Just Ghaleon!

#lunar fanart for the soul

all requests i did for lunar week from previous years

#lunar fanart for the soul

countdown for the release of the lunar remastered collection i did a few months earlier (1/2)

#lunar fanart for the soul

countdown for the release of the lunar remastered collection i did a few months earlier (2/2)

ir-dr

Day 3766 - 7 September 2025

🌔

.//projectTiGER

#alex noah #lunar fanart for the soul

yamarts

𝑹𝒖𝒃𝒚'𝒔 𝑭𝒖𝒓𝒚 🔥

Played through the two main Lunar games this past summer. I loved them! So have a little lady Ruby. She is beauty, she is grace — and she'll also scorch your face.

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#oh i love this XD #lunar ruby #lunar fanart for the soul

yamarts

𝑵𝒂𝒍𝒍'𝒔 𝑺𝒏𝒂𝒄𝒌 🐟

From the very first steps I took into the first Lunar game, I absolutely loved Nall. What there is not to love? Just a fluffy little dragon who loves fish. He always brought a smile on my face!

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#lunar nall #lunar fanart for the soul

yamarts

𝑻𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑩𝒍𝒖𝒆 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒓 🌎

If I had a coin for every time I played a JRPG series from the 90's that heavily featured a white feathered dragon, I'd have only two coins, but it is a bit weird that it has happened twice now.

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#lovely #lunar nall #lunar fanart for the soul

notdyingnow

Day 15 - Leo (Lunar 2: Eternal Blue), Stewardess

Feel free to color, just let me know!

#yaaasss slay #lunar 2 eternal blue #white knight leo #lunar fanart for the soul

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 4: What are your favorite scenes?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)

#<3<3<3<3 #truitt's delivery on that line still gives me shivers #the weight of compassionate love towards EB's main cast is palpable #tickles me that Dyne's light is the highest compliment Ghaleon can bestow heh heh

There are many things I could say about "These children shine with your light," about a man to whom the concept is alien at long last finding peace, but I'll limit myself to: there's just such love there, in Truitt's line reading. Working Designs was the first Western studio really to understand how crucial good acting was with the advent of multimedia, how it could make a scene, but even with the diffusion of this understanding throughout the industry and the passage of all the intervening years, I don't think we could have gotten a better read. The scene has an understatement and maturity, a necessary quiet, that was a foreign country to games of the era. It could have easily made all the wrong decisions (as the remake proves, by altering the line and adding flourishes it doesn't need and thereby fucking everything up), but it doesn't step wrong once. It's perfect.

Another masterpiece: the opening cutscene to EB, the original. It creates a character, a world, a crisis, a history without saying a single word. (All right, a few at the very, very end, but they're hardly necessary.) TSS's uses of the CD medium were largely limited and halting; this demonstrates an understanding of the platform's limitations but busts completely through them by working within them: the static images, the heavy use of pans up long pieces of sprite work, the limited palette - but you don't feel those limitations because they're smartly leveraged to enhance, not drag down, the specific story that's being told (a girl waking on a cold, dead world) and because of the way it's all cut and presented, with a profound knowledge of editing and the language of cinema. The animators wisely spend their frames on the moments designed to make the biggest impression on the viewer: the nightmare vision of Zophar juicing Lunar like an overripe orange; the shock of Lucia awakening, becoming the only moving thing on her lifeless planet.

And the music: after the mishmash of TSS's score, the opening theme erupts with a full symphonic maturity, dynamic yet cohesive, completely confident and, yes, epic. The cinematic storytelling, presentation, and scoring in this scene are leagues beyond anything contemporary in gaming. Eternal Blue's opening is the title proclaiming that it is, in fact, capable of offering experiences equal to that of film - an announcement that for RPGs, the CD format, and Lunar as we know it, had finally arrived.

