Note: This post is inspired by a video not from Overly Sarcastic Productions, but one from a YouTuber named Liam Carter. I still recommend watching it, though.
Hello, fellow fanfic nuts. My name is David Ishihara. You may know me as the leader of the Brave Adventurers in the Dimensional Heroes series, and believe it or not, I'm a huge JRPG fan, to the point where the basic structure of my group is assembled like a JRPG party. Especially since I've been playing JRPGs for as long as I can remember, but it's easily one of my favorite genres, due to the dynamics that were made throughout the team and everyone around them.
And while I'm not exactly an expert on the genre by any means, I thought I'd take a moment to talk about the recurring tropes I've seen crop up from everything I've seen from them. Basically, I wanted to talk about the classic JRPG party. More specifically, the types of characters seen in them, and how they affect the party as a whole.
Now when I say classic, I mean a Classic-style JRPG, with a vast world to explore, huge cast of characters, and a deep and involving story. Examples like Final Fantasy, Tales of, Star Ocean, Dragon Quest and the like. Throughout my fanaticism, I've noticed that you'll find at least one, if not all, of these specific character roles in the playable party.
These roles are identified as the Main Protagonist, Secondary Protagonist, Best Friend Character, Old Character, Child Character, and Non-Human/Different Race Character. Now to be clear, I haven't played/watched a playthrough of every JRPG is existence, nor do I intend to. This is not a comprehensive analysis of every playable character in every JRPG ever. As such, you'll hear me use the word 'usually' a lot. I won't be making any definitive statements about all of JRPGs, just a few observations. I'm also not the first person to make these observations, but damn it, I'm gonna be the first person on this site to make a post about it! We good? Cool.
To start off, I want to make special note of my use of the word character 'roles', and not something like archetypes or personalities. A character's role within the context of the party, and by extension the story, is really independent of the character's personality.
A main protagonist can either be angsty and melodramatic or cheerful and down to earth. They're still pretty much always gonna be the main protagonist. This also pretty much applies to every character in your party. Their roles and their personalities are seperate. Secondly, I'd like to take a guess as to why we see this combination of character roles so frequently. Obviously I don't have a lot of insider information on the games that invoke these combinations of character roles, but my main guess would be that a strong balance of character perspectives makes for a more interesting and dynamic party.
If all of your characters are teenagers, you'll be a bit restrictive in your writing in some way if you want it to be believable. You'll have to rate your characters as, well, teenagers, whatever you may define that as. Having an array of ages and races in your party is going to provide you with the most freedom when it comes to writing character perspectives and motivations. I personally don't think it's a stretch to say that people of vastly different ages and races will tend to look at the world differently in some ways. So, without further ado, let's break down these character roles.
First, we have the Main Protagonist. This is usually a male between ages 17 and 21. They most likely use a sword or a sort of variation of a sword for combat, they have strong morals, and are usually different from the rest of the party in some key way. For example, they might be the Chosen One, have a special ability, be the result of some kind of science experiment, have a unique upbringing, etc. Usually, they're portrayed as an average person that is somewhat ignorant to the world around them.
Next we have the Secondary Protagonist, or Deuteragonist if you want to get nitpicky. Usually a female in the same age range as the protagonist, and more often than not, a love interest. While the secondary protagonist is usually opposite in terms of personality to the main protagonist, they often share the same strong morals. They're often highborn or privileged in some way, be they of royal blood, wealthy background, or some kind of religious figure. It's usually the case in most fantasy-inspired settings that either the main protagonist or the secondary protagonist be the Chosen One, or have some unique role to play in that world. It's almost never the case that either both or neither are this way. This is so the two characters can be written in contrast to one another. One of them plays the role of the everyman and the other plays the role of the upper class. This isn't something unique to JRPGs by any means, but it is something you see in them quite often.
Moving right along, next is the Best Friend Character. Usually the same gender and age range as the main protagonist and usually has known them since childhood or at the very least at the beginning of their journey. They usually act as a foil to the main character in terms of personality and in some cases, as a younger or older sibling type character.
Next, we have the Old Character, which is a terrible title for a character, but please bear with me. The Old Character is usually male and is, as the name suggests, the oldest member of your party. How much older they are compared to everyone else can vary wildly. It's usually about 10-15 years older than the main protagonist, but in some cases, it can be as much as 40-50 years older than everyone else. They usually take part in some prior events that lead up to the main story of the game and are often some high-ranking official or famous individual in that game's world. The Old Character almost always takes up some kind of parental role within the party, and acts as a source of wisdom.
Up next, we have the complete opposite of the Old Character in the Child Character. While the gender of the child character varies, they're pretty much always in the 12-14 range. The child character usually provides some kind of perspective to the party that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Either through their backstory or some kind of specialized knowledge that they have. Unsurprisingly, they also often take the role of a younger sibling, either to the main character or some other party member.
And last but not least, we have the Non-Human Character. This is a role that I think has the most variation among JRPGs, as it allows the creation of a character that really is supposed to exist outside the rest of the cast, and by extension, the rest of the people in that world. Their gender varies across games, sometimes not having a defined gender at all, and their age varies greatly as well, sometimes being considered young by the standards of their own race, but old when compared to everyone else in the party. The personality of the non-human character can also vary greatly from game to game. But one thing that's usually for certain is that they often act in a way the other party members find strange, further emphasizing the fact they're different from everyone else. This of course is also relative. Strange to the rest of the party may be perfectly normal to their race. The non-human character has often been ostracized from their society or at the very least is seen as an oddball amongst their kin. If it's neither of those, it's not uncommon for them to be the last one or one of the last of their race, which has either been wiped out mostly or completely. It should also be worth noting that while it is rare, there are sometimes instances where the non-human characters in the party are simply animals that inhabit the world of that game. Their only real defining feature is that they usually have very high intelligence for an animal, and probably use a weapon of some sort.
Even though I've only gone into depth on six of these character roles, because they're found to be the most prevalent, there are other kinds of character archetypes that are commonplace in JRPGs, yet just don't have enough complexity to be considered party roles on their own. I say that because they're more like add-ons to a character rather than a defining feature.
To name a few of these archetypes, there's the Peeping Tom, Fanservice Character, Hot Head, Oddball, Rogue, Sheltered Royal, Tsundere, Rival, Mascot Character, Perky Teen, Tortured Soul, and so on and so forth. These sub-archetypes help to distinguish two characters that may serve the same role in the greater party context. This becomes valuable in games that have a very large playable character roster.
It's also important to know that a single character can have many hats when it comes to the role in the party. For example, it's not uncommon for the secondary protagonist to also be the best friend, or for the best friend to also be the rival, similarly the child can also be the best friend, and the mascot is almost always the non-human character.
Again, like the Hero's Journey, this isn't a one-size-fits-all guide to how the perfect JRPG party should be made. But I'm willing to bet that you'll find a lot of these characters in almost every JRPG.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, these are just observations that were made while looking at JRPGs over the years. There are certain series and games that I haven't mentioned during this post that either completely confirm or contradict what I laid out in this post, and that's fine. I'm not trying to make a definitive statement about the genre. Some of my absolute favorite games fall right into these tropes, and I love them all the same. Remember, just because someone is making an observation or a critique about a thing you like, doesn't mean it's any less valuable to YOU. Only you can dictate the worth of something.
Thank you so much for listening. I had a lot of fun making this post. If you had a lot of fun reading it and would like to make a request, let me know in the comments, and I hope you enjoyed.