Mana Series - TV Tropes

(The World of) Mana series (or simply Mana), alternatively-known as Seiken Densetsu (Legend of the Holy Sword) in Japan, is a series of (mostly) Fantasy Action RPGs developed and published by Square Enix.

It began as a spinoff in the tree-choppingly popular Final Fantasy series: The first game was a passion project by Koichi Ishii, but Square weren't interested in a new IP, so he finally got it greenlit as Final Fantasy Adventure. (It was literally titled Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan.) Likewise, the second game was originally going to be Final Fantasy IV, and then Chrono Trigger, then finally became a sequel to Adventure mid-development. The real Chrono Trigger ended up recycling ideas that Ishii and co. left on the cutting-room floor.

The games tenuously share a setting and usually center on the oft-threatened Mana Tree, which is the source of all magic in the world, and the mythical Mana Sword. Mana is played in real time, much like a Zelda game but with HP instead of hearts and AI-controlled teammates (when not controlled via multiplayer co-op). There are no battle screens or fight transitions, but other trappings of the JRPG genre are clearly present. Entries in the series include:

Main series 

Major spin-offs 

Minor spin-offs 

Compilations 

Other media 

The fully-3D Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles have usurped the place of Mana in the Square Enix pantheon to some extent. SE erroneously began scrambling to find a different genre for the Mana series, such as the Real-Time Strategy Heroes and vanilla action game Dawn. The latter was very poorly received, especially in Japan, where it was titled Seiken Densetsu 4 and viewed as an unworthy successor to that name.

Mana's mobile efforts have been met with similar derision; although trademarks for Circle and Rise were both filed in English-speaking territories, they were never localized, and the reception was chilly enough in Japan that both lasted about two years apiece before being shuttered.

The franchise also had a crossover campaign in Last Cloudia which featured Randi, Primm, and Poipoi as possible summons. There were also Arks based on the first three games.

The Square USA game Secret of Evermore was often mistaken as being part of the World of Mana, especially in the days before the Internet was mainstream. While it was directly inspired by Secret of Mana, notably the ring-based menu system and combat mechanics, it doesn't have any of the Mana story elements in it, and magic use is measured by consumables rather than the traditional Mana Meter.

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World of Mana includes examples of:

• Accidental Hero: Final Fantasy Adventure starred an escaped slave who gets caught up in a fight to save the world. The hero of Secret of Mana appears to be this—he originally only needs the titular sword to cut tall grass—until his identity is revealed.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Charging your attack as of Secret of Mana onward.
  • In Trials of Mana, the attack charging is changed from holding down a button to filling up the meter by hitting the enemy with melee strikes. (As far as pure DPS goes, though, it's still much more practical to just use the first level charge.) In the remake, charge attacks exist separately from these moves (now called "Class Strikes" and far less impractical), but the charging is really only useful for knocking away barriers from guarded monsters.
  • In Legend of Mana, some charged attacks do become worth the effort, as it's the only way to inflict high damage on the harder difficulty levels.
• Bittersweet Ending: If the ending to a game in this series isn't a Downer Ending, chances are good that it'll be a Bittersweet Ending. Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana are great examples.
• Black and White Magic: The Girl and Sprite from Secret of Mana, Angela and Charlotte from Trials of Mana.
• Black Magician Girl: Angela is a great example.
• Body Horror: Amanda's fate in Final Fantasy Adventure, and the effect of the Echoes in Dawn of Mana.
• Book Ends: A recurring trope.
• Broken Bridge:
  • You have to pull the Mana Sword out to chop down the plant blocking your way back home in Secret of Mana; you similarly need the Axe to break through rocks and the Whip to jump certain gaps.
  • In Trials of Mana, you can't even access the Duskmoon Forest (where the Luna elemental is hidden) until you've gained Salamando, Undine, and Sylphid, nor can you access where Dryad is hidden until you use the Luna elemental on the row of trees blocking your path.
• Cactus Person: Li'l Cactus, first appearing in Legend of Mana, is a very small creature who appears to be an ordinary inanimate cactus whenever the player character is around but, as soon as they leave, he gets out of his pot to write in his journal, revealing that he has roots for legs. He reappears in the remake of Trials of Mana as a hidden collectable that gives you bonuses depending on how many times you find him.
• Cap: Every inventory item in Secret of Mana is capped to four. In Trials of Mana, you can hold up to nine of each item in the ring menu, with more storeable in an inventory menu that's only accessible outside of battle. What's more, the number of items in the ring menu is also limited.
• Charged Attack: Characters in Secret of Mana can charge their weapons up to their skill level with the weapon. Unfortunately, charging, especially to higher levels, takes a while, and also slows down your movement significantly, for an inconsiderable increase in damage. Some weapons inflicted additional Status Effects when charged, making this useful in limited situations.
  • Much more useful in Final Fantasy Adventure, where you could level up how quickly the meter would charge, and could reasonably spam them in the final battle.
  • In Trials of Mana and Legend of Mana, the charge meter builds by successful attacks, and in Legend certain NPCs have synchronization effects that can help build said meter faster.
• Childhood Friend Romance:
  • Dawn of Mana: Ritzia, who gets kidnapped, used to unleash disaster on the world, and becomes the next Mana Goddess.
  • Legend of Mana: Matilda, Irwin, Escad, and Dana, the Love Dodecahedron that ends tragically for all involved.
  • Secret of Mana: Dyluck, who gets brainwashed by the bad guys and sacrifices himself to save the Girl.
  • Final Fantasy Adventure: Hasim, who dies trying to protect the heroine (too bad she can't use her unlimited healing ability to save his life).
• The Chosen One: Also present in several iterations of the game. Its presence in Sword of Mana is one of the major plotline differences between it and its original release.
  • In Trials of Mana, the chosen one is whoever the Faerie chooses to inhabit.
• Cool Sword: Generally the Mana Sword, but other equippable swords in various titles are also pretty impressive.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Secret of Mana was the first RPG to feature a co-operative multiplayer gameplay mechanic where a second or third player could drop-in and drop-out at any time. Trials of Mana used the same form of co-operative multiplayer.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Mana games are unbearably cute. The most iconic monster is a bucktoothed ball of fluff called a Rabite, the undead have googly eyes, the world is vibrant and colorful, the shopkeepers randomly dance. But it's also a world full of world-ending horrors, soul sacrifice, and tons of intrigue and murder.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Shade, the Spirit of Darkness. While he may be a creepy floating bat-eyeball, and is the only one to actively pit the heroes against monsters to prove themselves, he is still very much on the side of good.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Final Boss of most games is generally a sufficiently terror-inspiring Eldritch Abomination; in Trials of Mana you fight eight Benevodons and the final boss absorbs all of their power, as well as that of the Mana Sword; and in Legend of Mana, you even have to kill the Mana goddess' Superpowered Evil Side.