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 5: Who are your favorite characters?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)

Many years ago - over ten, in fact - I wrote about my favorite video game characters at the time, with three Lunar characters taking the top slots. Self-plagiarism ahoy:

Ghaleon: It says a great deal about Ghaleon that the only person to get through his armor of cynicism was just someone who was, very simply, deeply good. I write about Ghaleon so much that it’s difficult to encapsulate why I like him in just a few words. He’s a man of contradictions: he’s fiercely intelligent and subsumes his life into duty, and yet he has the idealism to turn his back on the world based on an ideological objection, to rail against a selfish, irresponsible god for the perceived abuse of a friend. From his very teen years, he is labeled “cold,” yet his heart and faith can be irreparably broken by the apparent betrayal of a foster child. And yet it all makes sense, in a tragic way. I admire his conviction and depth of feeling, and, despite his extremely problematic methods, you know deep down that his bitterly-drawn conclusions are correct; how wondrous it would be if love alone could make the world go round, but,as much as we would want otherwise, it is power and sacrifice that rule our fates.

Dyne: Based on his characterization from the gaiden manga, and yet it explains so much about Silver Star that I can’t cleave game and gaiden apart. Dyne’s the perfect personification of uncomplicated love, and he ideally embodies love, with all its pluses and shortsightedness, in Silver Star’s love vs. duty ideological debate. He brings to mind the literal meaning of the title “mahatma" - a great soul.

Rena: Rena reminds me something Roger Ebert said about Lucille Ball’s style of humor, how it stemmed from her insisting in the face of life’s frustrations on being treated like a human being despite her personal shortcomings. I love Rena’s proactivity, her indefatiguable self-confidence and support for her friends. Her talents are limited, her love of food is not, but she keeps on trucking and is a better role model than the exalted child-gods that populate some of the more prominent games in the series. I’d be better off with a Rena in my life.

---

Now, I could have sworn I wrote about my other Lunar faves, in that article or elsewhere, but search is failing me. I'm sure my tributes will not reach the caliber of those above, but these characters have my heart no less:

Morris: Morris is, bluntly, an asshole. He's constantly teasing Ghaleon and getting up in his face and being a jackass to a kid who just lost his brother/father figure, and is kind of ambiently smarmy otherwise. That's part of Morris's appeal, though: despite his incredible asshole instincts - and despite resenting Zain for having the heart of the woman he loves and knowing that the humans will eventually displace his race - he continues to do the right thing: teaching Vane's children and being a loving parental figure; telling the Guildmistress that she was right to defend her life and those around her, even if it resulted in the death of his love; treasuring Latona's memory, even though she had a low opinion of him - despite knowing full well that he will never, ever get any good out of it himself. His devotion to what's right, despite his eyes being wide open and seeing clearly the desolation that awaits him at the end of this path, is downright tragic. He's a cynic; Funato calls him a "hypocrite"; but he's one of the most romantic characters Lunar has produced. The panel of him listening with a sad, wry smile on his face to his love singing his rival's favorite song is a little masterpiece of masochism in this vein.

Latona: Latona's perhaps the most realistic character in a franchise marked by its storybook outlook. She has all the traits of a fairytale princess - beautiful singer; birdies even gather to watch her at her work - but no prince is coming for her, ever, and the world just gives her jack. She encounters this all with a defensive sadness - head down, still moving forward, not expecting better of the world - until life deals her a few particularly bitter blows and she just can't fucking take it anymore. I don't think endangering all the kids was right, OK? But I can understand her, in a way, for taking a stand and saying that the world she knew is worth something and she is worth something, even if it means the world destroys her. Daring to say there are victims and forgotten underneath all the sunshine and roses of the new. She goes to her tragedy on her own two feet - a predecessor for Ghaleon's own turn, that way.

art by diaxyz

Idol: I persist in loving and admiring this villain from the Magic School manga, a mazoku who tried to live a peaceful life but whose pregnant wife, in a scene that is uncharacteristically honest for Lunar in its depiction of humanity's ugliness, was slaughtered by her neighbors once they discovered her husband's race. The manga, for all its problems, is one of Lunar's few true attempts to wrestle with the less-palatable aspects of how it handles the human-mazoku conflict, and Idol embodies the best of it. He fights not because he wants to but because he's learned there's a large part of the world that won't let him or his loved ones escape it, ever. He doesn't care about power. He just wants to save…well, not his little girl. He never had a chance to have a child. But he understands that Elie's someone's little girl, and not something to be destroyed. There's a Lunaresque purity to that love, tinged by wisdom frequently alien to the franchise.

