HeoandReo

+Speed Azura!Kinu!Kanna and Setsuna!Kinu!Kanna have the highest speed caps possible iirc. They get a +10 modifier, which is not the highest mod possible, but in Nine-Tailed Fox with Beaststone+ they hit around 50 speed unassisted. For comparison, a Kanna with the highest speed mod(+11) in the highest speed class otherwise(Elite Ninja/Trueblade) hits 46. I'm inclined to favour Setsuna!Kinu, since the defenses are quite a bit better than Azura's, while all other offensive stats are matched. Setsuna has worse growths though, so it'll depend on if this is for the ingame campaign or PvP. It may be a bit of overkill, so depending on your purposes +Strength could work. The luck flaw prevents it from being as high as it could, but a +6 mod should work well. Instead of 50, they'll hit 46 with Beaststone+, so they'll still match the high speed non-fox Kannas.

Shinonome is my favourite Hoshido kid and possibly one of my favourite of the kids period. I like his design, I like his supports, and I like him as a unit. He doesn't care for any gimmicks, and I doubt that he'd even care who his mother is in a no-fun setting. Shigure is literally a Disney Princess and I love it. I also like that he's a guy who sings well and appreciates the fine arts. Kinu and Velour are cool too - the fox/wolf girl designs are very nice. Kinu has a fun personality, while Velour is a bit more awkward, but I find most of her supports to be kind of sweet in that way. Ophelia is my favourite female child, neck-and-neck with Velour. She may be a bit of a guilty pleasure, mostly because I like her design and looks. She has some good supports too though. Eponine is kind of in this same category, though as mentioned I do wish they did more with her character support-wise. The Nohr boys are great. Siegbert is like a boy scout. Foleo is a man's man dressed in woman's clothes. Lutz is a tiny luchador superhero. Ignis is cool too. Sophie is a fun character. I liked Cynthia in Awakening and don't mind seeing her revisited here. I like her design too. Soleil has a great design held back by really bad supports. She may be a case of a character that I'd have to like if I completely disregard everything that is said about her by the writers. I'm not the biggest fan of Kisaragi, but I like that he was born on July 4th and may use him as a unit based on that alone. (MURICA. Also his clothes are red, white and blue)

Azura has a better magic growth, so I'd give her to Odin and pair Lazward/Luna. Odin's base magic growth is quite low for a magic user, which hurts Ophelia quite a bit compared to other kids like Foleo or Shara. Shigure also appreciates getting an offensive proc in Vengeance, while Ophelia likes the speed boost and Swallow Strike. I'm inclined to think that Soleil can also stomach Luna's mods and growths a little better than Ophelia can - Luna's growths largely force a physical kid, and Soleil is better built for that than Ophelia.

My bet is Asyura, if only because Aqua's name has been localized to Azura and it would be really confusing if there was another unrelated character with a name with slightly different letters and almost no difference in pronunciation. It's a lot more confusing than something like Kent vs. Pent and Legault vs. Renault. Even if it's not who he's voicing, Asyura's name is not going to make it through the localization process.

