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Atelier (franchise)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The intrepid heroines of the "classic" Atelier games (that haven't come to North America yet). Clockwise from upper right: Lilie, Marie, Violet, Elie, and Judie.

Okay, you know how every RPG has the grand heroes chosen by fate to become wonderful friends and stand up to the evil sorcerer/empire/corporation/monster and keep it from destroying the world?
This game is not about them.
You know how in almost every RPG, buried about halfway down the final dungeon, sitting next to the second to last save point in the game there'sa shopkeeper who has every healing item in the game and every weapon or bit of armor that doesn't require an epic quest? The one who leaves you wondering: "Just how in blazes did she get down here? I'm the ridiculously powerful chosen one and it's almost impossible for me to do it so how did a lowly shopkeeper pull it off"?
This game is abouther.

TheAtelier series is a series of fourteen (or twenty,depending on how you count them) RPGs developed by Gust Corporation of Japan, with some localized byNippon Ichi Software. The franchise had been exclusive to Japan (withAtelier Marie,Elie,Lilie,Judie, andViolet) until the release of the first game in theIris trilogy in the United States in 2005. Its most recent North America-released iteration isAtelier Meruru. The series also possesses a brief manga depicting someAlternate Universe adventures between the first two heroines, brought to America courtesy of Tokyopop.

Based around the concept of the "atelier", or "artist's workshop", the main character in the games is usually an alchemist lookingto be the greatest in her field (or his, for theAtelier Iris andMana Khemia sub-series).Item Crafting is a major component of every game in the series, as the player is tasked with finding ingredients and recipes to create new items/spells.

The earlier games are rather famous in Japan for beingvery different from other RPGs of the day, with the item crafting and single-city-interaction focus. These differences, however, kept them out of the Western eye during the 90s and early 2000s, and after a fewnot-as-great sequels and after the rest of the industry began to judiciously "borrow" certain gameplay elements from it, the series' fortunes fell somewhat. The PSX-era games are still fondly remembered in Japan, however, and are often held up as an example that the Japanese game industryis still capable of innovation. (Though, granted, at 15 years old there's a debate to be had about just how valid a "recent" example the series is now...)

The series' fairly impressive release list is as follows, in release order, with U.S. releases bolded:

It's worth mentioning that the first two Salburg games,Marie in particular, have been re-released and re-made on more platforms than we can list here.Some of those platforms aren't even available outside Japan. Yeah, this series is more than merely popular there.

The following tropes are common to many or all entries in theAtelier (franchise) franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

Please only include tropes that occur in multiple games or in games not available in the U.S. in this list. For specific game tropes, refer to the game pages.

  • Alpha Bitch: Brigitt fromAtelier Violet. But she's alsoVitriolic Best Buds with the eponymous character.
  • Alternate Continuity: A few. Not too hard to keep track of, but beginning withAtelier Iris, Gust decided to not maintain just one continuity.
    • The first continuity is the "Salburg" one, which encompasses all five "original" games (Marie, Elie, Lilie, Judie, andViolet) and their spinoffs. They all take place in the same universe, with many characters making appearances in multiple games; the time period between the start ofAtelier Lilie (chronologically the first) andAtelier Violet is roughly 35 years.
    • Atelier Iris andAtelier Iris 2 then form the second continuity, AI 2 being a prequel of sorts that takes place long before AI 1.
      • Atelier Iris 3, while featuring certain characters who are similar, is in its own, sole continuity.
    • Mana Khemia 1 and 2 form another continuity; it remains to be seen if any other games will take place here.
    • The most recent games are difficult to place.Atelier Liese andAtelier Annie are clearly in continuity with each other, and at first glance the Arland games (Atelier Rorona thruMeruru) also appear to form their own continuity. However, there arevague hints thatLiese/Annie may well take place in the "Salburg" continuity and that the Arland games may be in continuity withthem; Gust is being very cagey about all this currently. (Meanwhile,Atelier Linaseems to sit all by its lonesome likeIris 3 does.)
