**Hello everyone and welcome to NerdCrush! A new series of Blogs dedicated to those characters out there that we have a serious NerdCrush on. You know which ones we’re talking about. Those characters who, from the moment they’re introduced, steal the show in our eyes and help carry their prospective plots along like no others could. The kind of characters who we aspire to be more like or perhaps someday meet in the real world through some form of eldritch magic. The kind of characters who, with a mere cameo appearance, can entice us to watch or play something we otherwise wouldn’t have given two shats about. These Blogs go out to those guys (and gals), our NerdCrushes.**

With Tales of Graces coming out on the 16th, I figured this was the perfect time to start my first NerdCrush piece as the character it revolves around, Rita Mordio, is not only a Tales character but the character that helped spark my interest in Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) in the first place.

First things first. I should start by saying that my experience with JRPGs as a child was pretty much limited to a certain Pocket Monster game with yellow, electric mice. I grew up on Sonic and Wolfenstein, not Mario or Final Fantasy. So when Tales of Vesperia rolled around a few years back, not only had I not heard of the game before, but I honestly had no interest in playing it. Of course at the time I lived with At The Buzzer’s own Chris Etling, a diehard Tales fan if I ever saw one, who was not only going to get the game, but was interested in having all of us in the house play it. Not being one to shy away from new video games, I figured I’d give the game a chance, even if I’d had no prior experience with games like it before.

As it turns out, Tales of Vesperia was exactly the kind of game that I needed to play in order to get me into JRPGs. Real time combat, voiced cut-scenes, a typical “save the world” story with non-typical JRPG characters… I could write a review of Tales of Vesperia, but I won’t. I’ll leave that up to Chris if he ever feels like it. For now we’re going to focus on my favorite part of Vesperia, Rita Mordio.

The Character:

When the characters of Vesperia are first introduced to Rita Mordio you learn, rather quickly, that she isn’t the kind of person to mess with. An orphan who has spent her life studying the strange “blastia” (devises that allow people to use and wield magical energy called “aer”) that exists in the world of Vesperia. Rita is stubborn, logical, arrogant and kind of a brat. The ‘genius mage’ of Aspio is not an easy one to get along with. In many ways she’s almost a force of nature that can’t be stopped. Even the main character of Vesperia, Yuri Lowell, a strong and independent character if there ever was one, has his demands for answers cast aside by Rita in a manner of seconds as her mind wanders onto the next riddle to be solved.

See, that’s the brilliant thing about Rita: she’s about as true to herself as any character can be. If she doesn’t like something, she’ll say it. If she’s angry or annoyed at something, she’ll attack it. She’s one of those examples of “what you see is what you get.” Rita isn’t out to make friends or keep up appearances. She does what she wants, when she wants, and will challenge you if you try to stop her. That isn’t to say that she’s some sort of feral wild girl or anything, cause she’s not. In fact, she’s perhaps one of the most logical characters in the game. She’s just too stubborn to go through life any way but her own.

As with any truly wonderful character, though, she changes over time. The change is slow and steady, fitting the plot as the game progresses, but the character she is at the beginning of the game (and her relationships with the characters around her) is very different from the person she ends up being at the end of the game. She learns to accept and trust those around her, something a life living alone had never taught her to do. She learns to genuinely care about her fellow party members, seeing them as more of a family than just some people she travels around with. And she even forgives one of them after they did something so terrible in Rita’s eyes that she swore white hot vengeance upon them. And (without any spoilers) I will mention that her relationship with blastia, the devices and research that dominated her life, is changed quite drastically by the end of the game as well, forcing Rita to move on with her life and look to the future in ways she never thought she’d have to before.

Take note future game designers! More often than not the true sign of a well-crafted character is when, at the end of their story, they look nothing like they did when they began it. Some series (*cough*Avatar: The Last Airbender *cough*) do this better then others. You can bet this point will come up more then once in these Blogs.

The Presentation:

Rita is one of those characters that, with a moment’s glance, you can pretty much tell everything you know about her. She reads well, as they’d say in ‘the biz’.

One look at her and you know, without a doubt, that this is a girl who puts function over form. Goggles? Check. Magnifying glasses and compass? Check. Journal and writing utensils? Check. Pockets? Triple check. Rita is a walking research lab and it shows. She sports finger-less gloves to keep her hands warm without harming her dexterity, and doesn’t wear her hair any longer then it needs to be to cover her head. Wondering what kind of intellectual she is? Well look no further then her mismatched stalkings and the ribbon that she only sports on her right arm. With asymmetry like that you know she can’t be a perfectionist and is probably more of a disheveled researcher who doesn’t have time to take care of herself. (Spoiler: that’s exactly the case.)

Her default outfit is bright, fiery, and utilitarian. Just like her. And while you can dress her up in all other kinds of outfits (including a certain ‘kitty cat waitress’ outfit that both her and I refuse to speak about) throughout the game, seeing as how some of those outfits are jokes/references to other games we aren’t going to take these into consideration. Although some of them are pretty badass. But that’s not the point…

Of course a major point in Rita’s favor as far as presentation goes is her American voice actress, Michelle Ruff. If you have no idea who Ms. Ruff is, then a) you’re missing out. And b) what are you waiting for?! Go look at her IMDB profile right now! Chances are you’ve heard her before in one of the many, MANY things she’s done. She’s one of the A-listers, folks.

Ms. Ruff does an amazing job of conveying Rita’s arrogance and stubbornness without losing touch of she fact that, deep down, Rita really isn’t such a bad person. She’s lovably obtuse, if you will. Whether it’s her snappy remarks at other characters when they comment on that fact that she isn’t doing anything but running around in combat or is using the same spell over and over again, “Shut up! I like it!” She’s a lovable brat through and through.

One of Rita’s most famous (and most humorous) lines comes from when she use what the game calls an ‘overlimit’ and is able to cast spells instantly instead of slowly charging them up. Rita ditches the often lengthy amount of dialogue to cast a spell and simply yells, “Blah blah blah!” to get things rolling. That, coupled with her ability to overlimit almost endlessly, also makes her one of the most broken characters in the game.

The Love:

So there you have it folks, that’s more or less Rita Mordio in a nutshell. A stubborn, snotty little spit-fire of a mage who pretty much carried my interest through Tales of Vesperia. That isn’t to say that the game was boring or the other characters sucked, because they don’t. The gameplay, characters and story of Vesperia are all quite solid, actually. It’s just that for me, the guy who got ‘stuck’ playing the mage in the group, Rita was the driving force in my caring for the group and what was going to happen to them. Her snark and deadpan humor are what kept me eagerly awaiting each new skit that popped up. Because I knew that each one would bring more opportunity for hilarity to ensue and Rita to kick some butt. For me, Rita was the most important character in the game, even if she wasn’t anything special or new by JRPG standards.

While I’m certainly not a diehard JRPG fan, I can safely say that I have a newfound appreciation for them. Sure, a good deal of that is thanks to Tales of Vesperia as a whole, as the game is absolutely wonderful. Yet for all the wonderful characters and setting the game had to offer, my absolute favorite part of it, my NerdCrush, was Rita Mordio. The hot-headed genius that’s just as likely to defend those she cares about as she is to smack them upside the head or toss a fireball at them.