This is most of the reason why I'm not a huge fan of Zero. Lewdness to adults is fine and dandy, but lewdness to kids/childlike characters brings up a ton of unfortunate implications, both for Zero's character, and for the portrayal of sexual minorities. It brings up the old stereotype of homo/bisexuals being attracted to children - a reference that we honestly don't need in this day and age. If I were a localizer, while his speech pattern would probably stay in most of his supports, I would cut it almost entirely with his supports with Elise/Nyx/Pieri/etc., because it's completely unnecessary in the narratives of any of those, and puts Zero in a really bad light. Zero/Nyx would be a good comedy support if the lewd comments were taken out or redirected to non-childish traits, and Zero/Elise is pretty solid up until the S, as has been discussed. People complained about Nowi, but in hindsight the localization handled her... as best as they could I suppose, making sure that she was absolutely of age. I don't see this happening with characters like Elise without a larger rewrite. What I've seen so far is promising, (Elise's English voice sounds much older than her Japanese voice, so she might have been aged up) and they could do something similar to Lissa where the age is just not mentioned, but we'll have to see how it turns out when it lands. Pieri I wouldn't predict would be changed too much. Her support with Arthur is really weird to a Western context so it might be rewritten. The dynamic between a justice-loving hero character and a bloodthirsty murderer could have a lot more going on than breast talk, so I could see the localizers doing work there. Her support with Leon is choppy, but I don't see anything that can't be handled through good translation. Maybe instead of Leon teaching her adult morals, give them a discussion on "Pieri's morals are X, while Leon's morals are Y and that's OK so let's get married." Good writing it ain't but it's probably the best way to faithfully localize the original. I could see her being given the Henry treatment, being made into a character who focuses mostly on violence. Making her writing a Harley Quinn reference would be funny, but she doesn't stand out as a character who would make significant changes through localization to me. Gregor was a painfully generic old man archetype in Japan but he was rewritten significantly to really good results. I don't get that vibe from Pieri. Even then Gregor might be more of a product of 8-4 than regular localization, so it's up in the air how Pieri will be affected. I think that Treehouse is capable of doing a solid job, but I could see them putting their foot down if IS continues to move in this direction. I feel like they've been blindsided a little bit by the direction the game is going, given prior announcements of Kamui fighting with their siblings but then later learning that Kamui could also marry them. I'd rather this not mean that future FEs stay in Japan because this is the direction that the game is going. It's probably too alarmist to think that, but I think it might be possible.

Haven't used Amiibos personally, but from what I'm hearing Marth and Lucina are both pretty good due to their classes and Ike is at best meh due to his really low speed cap. Jury's still out on Robin but I could see him working alright - his caps hurt him, but tomes are pretty good in this game.

The whole children thing is going to be rewritten. No way around that, since the whole time travel aspect of Awakening doesn't seem to be present here, given the problems established with characters like Elise/Sakura/Tsukuyomi/etc. Time travel to explain the kids would honestly make more sense than what we have now though, so I'd support that change. There will be some reduction or removal of the sexualization of children/childlike features. Again, no way around that since it's unacceptable to an international audience. I could see them repeating what was done in Awakening and raising the ages of characters like Elise and Lutz through voice-acting and support rewriting, or toning down or excising things like the lewd compliments in the Zero/Nyx support. I don't expect S supports will be removed - it would affect gameplay too strongly, and if time travel is used to explain kids it could work better. Probably. Avatar/Soleil will probably be rewritten, if not through the localization itself, then probably as a reaction from the outrage caused from that. I would expect that it along with some other supports are going to be rewritten whole cloth. The supports in general are going to be gone over and rewritten for consistency. There are actually a few plot holes with pretty unfortunate implications for the younger characters in the game present in them. Yeah, the localization is not going to like this job too much. If IS continues in this direction I'd expect more blowback from the international audience.

She can get it from A+ Oboro, which is what I meant.

It does kind of make sense in retrospect for Nohr to have a plot to reform a kingdom from the inside, although I realize in hindsight it probably would not have worked, given that the war between the factions takes away from the emphasis of reforming Nohr. Although I didn't consider it when the trailers were first released, it might have been better for a reformation plot to be standalone in one region, rather than one involving battles between different factions. Something more along the lines of the French Revolution within history. A plot with less focus on the alternate country and more focus on the single one. (RD might have that but I've never played RD so I wouldn't know) It could have been something that they did in Invisible Kingdom, but they didn't do it there, so that's a shame. I still hope they rewrite it a bit in the localization process, so that it feels more nuanced and less like Nohr is the inferior path. Well playing as an imperialist pig-dog sounds about as/more fun than playing as a rag-tag revolutionary

Mozume best girl. She's kind of like Charlotte to me. Wasn't expecting much from her at first, but when her supports came out she skyrocketed. Definitely not the standard demure villager archetype that I was expecting from her design and backstory. (I mean she hunts bears for crying out loud. And is confident enough that she knows she can do that. That came right out of nowhere and I love it.) Assuming I don't pair her with Avatar I pair her up with Xander. Similar to Thane I like the whole story of the peasant girl ending up with the strong and handsome prince, and the support itself is quite nice. Haven't seen her support with Ryoma but chances are I'll do that at least once. Also, she's one of the best moms PvP-wise thanks to +speed in a negative speed mod game along with a natural Extravagance/Line of Death combo. And Lance Fighter access, if the combo itself wasn't good enough.