  • Ambiguously Gay: Not who you might initially expect. Of all people,Elie Traum, theheroine of the second game, has an ending that raises alot of eyebrows. She can sort-of flirt with several of the male characters during the course of the game, but she also develops quite a relationship with Romauge the dancer. Romauge is one of two characters inAtelier Elie to have a fully-cinematic ending devoted exclusively to her, and in it... Elie abandons alchemy to run off and be a traveling dancer with Romauge and "pursue her heart". The overall tone of the ending isintensely romantic and more importantlyis the only "romantic" ending available in the game. And then there's the fact that Elie desperately wishes to contact Marie and "thank" Marie for saving her life and, well, you end up with a lot of speculation. Gust has never come out directly and said that the character is gay, however, so strictly speaking it remains speculative.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: This series is extremely guilty of this trope when it comes to naming the characters. Gust seems to fall into the same trap that certain companies likeSunrise do, in that they try to give all the characters Western-sounding names without really knowing what's properlyWestern.Atelier Annie has a few good examples, such as "Kilbert" (probably intended to be "Gilbert"), "Jalia" (possibly a correct name but more likely meant to be "Julia", eventually rendered as "Gillian"), and "Kraus" (the obvious problem in trying to transliterate "Claus", which is what the localization went with). Earlier games feature a few suspect names too -Atelier Elie prominently features a character who's name is officially written in-game as "Daglass McRain" when the "right" way to spell that is fairly obvious, especially if you're familiar with katakana at all.
  • Bag of Sharing: Explained in the context ofAtelier Iris 2; Felt and Viese possess a pair of rings which essentially allow them to teleport items to each other, so that Viese can make things out of all the crazy stuff Felt finds in the larger world, while remaining safe in their hometown until the very end of the game. The other games avert this trope by simply never taking control of the protagonist away from the player and making characters who aren't in the current party inaccessible for equipment purposes.
  • BashBrother-Sister Team: Violet and Bartolomaus fromAtelier Violet.Their quarrelling is a combination attack that hits all enemies.
  • Blade of Fearsome Size: Kilbert ofAtelier Annie uses an almost impossibly huge sword as his main weapon.Or at least, hetells people he can use it for the intimidation value, but he can't actually use it in real combat, and uses "standard" two-handers instead. Sterk of the Arland games uses Scots-style claymores that, while somewhat more realistic, are still quite long.
    • Bart, Violet's brother inAtelier Violet, works as a send-up of the concept. He also favors very large two-handed swords... and at the start of the game ishilariously inept with them, as they're too large and heavy to swing properly!
  • Boarding School: The main setting forMana Khemia. The first few games also feature a school, but the protagonists don't live there (even if they can have friends that do.) The third game stars the woman whofounded the school and details her adventures in getting it established.
  • Broken Bridge: InAtelier Violet, you can't bypass certain obstacles on the field until you have the item needed to overcome it (explosives of varying grades to clear barricades-- one of which is anElven Dice,Air Drop to breathe underwater, living rope to climb tall cliffs, etc). You need reference books to be able to craft them. Which if you don't have, you can only buy in the next city. To go to the next city, you need to have the request-issuer mentioning it to you. Which requires that you reach certain level in alchemy.
  • Catgirl: Norn fromAtelier Iris and Nikki fromMana Khemia.
  • City Guards: They mistake Violet for a Bomber Demon.
  • Cute Ghost Girl: The recurring character Pamela Ibis.
  • Darker and Edgier: As a general rule, games with a guy as the protagonist tend to be more conflict-heavy (and the villain truly vile) than games with a girl as the protagonist. This basically equates to theIris andMana Khemia games, withIris 2 being far andaway the darkest of the entire lot and the darkest game of the franchise, and the firstMana Khemia running a close second in its last act.
  • Determinator: The series has had a surprising number of these over the years, partially because of where it sits on theSliding Scale. Has become a little more obvious with the advent of theAtelier Iris sub-series.
