Childhood friends

Written in 2023

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Many heroes in japanese RPGs tend to be in their teenage years, and often enough the adventures start rather light hearted as adventures or simple tasks to help the elders.

Lunar: The Silver Star

In Lunar: The Silver Star, young Alex wants to be like the hero he admires so much. He finds out that recently warmed weather has opened the path to a mystical dragon cave and heads out to become a Dragon Master - together with his friends Luna and Ramus, as well as his flying cat, Nall.

During the story, Alex will eventually become a Dragon Master, but the friends he started the adventure with will separate from him. Ramus finds out he is not cut out to be an adventurer and opens a shop, Luna will become the damsel in distress to be saved by Alex.

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

Not every adventure starts out as light hearted travels with friends. Fidel Camuze from Star Ocean: Itegrity and Faithlessness travels to the capital city of the country he lives in is constantly plagued by bandit raids.

Together with his childhood friend Miki he tries to request help from the country's knights. Star Ocean 5 is quite toned down a bit in terms of epic scale, and Miki will accompany Fidel all the way up until the end, without any romantic feelings involved.

Golden Sun

Even more serious is the adventure of Isaac, Garet and Jenna from Golden Sun. Their village is plagued by a catastrophe right at the beginning of the story with severe impact on the lives of the friends. Later on, they enter a forbidden area after their teacher persues them to do so.

This makes them experience a group of vile strangers kidnap Jenna and Kraden, their teacher. Isaac and Garet have to embark on the journey to fight against those evil people.

The second Golden Sun game revolves about the other childhood friend of Isaac, Jenna. Only when the two games are played together, they will eventually tell the whole story of the group of youngsters that started in the first game.

In summary, there are two ways of involving childhood friends of heroes: It's either a juvenile need for adventure, or a threat the young heroes have to solve at a young age.

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