Poll of the Day > I didn't Know the US military had Dragoons

(+) Yeah! (+)

that's pretty cool!
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Dragoons were british mounted infantry that fought with lances and rifles.



Final Fantasy made up the part about fighting dragons and flying.
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Huh. What an effective use of fallen soldiers.

papercup posted...

Dragoons were british mounted infantry that fought with lances and rifles.

Final Fantasy made up the part about fighting dragons and flying.

Mainly because it was a mistranslation/adaptation.

The original "Dragoons" in the franchise were the "Dragon Knights" in the second game, who sort of influenced the idea of the class in later games. But with Final Fantasy IV (which became Final Fantasy 2 in the US), the class name was translated as "Dragoon", and it kind of stuck (though it's been translated differently at times - ie, the "Lancer" class in FF Tactics).

It might have been related to character limits (Dragoon has fewer letters than Dragon Knight), or just aesthetics (Dragoon sounds a bit cooler than Dragon Knight), but either way, it meant the term got attached to a class it was never meant to describe in the first place.

That being said, it's hardly the only time Final Fantasy uses Western words or names from Western mythology and gets it horribly wrong, because the Japanese rarely give a single shit about that sort of thing.


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