    • Perhaps shockingly, the first Determinator in series history is, of all people, the titular heroine ofAtelier Elie. Consider: she begins the game still recovering from the effects of a disease suggested to be similar to scarlet fever, and assuming the playerplays for a good ending, she will overcome this, overcome a somewhat disadvantageous initial ranking in the academy, manage to run a business and maintain her academy standing at the same time, overcomevampires, sea dragons andpotentially psychotic instructors standing in her way, all to become the finest alchemist Salburg has ever seenand thank the woman who saved her life - and she never,ever gives up on her dream, which is the theme behind the entire game. Heck, despite the soft music and narration, the very opening of the game has the message that you can't pursue your dreams if you give up!
    • Klein ofAtelier Iris 1. What's that? Avenbury is sealed? We've got theBig Bad running around planning terrible things?The girl I've fallen in love with seems doomed to die if I stop theBig Bad? SaidBig Bad is in fact unleashing a horrible beast borne of an alchemic experiment gone horribly wrong that will destroy every single thing I know, love and hold dear? The heck with all of that, I've gotalchemy. Let's do this.
    • Felt ofIris 2. My home and dearly beloved are threatened with, well, nothingness? The world below isa festering pit of hate, war and recrimination? What I do, alchemy, is considered the art of the devil? TheBig Badis being manipulated by a sword like mine, but gone mad? Yeah, not a bit of that is going to stop me from setting every single one of those things right.
    • And then the titular heroine ofAtelier Annie manages to poke fun at this idea. Annie isn't keen at all on having to do alchemy for years on an island her grandfather sent her to, until she finds a purpose to it all! One that she will never back down or waver from! That purpose?To win the alchemy contest and thus marry Prince Joel,thus allowing her to live the life of ceaseless, careless luxury she's always wanted and allowing her to never work again.Uh...
      • Of course,her hard work ends up influencing her no matter what ending you go for.
      • And then there's another character in the same game,a certain redhead who puts on a devil-may-care facade but may well have another purpose that she absolutely will not back down on, no matter what...
  • Dude Looks Like a Lady: Eleore of the still-Japan-onlyAtelier Liese fits this trope to a T, to the point where he cultivates his ambiguous appearance in order to catch people off guard and confuse them about his intentions.
    • Funnily enough, the lead character ofAtelier Annie is very much aBifauxnen; most people's first reactions on seeing her was "That's supposed to be agirl?!" She gets this reaction quite a bitin-game too, much to her chagrin.
  • Dungeon Shop: That would be you (to varying degrees). Most obvious inAtelier Violet, where you actually have some degree of control over the shop.
  • Early Teen Hero: Roughly half of the protagonists begin as early teens. Since the games typically take place over multiple years, nearly all of them enter late teens or even adulthood by the end of the games.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Azure Azoth fromAtelier Iris 2, and Sulpher fromMana Khemia.
  • Enemy Scan:
    • One of Witos' skills fromAtelier Judie.
  • An Entrepreneur Is You: Some games, but especially inAtelier Violet. The reason Violet learns alchemy is so that she can build her own shop of wonders to drive visitors (and thus, economy) to Karotte Village, which is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Failure to get500 visitors within1000 days lead to Bad End where the village is abandoned. (This is easier than it sounds, really.)
  • Exposition Fairy: Hilariously enough, the series usesactual fairies for this purpose. You often get a single fairy in the early games who explains how fairies can be "rented" to help around the atelier;Atelier Iris 1 andAtelier Annie feature Popo and Pepe, respectively, who exist purely to explain game mechanics to the player.
  • Expy: The series usually avoids this, but in the case ofAtelier Annie, when the new art for an older version of Liese Randel was released, any half-informed anime fan couldn't help but notice that she looksalmost exactly like Signum fromLyrical Nanoha.
    • Liese Randel was in fact, an expy of Minakami Misao fromAsura Cryin (only with redder hair), in which the light novel illustration was done by Nao Watanuki (the same character designer of the Atelier games which feature Liese). Coincidentally(?), the anime adaptation ofAsura Cryin was done bySeven Arcs ofLyrical Nanoha' fame.
    • Ash inAtelier Iris 3 is basically the exact same character as Arlin from the firstIris game, albeit an antagonist this time. So are Crowleyor should I say the Shadow Gem possessing him and Mull from the same two instalments, although Crowley isn't aSmug Snake (whether or not he reachesMagnificent Bastard is up to you) or aCard-Carrying Villain, thus making him a much better character.
