Guilty Gear/Headscratchers

• Why did Zappa initially insist on going to Faust to get those nasty demons exorcised? One, Faust is a doctor (probably Not That Kind of Doctor), so I doubt he'd have the right tools to get the job done. Two, let's just say Faust is...um, special. Aren't there any other magicians/voodoo priests/aliens capable of doing that sort of thing? It certainly would save him a helluva lot of trouble, in regards to being "accidentally" cut open.
  • Well, Faust does have a general reputation as a "miracle worker," so Zappa just assumed that he'd be of some help.
    • Plus, I'm not sure Zappa knows he's possessed. All he knows is that he sometimes blacks out, and wakes up some time later with fresh injuries.
      • Yes, he doesn't know it. Just pay attention to his reaction when Faust tells him he's possesed. Also, about the Not That Kind of Doctor thing, he DID heal everyone in need of healing he encountered, including a Necro-possesed Dizzy
  • Faust also diagnoses Axl's time-slipping in one of the paths in Guilty Gear X+'s story mode, so his knowledge seems to surpass mundane medicine.

• The Holy Knights are a (para?)-military organization, and Sol's a Jerkass. Why did Ky, as his superior, put up with him at all? Sure, Sol's competent as all hell, but why didn't he end up court-marshalled or dishonorably discharged for sassing back and generally being a loose cannon and a slacker?
  • Sol can set cities on fire when he's in a bad mood. Go ahead and court-martial him. I'll be right over here. On another continent.
  • I think he also came with a personal recommendation from Kliff Undersn, Ky's father figure. When your hero says "This guy'll be great for the place!" you tend to take him at his word for at least a little while. Also, on top of his power and his dedication to killing Gears, there is the whole mess of the Holy Order likely having a rather high death rate. Gears were designed to be incredibly good at magic, able to summon power the likes of which most humans can't match (Ky's reputation as a genius comes from his control over lightning magic, not any abnormal amount of power). Anyone who can keep fighting them and keep coming back alive would likely be considered essential enough to overlook some insubordination.

• What is a gear exactly? Is it a biological humanoid imbued with special powers? Or are they all artificial/mechanical androids like Robo-Ky? Or can a gear be either, only defined by their powers? I used to think of "gear" as a word for mecha, but none of them look like miniature mecha aside from the suit worn by Justice, who wages war on humanity, implying they're not human. So are they biological genetic constructs that don't count as human, biological constructs with android parts, androids with biological parts, or are none of them biological at all?
  • Despite the name "Gear," there's nothing mechanical about them. They're basically magic-infused, genetically engineered organisms. Beyond that, though, they come in many different flavors, ranging from Sol's I-can't-believe-it's-not-human to some rather monstrous things that pop up in art books and the like. "Gear" is really just a catch-all for Man-made magical lifeforms. Robo-Ky, while Man-made and exhibiting some electric magic mastery depending on the incarnation, doesn't seem to qualify because it's not alive.
  • Gear refers to evolution, hence "The Missing Link." In the GG universe, the Gears were originally meant to be the next step in human evolution. Instead they became weapons of war.
• Followup question: just what are Eddie and Angra? They're never described as gears, which seems supported by them not going catatonic following Justice's death, but they're described as "similar" to gears...
  • They're Forbidden Beasts. Not a lot of information has been explicitly revealed, but what is known so far is that they're magical in nature and the product of forbidden rituals (even Slayer strongly condemns them after noticing Millia's hair in his story in #R) available certain members of the Assassin's Guild. The ritual apparently involves giving up something precious to receive power in the form of the Forbidden Beast. Zato-1 gave up his eyesight and gained Eddie. It has yet to be canonically stated what Millia gave up to get Angra.
    • When Eddie comes across Dizzy in story mode (I forget who's), he mentions that Forbidden Beasts are, on some level, the enemy of Gears. I always got the impression they were a sort of 'sentient summon' like Testament's succubus familiar. As for Millia, a mix of subtext and fanon is that she gave up her womb, or something similar (her frequent references to 'a maiden's purity' in her quotes among other things)
      • Re: Millia: in her GGXX Ending I (I think), Slayer warns Millia that "that hair is alive", and Millia replies that she is quite aware of this. In Ending II, Millia worries that she has been overusing her power (presumably Angra), but claims that she is not "like [Zato] yet." In other words, Angra, like Eddie, may be capable of taking over its user/host, or at least influence his/her actions or thoughts. Millia may or may not have been forced to sacrifice something during the Angra ritual (remember, she was coerced into joining the Assassins' Guild in the first place), but AFAIK, no in-game content corroborates the theory that it involved her virginity or anything... below the belt. Jam is the one with the "A maiden's purity" quote (said when falling victim to Faust's Shigeteki Zetsumei Ken/Stimulating Death Fist), and Millia's GGXX Ending III line about Zato having "stained her" (or "dirtied [her] soul") is, given the circumstances, most likely not a metaphor for physical defloration.

• what was with Sol's story route in AC+ where he fights his past self, his past self gets killed and yet he survives anyway? Not only that but what was the point of that plot thread if it's never mentioned again? You would think Sol would be a LITTLE concerned about being alive despite his past self dying.
  • So New Sol can fight Old Sol.
• Every single time a character uses the contrived, awkward device of referring to the creator of the gears as "That Man", and nothing else. Why? Do they actually not know who he is, or is it just a transparent attempt to keep his identity hidden from the player? Unless "That Man" is his actual name, people do not talk that way.
  • Knowing this series, "That Man" is probably his real name.
  • Also, most of the cast we've seen doesn't have a clue who he is. Really, the only ones we've seen who verifiably have any idea who he is, rather than that he's just some guy who did horrible things to them are Sol and Raven... and neither of them have much reason to tell anyone else who he is beyond "That Man."
• It bugs me that Ky speaks American English in the dub despite being French.
• It has always bothered me that Sol and Ky carry their weapons all the time. They don't seem to have something like a sheath.
  • For Sol its okay since his sword is as sharp as a bread knife and won't probably hurt anyone if he doesn't add his fire element.
    • Because Sol is Badass
  • Isn't it dangerous in Ky's case? A cop carrying a long, pointy sword is pretty scary. And holding the sword all the time is kinda tiring and inefficient.
    • Maybe he summons the Thunderseal out of nowhere, just how Testament summons his scythe.
• I have a problem with with the ending music in Accent Core+. It just seems too inconsistent. We get the "okay" ending when Potemkin dies, but the "bad" ending music when May goes traveling with Anji? How does that work?
  • Probably somebody at Arc System Works realized it was wrong, but was too late to stop it, or something like that.
• Is Justice mechanical, or is she just wearing Powered Armor? Sometimes it seems to be implied that she's just wearing a suit, but if you look at her proportions, there's no way a person could fit in there. And if that is actually her body, why the crotchspike? Seriously.
  • It's just armor. Though without it, she's apparently pretty frail.
• Can Dizzy really be Sin's mother? Wasn't it said that Sin's half-gear and isn't Dizzy a half-gear herself?
  • Ugh... this is an example on how assumptions can confuse people. Sin is never stated as a half-Gear, but rather, described as a "child with the blood/genes of a Gear." So his fractions isn't officially 50-50.

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