Shadow Hearts spoilers below
24. Shadow Hearts – Overcoming Fox-Face
We discussed a Shadow Hearts moment earlier on the list which leads into this one. When Yuri tried to fuse with the Seraphic Radiance and failed, he essentially lost his sense of identity and became a broken man. He flew off to a castle in Europe, where he was eventually found by Alice and Zhuzhen, but he didn’t recognize them because his soul had retreated within himself and was trying to disappear, fearful of what would happen if the Seraphic Radiance was unleashed again.
After Alice and company manage to tame Yuri in the castle, she decides to venture into his soul to see if she can’t find some way to save him. She encounters the four masks in the graveyard, and I was honestly pretty surprised when she said that she loved Yuri when they asked her. It seems like in most RPGs, the characters can’t admit they love each other until the end of the game! So it was kind of nice to see Alice being so honest about her feelings for him.
Once Alice goes inside, she finds Yuri digging his own grave under the orders of Fox-Face, who had tormented him mentally at different points in the game. Yuri is clearly unstable, as he seems to think Fox-Face is his father and Alice is his mother, and he’s oblivious to the conversation the two of them have as he continues to dig. Fox-Face basically tells Alice all the stuff I mentioned about Yuri in the first paragraph about his fears, but she refuses to accept it. She believes he can overcome it, and her faith eventually frustrates Fox-Face so much that he punches her, which is another thing I was pretty surprised to see depicted in a video game: A grown man punching a woman in the face.
When Yuri sees that, he slowly begins coming back to reality, with Alice’s help motivating him along the way. I love it when Fox-Face goes in to punch him and Yuri just sort of casually kicks him and knocks him for a loop. He’s such a boss when he wants to be. I love this scene to see him face his fear of being a Harmonixer and finally standing up to Fox-Face, which was really a representation of his fear and self-doubt. And that’s what makes Yuri so great. Sometimes he gets knocked down, but he always gets back up better than ever and owns faces along the way. Even his Harmonixer transformation animation changes after this scene. Before this scene, Yuri screams in agony as if fighting the transformation, like he’s afraid of it (which Fox-Face alludes to during the scene). Afterward, Yuri simply swings his arm down, says, “Hmph,” and transforms like it’s nothing. I know it sounds silly when it comes to something small like this, but I totally marked out the first time I saw that new transformation scene. I knew I was a Yuri Hyuga fanboy from that moment on.
Bonus Question: What is your favorite “Character overcomes his inner demons” moment in a game?
Kind of a strange question, maybe, but it was the first thing that came to mind. Just be careful about spoilers!
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