    • Also, while Gust has never come out and said it, a lot of people rather suspect that the "Salburg" of the classic games is basedvery heavily on the real life city ofSalzburg.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: A fairly odd case. "Explosive powder" is a very common and easy to make item, and the bombs you can make get rather powerful; cannon are also mentioned briefly in the Salburg games. The guards and armed forces of the various cities in the classic gamesnever use even an arquebus, however. The later games go kind of all over the place with it and make it even weirder; on the one hand,Poe prominently uses a "magic" gun, but none of the soldiers in that game use firearms at all.
    • Atelier Rorona finally does away with this, as befitsits setting; most of Cordelia's special attacks utilize her exquisitely-crafted pistol, and you do encounter enemies who are armed with guns. The other party members don't use guns simply due to a preference for other means of defending themselves.
      • Funnily enough, though, the trope thencomes back after a fashion in the later Arland games; none of the party members inTotori orMeruru, outside of Cordelia, use guns (and Cory isn't even playable inMeruru) despite some of the enemies still wielding them.
  • Fetch Quest: Poked at and lampshaded inAtelier Iris 3 wherein randomly generated quests that involve getting an item are directly labeled "Fetch". This is also part of the bread and butter of making money in classic Atelier games, with a twist: the items to be "fetched" are generally not available simply by punchingMooks. You have to gather the materials and thenmake the item in question. This is a key in both random cash quests as well as quests that advance the plot.
  • Fiery Redhead: Liese Randel, ofAtelier Liese andAtelier Annie. She's a bit calmer inAnnie, but only a bit, and doesn't really take much crap from anyone and doesn't really take "no" for an answer. In her own game, she's even more forceful and is theRedheaded Hero to boot.
  • Fish Out of Temporal Water: How the eponymous character ofAtelier Judie starts her adventure, due to a freak alchemy lab incident. Well, apparentlynothing much changed between the 7th century and the 9th century.
  • Gainaxing: The manga ofAtelier Marie & Elie uses a print version of this alot; even Elie isn't immune, however, which feels extremely weird given how in all the game artwork her bust is not emphasized at all.
  • Game Breaking Bug:Atelier Liese initially shipped with an absolutely stupefying number of fatal errors that would wipe your save data or cause the game to hard lock; while a corrected version was eventually shipped out (and produced for hopeful localization), the press had already taken the game and company to the cleaners over the issues, which were by far the most serious defects an Atelier game had ever seen.
  • Gratuitous German: Used a lot in the earlierAtelier games, since the setting is meant to be a version of Renaissance Germany; it's meant to be breakingTranslation Convention since the characters seem to ostensibly speak German. This has essentially disappeared as of theAtelier Iris games.
    • Ein/Zwei Zecksclaw? No?
    • The opening theme song to Atelier Iris 3 starts with German.
    • Despite being based onVictorian Britain,Atelier Rorona has quite a bit of this, too.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Happens in all three Iris games, with Arlin in the first game, Chaos and Ardgevald in the second and Ash in the third.
  • Improbable Weapon User: As the series has gotten older, a fair few of these, and theirimprobable weapons have shown up, some cooler than others. Examples:
    • Top credit currently goes to Gio ofAtelier Rorona; aCool Old Guy who uses asword-cane for a weapon.
    • Kilbert's massive chunk of metal that passes for a sword inAtelier Annie.
    • The "Mechsword" inAtelier Iris 3.
    • Poe's crazy doomcannon inAtelier Iris 2. You'd think the recoil from that thing would knock him into the nearest hard surface every time.
    • And let us be honest:every single character inMana Khemia does it, to a greater or lesser degree. (Ever seen someone use aBag of Holding as a weapon?)
  • Item Crafting: A cornerstone of the series' design. It's well worth noting that Item Crafting in JRPGs, especially through use of "alchemy", became widespread after the release ofAtelier Marie in 1997 which went on to casually sell a quarter-million units. Pretty much all modern JPRG crafting owes something to, or is directly a pared-down version of, theAtelier crafting system.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Many of the "freeform" early Ateliers have a character like this who can accompany the main character on out-of-town quests (as well as serve as a kind of love interest), with Enderk and Daglass in the earlier games and Marius in the more recentAtelier Liese.