Matoi I think can get Line of Death by herself since she inherits Samurai, so she would only need Extravagance to fulfill the combo. But Bows seem to be the best option of dealing with Generals I would agree, since they have WTA against lances and WTN against axes, the two weapons that Generals can use. Oboro!Matoi I think is a decent alternative, though she wouldn't get Bowfaire unless she marries Kisaragi. I'm personally doing this over Mozume!Matoi, so that I can get her natural LoD/Extravagance onto someone else. (natural LoD/Extravagance + decent mods means she's actually pretty high in demand as a mom. All Nohr kids love her barring Ophelia and maybe half the Hoshido kids do well with her too, Matoi included. Granted Oboro is high in demand too, but unlike Mozume she can't marry everybody.) Lazward would be my go-to in Nohr for Pegasus/Ninja combo, but I could see her working very well with Arthur and Benoit. She beats Belka!Lutz cleanly as a Swallow Strike user, and compliments Benoit's mods while fixing his problems so that Ignis actually has a small chance to go offense. Her Hoshido spouses aren't much to write home about, though. Matoi is good for lore, to cancel out Tsubaki's -2 speed and because lower strength is advantageous for Prodigy, but Hisame doesn't get enough from Luna for it to be worth it, since he gets Swallow Strike on his own either from inheritance or A+ Shigure and his mods/growths already start out mediocre. 1 speed and 4 defense is kind of cool though - he's one of the very few Hisames who get positive speed. Mod-wise, Luna is very much 'Rinkah but way better' due to her shared focus on speed and defense with lower penalties to offense, at the cost of having a somewhat worse skill selection. Swallow Strike is worth it on its own though. It's honestly the only thing I'd have her pass barring maybe Deadly Breath for kids who have or can get Pegasus. She also has a solid niche set for Deere, competitive with the Hana!Deere set mentioned ages ago. Lodestar Luna!Deere has roughly the same dodging ability as Trueblade Hana!Deere, and much better defensive mods. Deere certainly doesn't mind Swallow Strike either, mostly because he has a dearth of good skills since Deere's A+s aren't exceptional and Jakob's A+s are literally the worst in the game. (2 of them give a class he already has, and Bowman isn't much to write home about on its own)

Yeah, that's one of the downsides of Setsuna. Her mods are great, but her growths are bad. It should pay off once Kinu is maxed out, though.

Avatar is the only mother (or spouse) who can pass down War Priestess to Eponine, since no one can A+ with the Avatar themselves. That being said, Elise is probably a good choice. Her growths are really high in the magic department, so Eponine can work well with staffs.

I had something typed up but I lost it, so I'll just bullet points it. From order of most to least controversial. Overt sexuality that comes across as more uncomfortable than attractive, coming across in the designs, many supports, and My Castle. Embarrassing portrayal of sexual minorities. I thought that the Tharja clone, of all characters was the best-portrayed one of the bunch, which doesn't look good for IS. The plot is worse than I anticipated. Hoshido is good, but Invisible Kingdom is written even worse than Awakening, and the maps are a bit worse in that campaign too. Azura is also bad for the plot itself, because she is a pants-on-head idiot when it comes to military tactics. While it's nice that it returned from Genealogy, the marriage system simply is not going to work in this current gen of FEs plotwise. The presence of C-A rank GBA style supports for everyone means that couples will have poor chemistry because the game demands they have to marry. Keeping the first generation of units because of aversion to permadeath means we will have Outrealms to explain why the kids are there. Take out marriage for now, bring it back later when trends change, and focus on fewer but better written supports. Write the supports better. Have recently found out the process of how they were written in Awakening, there needs to be a movement away from the 'quirk A meets quirk B' paradigm that is often used in its writing process. Focus on organic interactions - characters are not individual traits, they are larger wholes. Avatar. It has never been handled well from New Mystery on and there is no indication that it will be handled well in the future. Take it out or soften its role, and take the focus away from player worship. It's a trend started by New Mystery that needs to die yesterday. (It's actually amazing how many bad ideas New Mystery started that we complain about, if you take a closer look at it) Would have liked voice acting in supports. Even something like Awakening's grunts and catchphrases would have sufficed. tl;dr don't pander, remove marriage