• Doomed Hometown: In Dawn of Mana, the Hidden Elf Village where Keldy is raised gets invaded; the Girl from Secret of Mana hails from one of these as well, and in Trials of Mana all six protagonists hometowns get invaded/taken over by bad guys at one point or another (the order thereof depending on who you picked to be your team of three).
• Downer Ending: Despite the often colorful and upbeat artstyle, most Mana games do not end happily:
  • Secret of Mana ends with Dyluck sacrificing himself and the Mana Tree dying.
  • Two of the three arcs leading to the endgame in Legend of Mana also end this way.
  • Final Fantasy Adventure also ends this way: All of the hero's friends have been killed (with the exception of Lester, who the hero leaves behind in Jadd to mourn his dead sister... who the hero had to kill when she turned into a monster), and the girl he worked so hard to protect is giving up her existence to become the new Mana Tree. And if you consider Secret of Mana to be the chronological sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure, she ends up dying anyway when Thanatos destroys the Tree with the Mana Fortress.
• Elemental Crafting: The crafting system in the later games follows this trope.
• Elemental Powers:
  • Blow You Away/Shock and Awe: Jinn (called Sylphid in Secret of Mana).
  • Casting a Shadow: Shade.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Gnome.
  • Extra-ore-dinary: Aura (only in Legend of Mana).
  • Green Thumb/Petal Power: Dryad.
  • An Ice Person/Making a Splash: Undine.
  • Light 'em Up: Wisp (called Lumina in Secret of Mana).
  • Lunacy: Luna (not present in Legend of Mana).
  • Playing with Fire: Salamander.
• Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: Undine (water) opposes Salamander (fire), Sylph (wind/lightning) opposes Gnome (rock), Luna (moon) opposes Dryad (plant), Lumina (light) opposes Shade (dark), and vice versa. Some games also have the Aura (metal) element replace Luna as Dryad's opposite.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: All over the place as minor Mooks
• The Evil Empire: Your main enemy in most of the games.
• Evil Sorcerer: Generally The Dragon to the Big Bad
• Floating Continent: The Mana Fortress in Secret of Mana. Possibly the Sanctuary of Mana in Trials of Mana, if it's not simply in another dimension.
• Giant Enemy Crab: A boss battle Final Fantasy Adventure, Trials of Mana, Legend of Mana, and Dawn of Mana.
• Global Airship: Flammie, in the games featuring him (her in Seiken Densetsu 3).
• Go for the Eye: The Demon Wall in Secret of Mana, and the Fullmetal Hugger boss in Trials of Mana (although it had two eyes).
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The Fist weapons in Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana; Kevin fights like this in Trials of Mana.
• The Goomba: Rabites appear near the beginning of the game and don't put up much of a fight.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Unlocking/restoring the mana stones in most games; getting all of the Weapon Orbs in Secret of Mana; collecting all of the artifacts and getting all of the Cactus Diary entries in Legend of Mana.
• Götterdämmerung: Most (if not all) of the Mana games feature the destruction of the Mana Tree along with the loss of the world's magic (they both get better, eventually).
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Good luck figuring out how to trigger some of the subquests in Legend of Mana or how to master Item Crafting.
  • Knowing which enemies to farm for the third job class unlocking item or the best weapons/armor in Trials of Mana is also a massive pain in the butt even with a guide.
  • Unlocking secrets in Dawn of Mana can be stumbled upon by accident if you explore every inch of the stage, but still just about impossible without a guide.
• Harder Than Hard: "No Future" mode in Legend of Mana and "Ultimate" mode in Dawn of Mana.
• Healing Light: Healing Light is a skill learned from the Light Elemental, Lumina.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Though there's generally a default name for each character (in Secret of Mana, this is only the case in the mobile ports).
• Heroic Sacrifice: So many times in Final Fantasy Adventure that it gets to be like a punch in the gut. Averted in the remake, which leaves some grumbling.
  • Although over half the cast of Sword of Mana still ends up dead.
  • The player character in Legend of Mana turns himself/herself into stone weeping for the Jumi, thus bringing them Back from the Dead; don't worry, Deus ex Machina happens and they get better.
  • In Secret of Mana, the Sprite so much as taking part in the final battle is this.
• Hidden Elf Village: In Trials of Mana, a literal example is hidden in Lampbloom Woods. There's a non-literal example in Dawn of Mana, on its own remote island.
  • There is one in Secret of Mana as well: The Sprite's home town, but sadly it's destroyed by the Empire just before you arrive.
• Hiroki Kikuta: Composed the entire soundtracks for Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, as well as scattered tracks from the post-Legend of Mana games.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Light magic is one of the elements, with the patron spirit Wisp; in most games it only has one or two offensive spells, focusing instead on healing and defense.
• Honest John's Dealership: Neko/Niccolo (who share the same name in Japanese versions, Nikita, which appears in the fan translation of the third game), who sells overpriced items in most games and bilks quite a few people out of their hard-earned money (including the player character) in Legend of Mana. Trials of Mana reveals that Niccolo belongs to a race of such vendors, as does Children of Mana.
• Human Cannonball: Cannon travel. Thank goodness your characters don't take fall damage!
