Happy Pride Month ^_^ who wants some Queer Rage to celebrate? 😊
Okay ‘rage’ is a little excessive. But it IS a classic Siddy Rant :3 So I’ve been getting back into Fire Emblem Three Houses lately after not playing it for a while. Been reminded why I love it ☺️ I love the characters, I love the story, I love the supports. It’s all been great :3
… However 😊 There’s always been one character that confuses me to no end >_> and that… is Anna. For those who don’t know Fire Emblem, Anna is a character who appears in almost every single game as a merchant, but has only been playable as of the most recent games. Awakening Anna, Fates Anna, Fodlan Anna, and Engage Anna. And in Fire Emblem there’s a system called the Support System. Supports are unlocked by two characters fighting alongside each other, and these supports are how we get to know characters and expand on them and their relationships to other characters. In recent games, you can even make two characters get married :3 … I realize that explanation is probably redundant considering this is going in the Fire Emblem tag. And if you’re in the fire emblem tag you presumably already know this. But still just in case ☺️
Anyway, of the Annas, Awakening Anna has just two supports with Tiki and Robin, three if you count male and female Robin as separate characters, and even in those minimal supports we learn more about her than we would if she was just another NPC like she was in other games. In Fates, Anna can only support with Corrin, but even then, that single support shows us an insecurity she has about being one of thousands of Annas, because yes, all of the Annas across all the games DO exist in the same world and are all related and have the same name, canonically 😊. Engage Anna is a fresh take on the Anna character. Engage Anna… is a child. All the other Annas are grown, established merchants while Engage Anna is basically an up and comer. She, also unlike the other Annas, has a good amount of supports, with a total of EIGHT support partners. That’s a lot of characters to help flesh out Anna and make her into a full person :3
… And then we have Fodlan Anna. This is the Anna we see in Fire Emblem Three Houses. And she’s the woman of the hour >_>
She… truly confounds me. To the point it makes me frustrated if I think about it too long. Because this Anna… doesn’t have ANY supports whatsoever. So we can’t get to know her at all ._. And something I didn't mention before is supports aren't JUST to get to know the character, they're also a passive buff to your stats when you're in battle near your support partner granting you more of a chance to land your attacks, dodge enemy attacks, and not get crit... And they also stack. 4 times. 😊 Her not having supports is also extra weird because she’s one of 11 playable characters with a Major Crest .-. The Major Crest of Ernest. Was she born with it? Is this Anna a noble and she abandoned her title to be a merchant? Does Hanneman, The Father of Crestology, know about her Crest? Who the FUCK is Ernest and why is he important enough to have a Crest ._. Are any of these questions answered? No. Because she doesn’t have a single support conversation! .-. And the crazy thing is… I can think of SEVERAL characters that she could support with just off the top of my head! She could have conflict with hagglers like Ashe and Leonie, she could take advantage of sweet but naive characters like Mercedes and Alois and feel bad about it and apologize for it later, she could sell Manuela romance stories in a C-B support, Hanneman could pester her about her Crest and she rebuffs him by distracting him with history or crestology books in her stock, her support with Byleth could start with her recognizing them from when they were a mercenary, maybe she tried and failed to extort them and having to work so close to them now is awkward for her. That’s 7 supports right there, and that’s already breaking the Anna support record for the time and almost matches the current Anna support record set by Engage Anna .-.
Okay, so say you can look past the question marks of her character and you can ignore the support issue. Is she at least a good and unique unit? And the answer….. Is no 😊 No she is not 😊. The thing with Anna is her stats and what she's good and bad at contradict each other .-. She has a good magic stat and learns one of the best spells in the game, Meteor... but she has a weakness in Reason. She has a great Charm stat, but she's weak in Authority. She has a Budding Talent in Riding, of all things .-., but she can't take advantage of it in Valkyrie or Dark Knight because of the aforementioned weakness in Reason. And she COULD be a Holy Knight... But Holy Knight... Isn't even that good of a class, all it has goin for it is the horse ._.