#<3

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 7: What drew you to the series? Why do you like it?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)

#<3<3<3 #love reading folks' different lunar stories sm <3

In my last year in high school, I had a pen pal I got through a gaming magazine who was the only friend with whom I could talk about the amazing RPGs being released during that period. He'd send a letter to me; I'd send a letter right back; the timing was like clockwork. After all these years, I remember it as one of my dearest and most productive friendships. (Thank you, Alfred, if you're out there.)

Well, one day, one of his letters arrived with a videocassette. On the tape were the cinematics from a number of Sega CD games: Sonic CD, Popful Mail, and, of course, the Lunar games. It was accompanied by a 15-page letter detailing the plot developments that took place in between the numerous cutscenes of Eternal Blue, which claimed the lion's share of the tape. I was entranced; I tried drawing the characters with my meager art skills; and I ordered a Sega CD and played through the game myself. They helped me get through a difficult period in my life, when my education was delayed due to a family matter.

I came to the franchise when I just began to explore the internet proper, and Lunar was one of the first things I looked up. (Like, one of the very first. As in, I didn't wholly understand that just because one page linked to another didn't mean that they were part of the same site or from the same creator. I learned this only after complimenting someone on a guestbook for having a shrine to Ghaleon and being informed, kindly and politely, that they actually hadn't made it.) I chatted with folks on early message boards about Lunar. It dovetailed nicely with my interest in Phantasy Star, as both series attracted Sega RPG devotees. Before long, the series got cool manga and artbooks you could order from those newfangled online shops that carried stuff from Japan! And, hey; I was actually learning Japanese, and could try my hand at translating stuff, maybe! My love of Lunar played into a number of new interests I was developing during the period.

Well, longterm, it's not a surprise that Ghaleon was the main element that kept me attracted to Lunar. (Alfred similarly approved: "And that voice actor deserves a medal!") That he got an exceptional manga detailing his backstory to translate that became one of my favorite books ever certainly didn't hurt. I love Lunar for bringing us a villain that had personality and a point, brought to life with voice acting that was light years ahead of Lunar's contemporaries and strong character writing. I love it for how successfully it (particularly Eternal Blue) used its platform to make RPGs seem truly epic in scope - symphonic music, lavish anime cutscenes, a real understanding of what good voice acting could bring to a game. I love it for the starring role music plays in the series and for its bright colors. But, above all, I love it for the characters on its periphery with whom I…well, fell in love.

#thanks again for all your hard work for lunar week <3 #sorry i crashed out so hard at the end there i logged off for (checks) cripes over 100 days and forgot to log back on aaa #love these chibis so much <3

all the updated chibi portraits i did for lunar week

#yeeeeeeeeeahboiiii there's my scrungly bastard <3

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 7: What drew you to the series? Why do you like it?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)

just-ghaleon

A college friend glanced through my sketchbook sometime in 2004, saw all my slutty Magus (Chrono Trigger) doodles and pretty much immediately lent me his copy of SSSC, saying "I think you're gonna love this one" as he handed it over.

It took awhile for me to warm up to the game, actually. I was impressed by the opening anime sequence and song, sure. But the initial party (especially Luna) grated on me. (I was 17, it was the early 00's and I didn't have the media literacy and appreciation for half-decently written female characters that I have now.)

This poor first impression was not helped by the soft-lock bug WD had invariably added to the very beginning of the game by making enemies level with your party: I didn't know about any of that, and must have grinded out a few levels... because by the time I got to the game's first boss on the deck of the Hispaniola, that jellyfish slime was effectively unbeatable.