    • Sterk from the Arland games is an examination of the concept; hewants to be a knightand serves as a love interest for Rorona but he was born in an age where knights are becoming a thing of the past. His multi-game character arc involves his coming to terms with this and looking at what it really means to be a "knight".
  • Large Ham: Vayne's dark-side'sEnglish VA inMana Khemia deserves a special mention for this. Beggur ofIris 1 is also noted for this in the best way possible, especially in English.
  • Lady of War: Alot of supporting characters across various games. Kyrielich fromMarie, Yurika fromElie (sort of), Katarina fromViolet, Fee fromIris 2...
  • Low Fantasy: While the games are hardly gritty or cynical (just the opposite really), they are also generally low-blatant-magic, with a focus on creating items for your use to get things like "fire spells" and the like, are heavily dominated by humanity, and don't possess a scope that goes much beyond a single country or principality (in the earlier games this is part of the point; you're operating on a time limit so you don't have time to goWalking the Earth for whatever you need). One of the criticisms directed toward theAtelier Iris sub-series is that it tended very much away from the Low Fantasy roots of its predecessors, andMana Khemia and the DS Atelier games (Liese andAnnie) get credit for bringing the series back toward this; the dev team ofAtelier Roronaopenly stated that they intended to go back to this full-force with that game, which the Arland games did.
    • The truly great irony is that, in the original design document (as revealed in the Atelier Series Official Chronicle), the Salburg settingwas going to be very dark, gritty fantasy in the vein ofBerserk. The early visual concepts thrown around for Marie and crew didn't really line up with such a dark setting, however, and so the rough edges were filed off to turn it into the optimistic, hopeful concept seen in the final game. A few remnants of the old "dark" concept survive, though, such as the plague that struck Elie's hometown (though crucially, it was Marie whosaved it).
  • Mana: In theIris andMana Khemia games, anyway.
  • Magical Girl: Poin ofAtelier Liesewants to be this. How much she succeeds is open to debate, especially since she seems to fixate on poor Liese as a rival and "villain" (at least untilLiesefeeds her a sob-heavy version about why she ran away from home).
  • Medieval European Fantasy: A bit moreRenaissance European Fantasy than straight medievalism, but for pretty much all of the games the trope fits. In the first five games, mankind has discovered gunpowder but hasn't yet mastered man-portable rifles; the Iris and Mana Khemia games tend to be a littleSchizo-Tech. Out of nineteen games, onlythe Arland games have really broken ranks on this.
    • Interestingly, while a lot of Japanese MEF features a rather higher standard of health compared to what actual medieval Europe was like, in the Atelier games this is actuallyjustified in that, well, with practical science-based alchemy being so prevalent, the standard of medicine is quite a bit higher in this setting than it was in real life. This is even a quest in the first game (where you have to create a medicine to save a friend from a crippling disease) and a plot point in the second, where the protagonist of that game was saved from death's door by the medical skills of theprevious game's protagonist.
  • Medieval Stasis:Hilariously played with in various parts of the franchise. In the "classic" games fromElie on, this trope is generally averted becauseyou, the player character, are often discovering new items that become popular and imitated later on and are thus a force for change and progress. (Generally). InAtelier Iris,things are in factAfter the End and the world is slowly regaining the progress lost when Avenberry fell, and inIris 2the enforced stasis of both parts of the world is a large part of theproblem and you, uh,inadvertently set up the catastrophe that precedes AI1.
    • Atelier Rorona then turns this on its head. Arland has well broken past any Medieval Stasis, and that's a large part of theproblem; with so much new technology and progress, you have to prove the alchemy shop is worth keeping open at all. You have tocause a little Medieval Stasis just to survive!
  • Mismatched Eyes: Both Ingrid and Helmina of the original series have this;so does a significant portion of the population of their home city-state of Kentinnis, for that matter. It's a genetic quirk among the Kentinnisans; those without heterochromia tend to havegolden eyes like Lilie does.