But, okay, being fair, she DOES have strengths in Swords, Axes, Bows, and Faith. With these strengths the intention is clear, for you take her down the Thief class line, making her a thief, then assassin, and ultimately ending in the Trickster class, which provides a lot more speed, and lets her use her Faith spells. And she performs this role... Fine. But there's a problem. A gorgeous, purple haired problem. Meet Yuri
He's my favorite character in Three Houses :3 And he is a problem if you wanna use Anna... Because Yuri does everything Anna can do... just better in literally every way! ._. Yuri has supports, which means we get to dive into his, very interesting, character and also, as mentioned before, supports provide sometimes vital buffs to your hit rate, avoid, and crit avoid. And while Yuri DOES have more weaknesses than Anna, having 4 to Anna's 2... Yuri's weaknesses are in things you wouldn't train him in anyway unless your doing some kinda challenge run... Or hate yourself 😊 His strenghs are all perfectly in line for his role including his Budding Talent in bows which grants him the powerful, if sometimes inaccurate, Deadeye combat art. His role is the same as Anna's, get him to Trickster ASAP and let him slice and dice through enemies or blast them with magic.
Speaking of Magic... Yuri is better at that too! Yuri has 4 Reason spells that he learns, including the strongest wind spell in game Excalibur, while Anna has 3 spells, Fire at D, Thunder at D+ and Meteor... ALL the way at A! Meteor IS a good spell, arguably better than Excalibur because of its sheer range... But with Anna's weakness in Reason getting Meteor is gonna take WAY longer to get than Yuri's Excalibur. He also has more, and better, Faith spells than her .-. Yuri and Anna both have the standard Heal and Nosferatu at D and D+, but Yuri learns Recover, a more potent Heal that restores more health, at C rank, the offensive spell Silence at B which restricts distant magical enemies from using magic, effectively rendering them sitting ducks, and Aura at A. Not THE most powerful Faith spell, but IS the second most powerful and has a high crit chance, aided by Yuri's high skill/dexterity stat. While Anna learns Ward at C which grants the chosen unit +7 resistance that wanes over time... And that's it, no other effect, and she learns Rescue at B rank. Which, I will say, Rescue IS always very good to have in your repertoire, it warps far away allies to her side to get them out danger, the exact range of the spell being the unit's current magic stat divided by four, thank you FE wiki for that lol. Aaaand that's all she learns. So Yuri learns 7 total spells, not including Heal and Nosferatu because literally everyone learns those two, and Anna learns 5.
On top of ALL of this... Yuri has a Heroes' Relic that goes with his Crest, the Fetters of Dromi. The Fetters of Dromi are an accessory he can equip that gives him +1 to his movement, enables canto to let him move again after taking an action if he didn't use all of his movement, AND grants him Aegis and Pavise, skills that have a chance to halve damage taken. AND to top it all off..... His Crest does the exact same thing Anna's does 😊
To review: Anna is a character who we have no way of getting to know, even her Monastery dialogue is static and only changes twice, once at the beginning of the timeskip and again at the end... And even that dialogue is VERY generic and doesn't tell us anything about her specifically, the dialogue boiling down to "Man the war sure is hard for people, I hope they're okay :(" And "I can't believe the war is almost over! I can't wait for this to be behind us so I can get more business opportunities to make more money 😄" Hell, she has a PARALOGUE, a whole separate chapter, all to herself, and even THAT doesn't tell us anything about her! ._. She arranges a business deal with another merchant named Pollardo, Pollardo tries to scam her out of her share of the profit, you fight, Pollardo leaves, and Anna says "I hate getting scammed >:( Thanks for helping me out 😄" like... Cool... She doesn't like scammers... No one does 😊 So... Thanks for that >_> On top of that, she's not even that good of a unit. You CAN use her... But why would you want to when there's a character who does the same thing as her AND is objectively a better unit in very sense .-. And, listen, I LOVE to use bad units, I ALWAYS use the Trainees of Sacred Stones. All 3 of'em are permanent staples in every Sacred Stones playthrough. I go out of my way to use Nino in Blazing Sword, I use Niles in Revelations, and I haven't gotten that far in Binding Blade before, but I DO fully intend to use Sophia. I USE bad units.
But Anna... She just doesn't have anything going for her! She's not an interesting character, she's not a stand out unit, her budding talent is random and grants a mediocre skill. Maybe her budding talent DOES tell us something about her character... Not that we'd ever know because, say it with me, she doesn't have any supports 😊 She doesn't even have a UNIQUE Crest effect. At LEAST give her the effect that raises the damage melee weapons. Because that's the only Crest Effect that doesn't double up with only the Crest of Fraldarius having that particular effect. At least in that case she'd have the same crest effect as someone who ISN'T in direct competition with her spot .-. Felix is a completely different unit than Anna. Yuri and Anna fill the same niche which, as I'm sure I've made clear, Yuri is better at ._.
ANYWAY, thank you for letting me rant. I don't understand the purpose of this Anna as a character... She may as well be a cardboard cutout .-. Or one of those dolls where you pull a string and she spits out a catchphrase ._.