I shelved the game for what felt like a year, until my guilt about borrowing something someone had recommended so enthusiastically to me became unbearable and I tried again from a brand new save file.

This time I new the opening of the game, so I must have rushed through it, because I successfully avoided falling into the same soft-lock trap that scuttled my first run.

And I was finally treated to Wind's Nocturne. A song and sequence so deeply ingrained in my memory, I don't think I could forget it if I wanted to. That was when Lunar's unique charm first started to reveal itself to me.

Reaching Meribia felt like a bit of a slog again, I recall hating the sewers, but my interest maintained and eventually I made it to Vane...

Then, he showed up.

(You don't want to know the struggle I went through to slap two images together on mobile. Hellish.)

I don't know who all remembers what an awful time the early 00's were for queer folk like me, or how hypermasculine men were expected to be in EVERYTHING, and nowadays you could easily write this introductory appearance off as a "classic" mage robe ensemble. But back then this just hit different. (And looking at Lunar's other examples of mage robes, the purple frock still reads highly feminine to me today.)

When this elf showed up with his cunty voice, draped in all his gender non-conforming glory, it felt like I'd been struck by lightning. I'd never seen a fictional pretty boy presented like this in my short life, and he CHANGED me.

I'd flirted with exploring my own queerness before, but growing up in fuckin nowhere Iowa left me feeling pretty unmoored and directionless. It was a closeted era in general, and I yearned to find some kind of queer elder to reassure me. I just didn't expect he'd be a fictional elf on a fantasy moon.

Lunar's undercurrent is inherently queer, and I'll argue that point to my dying breath. That's what drew me in around 20 years ago, and that's what's kept me engaged after all this time. Endless queer readings that change the game every time you consider it.

Alex is a closeted nonbinary youth, constantly besieged by messages of what it means to be a "man" or "woman."

Luna is deep in crisis over her own identity, a child burdened by a thoughtless upbringing, raised to be nothing more than her sibling-by-adoption's constant companion and future wife. Her future is a foregone conclusion that's been beaten into her every day of her life by the careless words of the adults around her. "Can there be a guiding light I've yet to see?"

Nall doesn't know what he is, only what he isn't.

Ramus had suffered the fate of every moderately unsvelt child: ridiculed and seen as an inherent failure. He embraces his sexuality when the world at large would mock him for it, and overachieves to earn the love and respect of a father who does not deserve either in kind.

Nash is brash and arrogant, and very easy to read as an ftm man desperate to cover his own flaws by pointing out the ones he sees in others.

Mia, quiet and full of unstated mystery, can also be read as trans or a trans allegory. She's still trying to find her voice, traumatized by the sudden abusive transformation that's come over her "mother". For all she knows, Lemia's change in attitude is due to Mia's own choices. (Thankfully it's just a case of unsubtle doppelganger subterfuge instead of parental transphobia. )

Kyle is deeply entrenched in his own toxic masculinity, but it's still possible to see a future where he overcomes that and embraces his desire to be feminine and fluid. I read him as closeted genderfluid.

Jessica, Jessica, Jessica. Beloved by all, bisexual Jessica. Clunky dialog choices make her protest from the closet doors, but we see you Jess.

Dyne "Staying composed all the time, just seems painful" Laike Bogard. Ran away from home at 15 with a man he just met. Small for his age, small for his gender. Changes his name and entire identity. Bi/Pan trans man.

Lemia married-to-the-job Ausa. Single mother, coparenting her child with her closest friend. AceAro queen, with a side of nonbinary just for me, as a treat.

Mel's a fuckin PIRATE. THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE QUEER THAN A PIRATE.

Ghaleon. "Only loved one person, a human man." (I'm sorry Xenobia, but he's actually a slut. He just doesn't like you like that!)

Royce. Lesbian coded to hell and back. Bratty youngest sister who gets away with everything. We need to engage with her potential MORE.

Phacia, doomed aromantic. You deserved better.

Xenobia, tragically straight and in need of a lesbian awakening. I've made my arguments before, so I won't retread.