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Most obvious in Trials of Mana, in which you have a second "bag of holding" that can hold quite a bit more than the main inventory, but all of the other games has your party carting around quite a bit of stuff. Even more so in Legend of Mana, in which you can carry a ridiculous amount of Shop Fodder, weapons, armor, instruments, and magical artifacts in your pockets.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Various kinds of sweets serve as healing items in this series.
• Improbable Hairstyle: Quite a few of the characters. Legend of Mana hangs a lampshade if you choose the female protagonist.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Where was the Rabite keeping that thing?
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The unaccountably dancing, turban-wearing merchants, who are all named Moti in games that give them names. Presumably they are all part of a very powerful guild, because their reach extends across all time periods and dimensions.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Bushes, rocks, or even just mildly rough terrain can prove impassable; in Trials of Mana, the entrance to the dwarf cave is blocked by an insurmountable optical illusion that cannot be bypassed unless you talk to an NPC and then use the Lumina elemental to remove said illusion.
• Interface Spoiler: In Children of Mana with your empty weapon slots and to a lesser extent, the gems.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Trials of Mana has both a day/night cycle and a weekly cycle tied into character stats, types of monsters spawned, and which NPCs are active; Legend of Mana has a weekly cycle whose only obvious effect is which teachers are in session at the Geo academy and whether you can recruit Pearl or Blackpearl in the Bejeweled City after you've finished the Jumi arc.
• Kenji Ito: Composed the entire soundtrack for Final Fantasy Adventure and some of the tracks for the post-Legend of Mana games.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • The Black Rabite in Trials of Mana is a palette swap of the weakest enemies of the game, but the boss itself is the strongest enemy in the game.
  • On No Future Mode (the hardest level in the game) of Legend of Mana, every Rabite (and every other enemy) is this.
  • In Dawn of Mana, you can encounter "rare" versions of enemies that have longer life bars and tougher to take town otherwise, and of course Rare Rabites can be found in certain areas.
• Item Crafting: Legend of Mana and Sword of Mana both allow the player to forge much better weapons than they can buy in stores.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The tower in the City of Gold in Secret of Mana and the Chartmoon Tower in Trials of Mana; the Tower of Leires in Legend of Mana isn't quite all going upstairs, but it may as well be.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Sprite from Secret of Mana and Pearl from Legend of Mana.
• Legendary Weapon: The Sword of Mana. Even more legendary because it is ALL the legendary swords that have ever existed, just with different name on each occasion.
• Light Is Not Good: Several of the games have light-elemental monsters, including the Dread Slime and Terminators from Secret of Mana, the Fullmetal Hugger and Lightgazer from Trials of Mana', and the Light Cyclops from Sword of Mana.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards
• Lost World: The Mana Holyland.
• Luck Stat: Determines the appearance and quality of what Randomly Drops, and also how many "safe" squares are present in a trapped box.
• Mascot Mook: Rabites are the series' signature monster, present in every iteration. A few others (like the Chobin Hood enemies) are recurring as well, and monster design in general is extremely consistent across the series.
• Mook Maker: Eggplant Men have a tendency to summon zombies, whereas Slimes can reproduce and at least one boss in Trials of Mana and Dawn of Mana can summon Mooks to attack the party; several of the games also have destructible enemy spawn points.
• Mushroom Man: The Mushboom or Myconid, is a recurring and iconic enemy in the Mana series. They have purple or pink caps with heart patterns, stubby limbs, eyes and a mouth. They have a propensity to attack you with sleep-inducing spores.
• Nature Spirit: The Mana Sprites.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • In Secret of Mana, releasing the sword from the stone on the waterfall spawns Rabites outside of town, eventually leading to the hero getting kicked out of the village forever.
  • In Trials of Mana, once the heroes finally complete their goal of rounding up all eight spirits in order to open a gate to the Holyland, it turns out that their efforts allowed the Mana Stones to be unsealed, opening a gate that every faction other than the heroes is able to use. And then, after stopping an apocalypse by defeating the eight Benevodons, you realize that by defeating them, you released their power into the Sword of Mana. Too bad you let The Dragon take the sword, hero.
  • Keldy and Ritzia sneak into the ruins that they're not supposed to enter, and Keldy kills the Giant Enemy Crab guarding the area when it tries to attack Ritzia... and then Ritzia gets possessed by the spirit of an evil sorceress, who wants to unleash the Echoes of Malvolia onto Illusia. Oops.
• New Game Plus: A feature in Legend of Mana (carries over items, levels, and equipment), Dawn of Mana (carries over earned badges and acquired pets) and Heroes of Mana (carries over the equipment).
