Best deconstructionist FE?

[Alistair]

While the title speaks for itself, I feel the need to clarify what deconstruction means from a literary analysis standpoint: to take apart meaning in a particular text or genre. For example, even though any given 90s American superhero comic is dark, that doesn't immediately qualify it as a piece of genre deconstruction).

 

I think the first part of FE4, from what I've seen of it, could qualify: the politics are sigbificanly more complicated, and it's that situation that allows Sigurd's accidental conquests to form the empire.

[Reality]

Fire Emlbem is a franchise tha clings to tradition. FE6 relative to Archanea, and Awakening being the stand outs, but even the Telius games, for all their fanfare, have the shadow of the originals looming over them (especially regarding gameplay). 

Most of the game's probably "take a stab" at deconstruction, but only sustain that for a few arcs or chapters in the game, as Any of the FE plots taken in its entirety, is startlingly conservative. 

For me stand outs- 

FE3: Mystery of Emblem- Hardin, an ally of the Marth from FE1, takes power, and is partly motivated by  and jealously and petty fame, but it's heavily implied that he comes to realize that he wasn't Nina first love and she accepted him due to politics- bringing up an angle that could be construed as sexual frustration with his wife.

"In the previous war, it was only because you were the descendent of Anri that Nina gave the Emblem to you, and chose you to become the leader of the alliance.
Prince of Light… What nonsense!
If you hadn’t received my support you would have died long ago, so don’t act all big, Marth!!
From that day on, I hated you.
I kept silent for Nina, but I knew I would have to deal with you eventually.
This has nothing to do with this Orb!"

However FE3 after this point can't properly perform as a "deconstruction" because afterwards the dark wizard/dragon plot takes over. Still, most of the game builds toward a different type of conflict than had been seen in FE1.

FE5- The game limits itself to a regional conflict (being an actual side story, unlike gaiden) instead of a continent/ world spanning one. In addition, while all of the FE protanganists are e technically teens or young adults, it's probably the closest to addressing the issue of how the trauma affects charathers - From the opening naturation "as Leaf stares on the blaze cradled in Fin's arms, can he even begin to understand the terrible signifgance?" 

FE9: Ike is commoner is thrown around a lot, but is not really deconstruction, the lord being noble isn't really in Fire Emblem's DNA more so than the lord being a moral paragon. The game does much more interesting things with your allies- getting people to join you is not unilaterlly a good thing, and it's explained that Begnion's armies COULD fight the final battle,s but that it is necessary for  Ike's party, as a vangaurd representing Crimea's own troops to carry out the final assault or else the newly restablished country will have no legitimacy and will be seen as a vassal state.

However having a few plot threads and scenes that re-frame the genre and its tropes is not enough to make ANY of the Fire Emblem games a de-construction, and the comparison with Comics is really disproportional (maybe 1 or 2 games, rather as opposed to  few books leading into entire imprints like Wildstrom and Vertigo jumping on the deconstrion trend, to the extent that when comics returned to Silver Age ideas (Mark Waid, Grant Morrison) it is often called re-constructionalism. If any Fire Emblem game is a deconstruction, it has hardly affected the status quo of how Fire Emblem games are written, much less set off a trend of other deconstructions or counter-trends of putting the genre back together.

I'd sure that some people could tell you about how FE4's plot doesn't hold up very well in the later half, but my personal bias against the game prevents me from being the person to say that FE4 fits into the same conservative mold as the simplest "save the world" games like FE1 and FE6.

Edited September 11, 2017 by Reality