Tempest and Fresca, inseparable t4t pair. Tempest is pregnant with his first child by the end of the game.

Myght, inventor with average hermit tendencies, cursed with an offputting odor by WD's localization. Taben moves in abruptly after Ghaleon's defeat. Crotchety old mad scientist yaoi ensues. Hop on board this ship with me, cmon.

Taben. If any one character in SSSC has answers to the mysteries of the past 5 centuries, it's probably him. (It sure ain't Althena.) And he's a tight-lipped bastard. Tired old gay man swag.

Althena. "Mother." Oh, how we deny the agency of mothers. Oh, how much a loving mother can harm her children. Oh, how she would do anything to prevent her children from becoming what they became before. Oh, the wreckage. Oh, the ruin. Oh, the denials, the accusations. "Mother." Althena.

And cripes I'm gonna be here all day if I do that for the other games, but just know every Lunar character and situation has a queer reading. These are just mine.

hardcoregamer

Betrayal, destruction and sometimes mind control; these JRPG villains stop at nothing to get what they want.

From gods and monsters to manipulative psychopaths, JRPGs have granted us some of the most memorable antagonists. Some come with complex and tragic backgrounds, even urging some understanding of their actions. Others are evil for the sake of being evil. No matter the reasoning, they’ve all stolen the show each time they’ve appeared.

just-ghaleon

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 1: Which is your favorite game in the series?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)

#lunar week #god yeah fantastic answer #whole-heartedly agree #lunar isn't bad as a whole but it is very imperfect and fragmented #and i can't help but find myself fascinated with filling in lost moments and following the trail of consequence to new conclusions #also the Vane Airship manga slaps and you all need to read it if you haven't yet

Tales of the Vane Airship!

OK, seriously: You know how a lot of Final Fantasy IV fans say that there's no best English-language version of the game to play? In a similar vein, I'm a Lunar fan, but I don't have a favorite game. I think the Sega CD EB is the most polished and accomplished - the "Lucia singing on the Destiny" scene reblogged recently by 90sfantasyanimestuff reminds me that there are cutscenes that are just technical wizardry and have such a mature understanding of the language of film for that stage of gaming - but it's the Ghaleon storyline in which I'm invested, not the Zophar one. SSS has the most conventional case for it, but I'm just not a fan of Alex and a number of the heroes. TSS has a number of rough edges. I like its handling of certain aspects of Ghaleon's motivation better, but there are numerous storyline aspects that I also don't prefer over SSS, and many of the defining aspects of the series - the bright palette, the beautiful cutscenes, the focus on music - just aren't there yet. Interviews reveal that the game was kind of slapped together for a CD release, and that's glaring in some ways, in retrospect. The EB remake…I can see what Akari Funato was complaining about in terms of cut budgets, shoddy work, etc. The cutscene artwork at points is ugly and downright jagged. Magic School kind of misses the small, cozy scope and exploration of childhood friendship that were the points of the original game - which I like, but isn't quite representative of the series and doesn't have its hallmarks - big cutscenes, great music, etc.

Hey, the manga doesn't, either! But it's a masterpiece of gaiden storytelling. It fills in the backstories of two characters (one a fan favorite, one hugely influential but largely unseen in that capacity) who are crucial to the game's narrative but whose larger history doesn't fit organically within its structure, casting their relationship in a light that's unexpected but serves to illustrate the game's themes smashingly. It addresses some of the thematic oversights of the game in a way that actually makes those stories stronger. The new characters it introduces both work as individuals and add greater texture to the world at large. On its own terms, it's thoughtful narratively and expressive & detailed artistically, with an austerity at points that fits an often-somber, contemplative story. It brings a touch of maturity to stories that demand it in a series that's marked by its youth. I've enumerated my appreciations more thoroughly here. It's not a game, but it's my favorite part of the Lunar story, and one of my favorite books, period.

Lunar Week 2025 Q&A Day 2: What are your favorite songs?

(feel free to reply, reblog, send in asks, make your own post, anything -- to answer the question, as well as to explain why)