    • Eyes of Gold: As noted above (but here's the non-spoiler version), the titular heroine ofAtelier Lilie has pure golden eyes. Unlike many examples of the trope, though, these don't really mark anything particularly supernatural about her.
  • Multiple Endings: The earlier, freeform Atelier games had lots of endings;Atelier Elie hadthirteen of them. Mostly abandoned with the later games butAtelier Liese andAtelier Annie once again feature them.Atelier Rorona, as part of its "true back to the roots" design, was advertised as havingthirty such endings (though whether this is true is up for debate). The other Arland games have similarly large ending counts.
  • Nice Hat: This seems to be a requirement for being a heroine of a "main" Atelier game; every heroine has some bit of headwear that is prominent to varying degrees. Liese and Annie have particularly notable hats; Liese's is doubly notable as it disappears once she's no longer the main character inAtelier Annie.
  • Nintendo Hard: The third game of the series,Atelier Lilie, has a reputation for being hellishly difficult to complete with any kind of satisfactory ending without a lot of planning beforehand and knowledge of how the game works. The optional material in many of the latter games tends not to slouch, either.
  • No Fourth Wall: Popo's amusing tutorials inAtelier Iris.
    • Also, during one scene inAI1, Norn the Catgirl gets frightened by all the monsters in the woods, and asks to sleep in the same bag as Klein. She thinks it's innocent, but Klein gets the entirelywrong idea and says "No way! The ESRB would go nuts!"
  • Rebellious Princess:Liese ofAtelier Liese is this. Mildly out of the ordinary in that she's leaving home without permission in order to earn enough money to pay off her father's crushing debt.
    • While she seems to have canonically saved her family from ruin, she continues this sort of behavior inAtelier Annie, having apparently given her parents the flip to go participate in the Sera Island alchemy tournament. Despite outward appearances, though, her motives don't seem to be driven entirely by money this time...
  • Reluctant Monster: Pamela, who appears in multipleAtelier titles, is a ghost who either denies she is a ghost or doesn't want to believe that she can be unsettling to the living. Also, the "demons" portrayed in the manga version ofAtelier Marie & Eliedon't seem like such bad guys, most of the time.
  • The Renaissance: The architecture, clothing (mostly) and government in the first five games is meant to feel like Renaissance Germany - specifically post-Westphalian Baroque Austria,sans the rampant warfare and killing, complete with some words being pronounced in aGratuitous German style (seeSpell My Name with an "S", below). The Iris games and beyond tend to be a bit more blatantly fantastic with their settings but still retain some elements of this. The Arland games, meanwhile, go in adifferent direction.
  • Running Gag: Player characters often shout "Barrel!" whenever the player searches one. Yes, this dates all the way back to Marie.
  • Schizo-Tech: Assiduously averted in the first five games (Marie toViolet) as all of them maintained a more or less realistic technology level fortheir settings. Some of this began to creep into the games with the advent of theIris sub-series, however (although it never got as bad as inAr tonelico).
    • This is allpoked fun at and lampshaded inAtelier Rorona, where a previously Renaissance-level civilization has discovered the ruins of amore advanced culture and is slowly integrating technology as it is understood. By and large they have so far advanced tothe steam age and firearms are becoming increasingly common, but a few more advanced pieces of technology appear throughout town, likea computerized bulletin board, complete with touchscreen in the town square.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Pretty much every single entry into the franchise is deliberately slammed just about theentire way toward idealism. There isno problem that cannot be solved with the proper application of science, logic, and faith, and the life of your fellow man canalways be made more pleasant. Even in the few games where the situation can look dark and grim, the protagonists do not lose hope because theyknow that the world can be made a better place,though the work of their own hands, however small. The games are relentlessly optimistic in tone - practically to the point of some accusing them of beingrather too sweet.
  • Smug Snake: Many of the villains. (This makes punching their faces in highly satisfying.)
