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Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: The Real Way to Spell the Main Characters Name
« on: January 26, 2009, 03:04:17 pm »"Maou" (Janus's Japanese name) means, according to the translators, "Dark King" or "Witch King". "Magus" is a title, not a name.
Strictly speaking, "Magus" is a title rather than a name, true, but in the Middle Ages he went by no other name. There's no problem with his continuing to go by the "name" Magus in an English-language playthrough, since it's the name that the party knows him best by.
You're a bit off on the translation, though. The word "Maou" carries with it some ambiguity depending on how you translate the kanji (see below).
Quote
The Fiends (Yes, "Fiend" is far more accurate. Their original name was "Demon") simply gave him that title.
There are a number of reasons (beyond simply the preservation of canon) why the term "Fiend" is inappropriate for the Mystic races. The first being that it's a rather pejorative translation that loses the subtlety embedded in the original Japanese name. The Mystics in Chrono Trigger are called "Mazoku" (魔族). Zoku (族) means "race" (kind of), but "Ma" (魔) does not necessarily mean "demon." It is also used extensively throughout Japanese fantasy and fiction to mean magic, or express in derived words a connection with the supernatural or the occult. (as in Final Fantasy, where the Japanese names for Black and White Magic are "Kuro Mahou" and "Shiro Mahou," both using the 魔 character -- would you translate Black Mage as Black Demon?) In this reading, the name "Mystic" clearly makes the most sense.
Both the name "Fiend" and the reading of "Mazoku" to mean "Demon Race" are unequivocally negative, blackballing the Mystics as inherently evil (despite the fact that the Mystics are redeemed after the party defeats Ozzie's Fort; and later, in Chrono Cross, it's stated that Mystics send scientists to aid in the Chronopolis project). I think that this takes something away from the original Japanese use of "Mazoku"; at least when the race is called "Mystics," the reading can remain neutral, and these creatures can transition easily from being villains to friends with the movement of the story. This is the best we on the English side can do, since we don't use kanji, and our written language doesn't benefit from the kind of nuanced interpretation that Japanese players get.
Quote
And also, Schala does indeed call him Janus in Dream's Epilogue, which pretty much seals the deal.
This doesn't really seal any deals... of course she'd call him Janus. That's the name she knows him by. Atropos calls Robo "Prometheus" -- does that make Robo or R66-Y untrue? No. In the context of the English language translation, both Janus and Magus are names the character uses.
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Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / My Thoughts on CTDS
« on: January 26, 2009, 01:48:17 pm »
Okay. So I thought I'd pop in here and offer up some of my impressions, now that I've more or less absorbed all of CTDS' new features and such. Bear with me, as I haven't had time to read through all five pages of posts in this thread before posting my thoughts... so some of what I say may have already been said before.
As a longtime Chrono fan, I picked up this game despite my general aversion to the Squeenix tendency to remake classics rather than produce actual new games of quality. (but that's a rant that doesn't belong here!)
On the whole, I like CTDS. Its new features (the Dimensional Vortex and the Lost Sanctum) are worthy additions to the Chrono universe, and the retention of the various meta features from the PS release make this very near to a perfect version of Chrono Trigger.
However, I can't stand the retranslation. It's the only thing that keeps me from giving this version an unqualified 10-score.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm big on the English language. A lot of Japanese RPGs from the 16-bit era clearly don't share that affinity with me. Awkward phraseology, the occasional grammatical hiccup and a number of other problems plague these games. I'm well aware that some of these traits are comical at best, embarrassing at worst.
But before I'm a language snob, I'm first and foremost very sentimental. I fell in love with the game with and despite its shoddy translation; the dialogue as it was became part of its charm, and something that was overlooked easy enough because of how amazing (and, after almost 15 years, enduring) Chrono Trigger's gameplay, graphics, score and story are.
That said, I could abide (and even understand the desire to) "clean up" some of the dialogue. I'll concede that Frog sounds a little less ridiculous with his misuse of modern Elizabethan English (the next person who says that Frog speaks "Old English" or "Shakespeare," or who claims that Frog's speech is an example of an "accent" [do you people even know what an "accent" is?] is going to get a book thrown at them), especially given that he seems to be the ONLY person in the Middle Ages who speaks this way. In fact, after a full playthrough, I find that I actually do like the new dialogue changes because they do seem to help the game to "mature" along with me 15 years later. I don't like it, but I can live with it.
