Okage

These villagers here, they conspire to infuriate me!

—Stan

Ari was an ordinary boy, so ordinary that he blended in with the background. He and his family live in a small village called Tenel back in the middle of nowhere. However, the family's "normal" life is suddenly turned around on its head when his sister gets cursed by a ghost that causes her to speak completely in Pig-Latin. Not wanting their daughter to live the life of a comic relief girl (seriously, they actually say that), they turn to the spirit of a strange and mysterious bottle that Ari's father found one day. The spirit in the bottle agrees to help for a price: one of the other family members will have to play host to the entity in the bottle and do as he says. The entity in question is the Evil King Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV... or Stan. After a quick competition to determine who has the best shadow, Ari is chosen to play host for Stan (and practically handed off by his family, poor sod) and Stan makes good on his word, turning Annie's (Ari's sister) shadow pink, just because he never said he wouldn't.

...It gets weirder from there.

Okage is an Eastern RPG that was made by Zener Works in the early 2000's. It has gotten mixed reviews from those that have played it, having being somewhere between a good game to a mediocre one at best, with the eastern world generally having a very high opinion of it while the western world barely know it exists. Much of the game's design is reminiscent of Tim Burton's works (particularly The Nightmare Before Christmas), and it's implied that his works actually inspired most of the game's setup.

Tropes used in Okage include:

• Action Girl: Ari's mom is hinted at being this in her childhood
• All in a Row: Ari's allies follow him around outside of towns, although they can get stuck behind walls or trap Ari in a corner.
• Big Bad: It seems to be Beilone, but in The Stinger, it may be implied it was Stan all along.
• Big Damn Heroes: Rosalyn when you first meet her, also counts as Dynamic Entry.
• Blind Idiot Translation: While not as bad as some examples, all of the script is given a very literal translation without regard for cultural differences or loss of humor.
• But Thou Must!: Ari is so overshadowed that he rarely has a choice in the matter.
• Cat Up a Tree: One of Stan's first displays of his awesome power.
• Collector of the Strange: Kisling and Ari's Dad. You can overhear their conversations at several points in the game, and they always get stranger.
• Cool Big Sis: Rosalyn to Ari and Annie.
• Dialogue Tree: A staple of the series. Most will have an option for agreeing, sarcasm, or negative, and quite often what choice you pick changes your relationship status with whoever's involved at the time; select more for Stan, for example, and the fortune tellers will indicate he's your strongest relationship. They even have a big role in one of the later chapters, believe it or else.
  • Whatever you do, don't click the Visible Silence options for that part. Don't do it.
• Evil Diva: Linda, but on accident.
• Eviler Than Thou: Another part of the game's premise, with Stan trying to be the most evil of them all. He throws frequent hissy fits throughout the game relating to people not recognizing him as the True Evil King.
• Faux Affably Evil: Stan.
• Flunky Boss: Every boss save the for the Final Boss has minions that fight with it.
• Freudian Excuse: Beiloune seems to claim this as for why he introduced Classification and blocked off their world from the rest of the universe.
• A God Am I: Beiloune's classification powers make him virtually a god in the setting.
• Heel Face Turn: Three of the seven fake evil kings join you after knocking their power out of them.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: Unlike most games of this nature, the player character has a default name (Ari in English, Ruka in the original Japanese), but you're still welcome to change it.
• The Hero: Rosalyn. It's an extremely rare instance where the Hero is not the main character.
• Heroic Mime: Built on this as part of the premise, yet again.
• Improbable Weapon User: From books, to microphones to playing cards.
• Kid with the Leash: Inverted; Ari is owned by Stan.
• Living Shadow: Stan. Played completely straight until the end, which even then proves to still be accurate.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: One of the game's only drawbacks. It's not so much the length of the load times (anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds) as the frequency. Loading times even crop up between rooms within the same building... and not very big rooms either.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Beiloune separates the setting of the game from the rest of the world, all for his daughter.
• Parasol of Pain: Most of Rosalyn's magic revolves around using her parasol as a sort of conductor.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Epros, to the frustration of Stan.
  • And almost everyone else.
  • Rosalyn: Cute, but uses cheesy metaphors.
  • He only slips up twice throughout the whole game, after his boss fight at the end.

Epos: Damn Rhyming...

• • Implied to be enslaved by rhyming by classification until defeat, but plays along for most of his time in the party. After the final boss, Linda declares that she'll follow him anywhere, and he pretty much yells for her to go away.
• Rule of Funny: Someone was obviously following this rule throughout the game's development.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Stan. Only in this case, it's a pretty pink bottle. With jewels and generally not-evil accents.
• The Stinger: At the end of the game, after the credits roll, you get a scene of Stan in his Shadow form in front of Ari's house and makes some rather cryptic comments even somewhat implying that he was in fact The Man Behind the Man.
  • That moment also was a nice setup for a sequel, but when Zener Works went of business, it kind of crushed that plan like a soda can.
  • Maybe Stan was just being his usual Harmless Villain self. He left saying that he'd take over the world, but instead he thinks that playing tricks on Ari is more EEEEBIL. It's unlikely that he was The Man Behind the Man because he was stuck in the bottle for too long, he seemed genuinely confused when he found that the Fake Marlene had no soul and that Beilone was a powerful villain, he was pissed off by all the Fake Evil Kings, and Classification would have caused him to die fighting Rosalyn.
• Tsundere: Rosalyn, who shows her tsuntsun side to Stan and her deredere side to everyone else.
• Uncanny Atmosphere: Highland Village, which turns out to be a feeding ground for the Vampire Evil King.
• Visible Silence: All. over. the place. Even in Ari's Dialogue Trees, the third option is always an ellipsis.
• We Cannot Go on Without You: One of the game's drawbacks is that you get a game over if Ari dies.
  • Could make sense, considering that Ari's inanimate body is of no use to Stan, since he can't move and continue the quest to get his power back. There's also a good chance that, if anyone else would volunteer to carry said body, they'd forget him somewhere, since Ari's ridiculously unmemorable.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Marlene, at first.
• Wham! Episode: Chapter 5 of the game. And how.
• You All Look Familiar: This happens in one of the chapters. When Ari disappears from the world, everyone forgets about him and what they were doing, and the result ends up as some strange twist of future-happenings and if-we-never-met-you. Needless to say, it's a bit of a gut-puncher for the player.