  • Spell My Name with an "S": The literal version, as "Norudisu" ofAtelier Elie and related works (such as theAtelier Marie & Elie manga that has been relased in the U.S.) suffers from the exact same problem as acertain other famous video game character who's name ends with "su". This is so bad and consensus is so nonexistant that even Tokyopop changed the spelling of his name between volumes of the manga (the only English medium the character has appeared in thus far) from "Nordith" to "Nordis"!
    • This problem exists for a whole bunch of other characters and places, particularly for ones who don't really have a game released in the United States yet. Is a support character in the first two games meant to be My or Myu? The first one is how Gust likes to spell it but it leads to certaingrammar issues in text. How about "Hermina" versus "Helmina"; even worse in that both arecompletely valid options? Is the last name of the titular character ofAtelier Lise Liese "Lander" or "Randel"? In the same game, is the region the game takes place in "Ordre", "Oldor", "Ordor", "Orudoru"? And so on and so on. Gust Inc. itself often doesn't help matters either - they like to spell the name of the heroine of the fifth game as "Viorate", despite the factthat the name they're aiming for is fairly obviously "Violet" (which is whatTrinity Universe's English version went with).
      • For some of the above examples,Atelier Annie eventually came down with "Randel" and "Orde", which work... along withLiese for the protagonist ofAtelier "Lise", creating a little confusion as to whatAnnie's prequel should be called.
      • NISA is also proving to be a little inconsistent with names for characters from unreleased games in the "music DLC" for the latterArlandgames - in the Meruru DLC, Violet is named as "Violette", Liese is namedback to Lise (and was "Lize" in the Totori music DLC!) and Lilie is "Lily".
    • This is especially hilarious for the name of the principality in which the first three games (and the manga) take place in - ever since the beginning of the series, Gust Inc. has spelled it "Salburg" and evenruns a website bearing that name. Given that the setting is meant to be vaguely like Renaissance Germany, however, the pronunciation in katakana features a "za" instead of a "sa"; ergo, the name of the city is rendered by Tokyopop and some fan translators as "Zarlburg". Apparently Americans aretoo dumb to understandGratuitous German pronunciation.
  • Stripperific: The series tends to yo-yo on this a little. While the heroine of the original game, Marie, wore an outfit whose chest can best be described as"liberal", and several other heroines (Judie of her own game, Lita fromAtelier Iris, and the Iris fromAtelier Iris 3) all have somewhat revealing costumes, in general the rest of the female heroines in the series tend to be very tastefully and possibly even conservatively dressed. The best examples areElie andViese fromAtelier Elie andAtelier Iris 2 respectively; they're dressed in such a way that aside from their hands, the lowest you can see exposed skin is theneckline. And these are not low necklines.
  • Tall, Dark and Bishoujo: Esmeralda from Atelier Judie, who is also aHot Chick with a Sword.
  • Translation Convention: Given the lengths to which the earlier games of the series attempt to evoke that "Renaissance Germany" feel, it's generally assumed that characters speak German or something similar in the context of the games. In many Salburg games, even parts of the interface are in German.
  • Troperiffic: The very first game of the series,Atelier Marie, has a lot of fun with this: the intro appears to be lifted directly fromRecord of Lodoss War, "Light And Darkness" and all, and seems to be setting up an incredibly cliched experience... then the game reminds you that 99% of the population of this worldisn't a world-saving hero and just goes about their normal lives.And that you're one of these people. Cue title screen and the surprise of many 1997 gamers.
  • Unfortunate Names: One would think that one of the reasonsAtelier "Viorate" never leaft Japan is due to the name of the heroine, never mind that a more accurate romanization would be "Violet".
  • Updated Rerelease: ParticularlyEgregious withSalburg games. Justhow many Marie/Elie games are there?
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Violet and Brigitt fromAtelier Violet.Brigitt even has her own ending.
  • Widget Series: A lot of debate as to whether or not this even applies. Many in the industry certainly seem to think so, given the obstinance with which they refuse to bring over the earlier games; however, those very earlier games especially were meant to be asWestern as possible to Japanese audiences what with thedown-to-earth plotlines and characters and conspicuousnon-Japanese language and all. TheIris games andMana Khemia tend to be a little weirder, but not confoundingly so by any measure.
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