The new content redeems CTDS, in the eyes of an old sentimental gamer like myself. Both the Dimensional Vortex and the Lost Sanctum are excellent in terms of new content; they provide a small amount of extra story (without overburdening the game's original plot), an extra "something to do" at key points in the game's progression (semi-spoiler: running Lost Sanctum immediately after it becomes available is a GREAT way to build up your last few techs, get some neat loot upgrades and bridge the level-gap between Crono and the rest of your party [while the spikey-haired one is off being temporarily dead]) -- and did I mention the new loot already? (Marle's new Venus Bow is probably one of the single best improvements to the entire game)
My ultimate rating for CTDS is 8.5. For whatever that's worth.
As a longtime Chrono fan, I picked up this game despite my general aversion to the Squeenix tendency to remake classics rather than produce actual new games of quality. (but that's a rant that doesn't belong here!)
On the whole, I like CTDS. Its new features (the Dimensional Vortex and the Lost Sanctum) are worthy additions to the Chrono universe, and the retention of the various meta features from the PS release make this very near to a perfect version of Chrono Trigger.
However, I can't stand the retranslation. It's the only thing that keeps me from giving this version an unqualified 10-score.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm big on the English language. A lot of Japanese RPGs from the 16-bit era clearly don't share that affinity with me. Awkward phraseology, the occasional grammatical hiccup and a number of other problems plague these games. I'm well aware that some of these traits are comical at best, embarrassing at worst.
But before I'm a language snob, I'm first and foremost very sentimental. I fell in love with the game with and despite its shoddy translation; the dialogue as it was became part of its charm, and something that was overlooked easy enough because of how amazing (and, after almost 15 years, enduring) Chrono Trigger's gameplay, graphics, score and story are.
That said, I could abide (and even understand the desire to) "clean up" some of the dialogue. I'll concede that Frog sounds a little less ridiculous with his misuse of modern Elizabethan English (the next person who says that Frog speaks "Old English" or "Shakespeare," or who claims that Frog's speech is an example of an "accent" [do you people even know what an "accent" is?] is going to get a book thrown at them), especially given that he seems to be the ONLY person in the Middle Ages who speaks this way. In fact, after a full playthrough, I find that I actually do like the new dialogue changes because they do seem to help the game to "mature" along with me 15 years later. I don't like it, but I can live with it.
The new content redeems CTDS, in the eyes of an old sentimental gamer like myself. Both the Dimensional Vortex and the Lost Sanctum are excellent in terms of new content; they provide a small amount of extra story (without overburdening the game's original plot), an extra "something to do" at key points in the game's progression (semi-spoiler: running Lost Sanctum immediately after it becomes available is a GREAT way to build up your last few techs, get some neat loot upgrades and bridge the level-gap between Crono and the rest of your party [while the spikey-haired one is off being temporarily dead]) -- and did I mention the new loot already? (Marle's new Venus Bow is probably one of the single best improvements to the entire game)
My ultimate rating for CTDS is 8.5. For whatever that's worth.
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Chrono Trigger DS Analysis / Re: anyone else here hate the new dialogue font?
« on: January 26, 2009, 01:47:51 pm »
I dunno why, but I've been hating all the Squeenix GBA/DS redux fonts. I don't know why it would be a screen-size issue, since none of the redux games I've seen have had any graphic reduction problems. The original CT font was the best.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: Yamaneko
« on: June 14, 2006, 01:08:00 am »One of the meanings of Magus' Japanese name is equivalent to Satan. His name isn't actually Satan, it's Maou.
Which means "magician" and therefore translates into "Magus," but because the Sino-Japanese pictogram used to spell the word "magic" in Japanese carries quasi-demonic connotations, the popular mythology among CT fans holds that a translation of his name is "Satan."
