About the Author: Why this character?

[Shulk]

I picked Shulk because he defies everything I tend to hate in JRPG protagonists, and that made him grow on me in a way no other JRPG protagonist ever has. In a lot of ways he comes off as a supporting character in his own game; he's not a badass soldier, he's a nerdy engineer who uses the Monado to overcome his own shortcomings. He's not the fastest, the strongest (he has the third lowest HP in the game), and there's no way in hell that he can solo the game due to the way his abilities work. He's not an angsty, brooding loner, he's a guy who encourages his team in every single random battle. It was refreshing to play as a protagonist who actually needed to rely on his party, and the affinity system and the heart-to-heart scenes cemented his relationships with all of them organically, through my own efforts.

Other things I can gush about? His amazing voice actor managing to pull off some ACTUAL emotion that doesn't come off as forced, something you don't hardly see in Japanese to English dubs. Then there's the way his character develops thanks to his ability to change the future and his struggles to do so. There's his changing viewpoints on the war with the Mechon, and finally there's his willingness to actually kill the most irredeemable villains in the game because he actually realizes there's no reasoning with them.

Oh, and then there's the Monado. I consider it the coolest sword in a JRPG. It's the Buster sword if it were also a lightsaber with magic spells and an even bigger plot significance. All jokes about "da monado's powah" aside, it's hard not to share Shulk's absolute reverence for it when it saves the party's lives over and over. Then there's the plot twists that make it more than just a simple sword, plot twists that genuinely caught me off guard.

Sure, he believes in that tired "power of friendship" cliche, but I didn't find it cheesy at all because of the way the game ACTUALLY encouraged you to build the relationships within your party and give them all a common goal: changing the future and controlling their destinies. That, and Shulk can't use the Monado because he believes in his friends, he just survives enough battles to be a proper swordsman by the game's end.