• Ninja: Recurring enemies in the series, and Hawkeye can become one.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Except for the one in Sword of Mana who wants to "quit" being a Dwarf. He goes back to the mine in the end.
  • The Mana series is notable, though, for having dwarves that rather than looking like short Scotsmen are pitch black and all wear cool looking war helmets.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Chibi-looking dragons (to which Flammie is related) are helpful and friendly, whereas the scaly varieties as presented as hostile and warlike.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The Sylph magic.
• Our Liches Are Different: The Big Bads of Secret of Mana, as well as one branch of Seiken Densetsu 3's plot.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolves show up in most of the games. They are called Beast-Men in Trials of Mana, but they only look wolfish at night. During the day they resemble camels for some reason or at least the men do. Kevin, one of the playable characters, appears more human as he's a Half-Human Hybrid, but he can go full-on werewolf at night.
• Palette Swap: Almost every early enemy has a harder palette-swapped version. The player characters themselves in Trials of Mana are usually palette-swapped for their class changes.
• Point of No Return
  • The climb up the Dime Tower to the Mana Sanctuary is a one-way trip in Final Fantasy Adventure and all its remakes.
  • In Dawn of Mana, you can backtrack to just about any point in any stage except for the last one, where a large, unclimbable drop keeps you from Level Grinding for better stats before the second-to-last boss.
• Randomly Drops: Several of the orbs necessary to power up the weapons on Secret of Mana can only be obtained by random drops from certain enemies in the final area. The items necessary to upgrade character classes in Trials of Mana are similarly tricky to get.
  • Meanwhile, in Legend of Mana, you can have a pet that, if you're synchronized with it, guarantees an enemy killed will drop something, but what gets dropped is still randomly determined.
• Rebellious Princess: Primm from Secret of Mana (comes from a noble family, and is not actually royalty but otherwise fits perfectly) and Angela (and to some extent Charlotte) from Trials of Mana.
• Recurring Location: Sanctuary of Mana makes frequent appearances, and is routinely blown to smithereens.
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude
• Respawning Enemies: Killing all the enemies on a screen in Sword of Mana causes them to respawn after a few seconds. This is annoying, but can make farming random drops easier, and since the game has both a healing spell and a technique that lets you recover MP, it stops the player from completely recharging after every battle. In the other games, enemies respawn if you leave the area far enough and return, making Level Grinding fairly easy for areas where you can just keep going in a circle, killing things along the way.
• Ring Menu: a staple of the series since Secret of Mana.
• Saintly Church: The Churches of Mana
• Scenery Porn: The series as a whole sports a very unique art style and color palette. Load up a ROM of Trials of Mana some time and boggle at how seamless the tilesets can be.
• Squishy Wizard: Most of the caster classes in all of the games.
• The Starscream: Fairly frequent in occurrence, in fact, as several games have one.
• Spiritual Successor: The Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles series are both ones to this one.
• Summon Magic: The spells in Secret of Mana all involve calling up the respective Nature Spirit and having them blast the enemy or buff the party.
• Thematic Series: Although the more recent games are tied together more closely, the first four games have little (if anything) tying them together.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: Watts in most games; in Legend of Mana, he teaches the player character to be their own Ultimate Blacksmith.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll:
  • In Dawn of Mana, rolling doesn't give you many invincibility frames, but it's still marginally faster than running.
  • Featured both as its own normal ability and a feature of multiple super moves in Legend of Mana.
  • Dodge rolling is a critical part of the Trials of Mana 3D remake to quickly move to safety or to grant invincibility frames; they also make the same Kiai every time, which for some characters may grate on the ears.
• Unwinnable:
  • You'll need at least two Interchangeable Antimatter Keys to get through the final dungeon of Final Fantasy Adventure. If you don't have them, or use them in the wrong spot, then you can't advance to the Final Boss without grinding for additional keys.
  • Additionally, if you didn't grind enough stat boosts once you've reached the save point before the second-to-last boss in Dawn of Mana, you are probably going to have to restart the entire chapter.
• Video Game Remake:
  • Final Fantasy Adventure was upgraded into Sword of Mana, bringing it more in line with the rest of the series, ditching the carryover Final Fantasy influences for more familiar Mana references. (Chocobos replaced with cannon travel, for instance.)
  • Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana have both been remade with 3D graphics.
• The Virus: What causes Amanda's Body Horror in Final Fantasy Adventure; the Echoes in Dawn of Mana have a similar effect.
• World Tree: The Mana Tree in its various incarnations.
• The X of Y: Beyond Final Fantasy Adventures, the franchise always calls its games "_____ of Mana" in English.

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