Fire Emblem: Is It Zooey?
Being a zoo who really enjoys video games, I was quite surprised to find so few zoos who enjoy RPGs as much as I do. Perhaps that's asking for a lot considering how of a community we really are, but I think that as the now self-proclaimed number 1 RPG zoosexual, I would like to attempt to get others to try out one of my personal favorite video game series: Fire Emblem! And what better way to recommend a series than to discuss its many zooey themes that have been poured throughout its several decade-long lifespan? There is a lot more to it than you may think!
But first, I think a quick description of the series is good, as I'm sure many people have only heard its name in passing, or perhaps never at all. Fire Emblem is a really unique and strategical turn-based RPG, and is often compared with chess due to the way movement and action is done, but that is of course, a gross oversimplification that hardly covers all of the gameplay that the game offers.
The main grab of Fire Emblem, at least to me, is its very intense focus and weight of any and all actions that you perform in the game, as the game can severely punish your misplays. Because of this, strategies take a spin on reducing bad luck outcomes as much as possible and a heavy focus on your survivability and long-term planning to carefully execute a winning strategy, which is something that many RPGs do not do to the same extent. To the more casual gamers, this game may be a bit much, but I would still recommend it to many folks, as especially the more recent entries have made it both beginner and casual friendly to the masses, while still having the option to test yourself and play with permadeath, where if you lose a character, you can no longer use them for the rest of your playthrough. This adds so much weight to your actions and leads to a lot attachment to your cast of units, because losing them will hurt all the more (that said, no one would bat an eye if you decided to use save states or restarted the game in order to keep a character you like, it's a single player game after all, who really cares?)
Now that we're all on the same page about how very fun and cool Fire Emblem is gameplay-wise, let's discuss zooey! I will note that much of what I will discuss will be as vague as possible to avoid spoilers of many Fire Emblem games, as I think their stories are worth experiencing blind! Fire Emblem is usually set in fictional medieval settings, but with standard RPG elements like magic and dragons. Dragons are an especially common element of Fire Emblem and often play an integral role in the games' stories. Quite often, within the conflicts of the games' settings, dragons will be involved, both as enemies and allies. That being said, it's quite frequent for there to be canonical relationships between humans and dragonfolk in Fire Emblem. Often, these are only on the kinds of dragons that have a "humanoid" form, whereas the reveal that they are actually a dragon may be integral to the plot. That being said, they can often shapeshift into an actual dragon, and sometimes dragon characters can actually be added to your cast of units, usually in a special class that allows them to utilize a dragonstone to shapeshift into a dragon in combat. The fact that these characters are part non-human makes it inherently zooey to allow them to have relationship with the purely human character in the games, which is quite common! In fact, most Fire Emblem games have these kinds of zooey romance options with not just dragons, but beastfolk as well!
That's right, if you're not as much of a fan of cute zooey dragon romance (which is a shame), I would have you know that there are multiple Fire Emblem entries that involve beastfolk as well! Similarly to the games' many dragon characters, these beasts usually have a human form. That said, they quite often have many animal characteristics as well, such as animal ears, a tail, and fur in certain parts of their body. To many of us, this may still not be very desirable, which is why I'm happy to share that these units also get to transform into animals in combat! For the most part, these transformations are very similar to actual feral animals, and in Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, these include felines such as lions and tigers, as well as some birds like hawks and ravens. In Fire Emblem Awakening, we have the taguel, a species that can transform into really cool and strong rabbit folks. In Fire Emblem Fates, a game with quite a few controversies, one of my favorite aspects actually the beastfolk. There are 2 species, kitsunes and wolfskin. Kitsunes are amazing (as a fox enjoyer, I have no bias) and transform into cute feral foxes, who are very strong in the routes where they're playable. Wolfskin take up more anthro characteristics, being more akin to werewolves, but they're still awesome and fluffy.
Unfortunately, this is the extent of the beast units in the current set of Fire Emblem entries, but I hold out hope for more in the future. That said, there still are quite a few cute critters in every Fire Emblem game in the form of cavalry and flier units, who use them in order to gain an advantage in combat. This is obviously not the same thing, but many of these species are very beautiful! A personal favorite that has appeared in every single entry is the pegasus flier, giving you aerial mobility. Another is a step toward dragon territory: the cute but ferocious wyverns, who are also used for flying. These classes are in every single Fire Emblem game, alongside the standard horse cavalries, and they add more animal flavor into your cast which is always something I especially enjoy looking out for. There exist a few uncommon additions, such as the griffin knight, only in a few titles, but I always enjoy them. A very new addition, only in the most recent entry of the series, Fire Emblem Engage, has the wolf knight, which is exactly as it sounds. You ride a big, beautiful wolf! It's a personal favorite class of mine, as I find them very attractive, and they're not that bad gameplay-wise.
Now, onto the zooey relationships. Because as great as animal and fictional creature variety goes, that's not inherently zooey, of course! Well, there are a couple instances where I would argue that the relationship between human and nonhuman in Fire Emblem games actually spoiler, so I don't really wanna get into depth as I would hate to spoil some of the better games' stories. That said, a few aren't! Starting with Fire Emblem Awakening, marriage actually becomes a bit of an integral part of the gameplay in some of the games, and in both Awakening and Fates, there exists both dragons and beasts who can marry plain, ordinary humans. What's more, they actually can produce offspring child characters, which you can then recruit and add to your roster, and they explicitly carry over genes from both parents, including their dragon or beast powers. The avatar, which is meant to be a bit of a self-insert is able to romance most characters in the games, including the non-humans. In the case of Fates and Engage, the avatar is actually part dragon themselves (this is not a spoiler), which means literally anybody that you decide to romance is going to be inherently zooey, which I think is pretty cool!
This romancing thing is a bit more of a recent thing, but romance has always been a theme in many Fire Emblem games, even if they don't always have the same level of focus or benefits in the earlier entries. I think a great entry that has a bit of a large focus in restoring peace between humans and dragons, as well as involving romance between the two is Fire Emblem 7, just called "Fire Emblem" everywhere outside of Japan because it was the first game localized outside of it, though has since been titled "Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade." This entry is a personal favorite, isn't that hard and is pretty zooey in canon, and I would love for more people to experience it! I won't get into any more detail, however, as I fear it could spoil the game's fantastic story. This entry is actually a prequel to the previous Fire Emblem before it, The Binding Blade. Sadly, th one has only ever released in Japan, but fan translations exist and it still focuses on human and dragon relationship, though not to the same romantic extent.
Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are two entries in the Fire Emblem series that have beastfolk play an integral role in the game's story, involving the relationship between them and humankind. In the sequel, Radiant Dawn, Ike, one of the main characters, has a potential paired ending (romantic ending during the epilogue for if you've supported 2 characters together long enough) with Ranulf, who is a cat. This is completely unrelated, but Ike is also canonically gay and only has 2 paired endings, both men, which I just think is cool. Gay rights!
Before closing things off, I wanted to go over one final character, who while is a human, is obsessed with animals. Merrin from Fire Emblem Engage starts out as a wolf knight, and most of her conversations with others involve her gushing about different types of animals. The avatar of the game, being part dragon, means that she's very interested in the way they might be different from others by being part dragon. She also always wears a prosthetic tail. She's pretty cool, and pretty zooey, in my opinion. Also, she can marry both the male and female avatar. Bi rights!
And with that, I hope I have successfully made at least some of you interested enough to try out Fire Emblem. Though not every entry is equally zooey than the other, they're all still very fun games, and the zooey elements are a fantastic bonus for non-human fans such as myself.
Article written by Pawful (March 2025)
Find her at https://x.com/pawfulzeta
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