It's a valid correction, but it doesn't detract from my larger point.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: Yamaneko
« on: June 13, 2006, 10:20:07 pm »I found this very interesting , my friend told me that Yama was the god of death in indian mythogy. It would make more sense than the translation "mountian cat" it would traslate to mean "death cat" and isnt that what he is after all? After all square has used alot of refrences to mythogly in Final Fantasy. so I would not be surprised at all. Also when I looked up the word yama in the japense dictionary it was a totally diffrent symbol than what is used for Lynx's name!
lol ... Well, it's an interesting theory... but it's utterly baseless. "Yamaneko" means just that: "mountain cat." And rather than calling him "mountain lion" or "puma" or "cougar," Square made the English rendition of his name "Lynx," because... I dunno, it sounds like a cool villain's name.
This is why amateurs or those unfamiliar with the Japanese language should use caution when attempting to trace translations. The "symbol" you saw was a kanji character. Kanji derive from the Chinese language, and are used in Japanese intermittently, often replacing nouns or verb stems that would otherwise be written in the native Japanese alphabet. When used (especially in names), Kanji characters are selected for one of two reasons: either the phonetic pronounciation, or the character's meaning. In the case of Lynx, it's possible that the "Yama" character used in the game for the character's name is different from the character for "mountain." Square could have done this in order to give some subtle secondary meaning to his name that differed from the meaning gotten when you simply read it phonetically.
... However. I don't think that's likely, because I don't think that Square has ever allowed players to use Kanji for character names. I could be totally wrong here, of course!! Because I'm not Japanese, and my level of fluency is still well below the level I'd need it to be to play an original untranslated Square game start to finish. But from a conceptual standpoint, it strikes me that it would be highly impractical (especially in the PSOne generation of Square games) to include an available character library during name selection that allowed for use of Kanji characters, simply because you'd end up with thousands of choices.
So, in the end, the "symbol" you saw in the beginning of Yamaneko's name in the Japanese version was either Katakana or Hiragana (likely the former), which are simple alphabetic representations of sounds with no inherent meaning by themselves.
Also: an allusion to "Yama" from Indian mythology would be WAY far afield and highly unlikely; there's nothing else in the context of the game that supports such an allusion. Yes, Lynx uses a scythe, which is the symbol of death -- but so did the Magus, whose name in the Japanese game was Satan, who is more aptly associated with a trident or pitchfork than a scythe.
Okay I'm done, because I really need to poo.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: CT Last Names
« on: June 13, 2006, 10:07:43 pm »
So. How about that Chrono Trigger? That's some good storytelling there. No midi-whatsisians there, and no stupid new trilogy dialogue either. Hey, anybody know what Crono's last name is? I know that's an off-topic question to be asking in the Star Wars Midi-Chlorians Darth Plagueis Gripe Forum, but hey, I just gotta know if anybody out there has some clue.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: CT Last Names
« on: June 07, 2006, 02:47:34 am »It's actually fairly well-known in the SW community.like I said: where did you get this info?
... More importantly... why are we analyzing the utterly boned New Trilogy like it's anything resembling literature? :-p You know what the best thing about the new star wars is?
Lego Star Wars.
Oh yes.
You know why?
No dialogue.
OH YES!
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: CT Last Names
« on: June 06, 2006, 03:42:14 am »It's also horrible, bad, fantastically bad and wrong. Doesn't matter if Chrono Trigger came out before Episode 1. Gina was just a single mom tryin' to make her way in the Modern Age. Where's dad? I dunno. Maybe he's dead, or maybe mom got knocked up and had to drop out of college to raise her spiky-haired lovechild. Or maybe his folks are divorced.
Meaningless corrections about the misspellings of unbelievably dumb Lucasian shroom-induced plot devices aside... the point is, I think this would be an awful, awful, awful place to take our discussion of CT's plot. I groaned in the theater -- very loudly -- during Episode 1. (so did a lot of other people) The Jesus parallel (... "metaphor?"...) just does not work because it's so bludgeoningly obtuse it drags the rest of the story down with it. It's baggage. It takes away from the story, rather than adding to it. Which is kind of the point I was making with my one-word, apparently misspelled (although I don't frankly care) reply: do we WANT the Chrono storyline to take on the color of Episode 1?... I sure don't.
Also: I know my tone *might* possibly suggest it, because I'm naturally snarky, but I am NOT trolling for flames. Nothing in what I said was meant to be taken personally by ANYONE (except George Lucas, who is a hack, and should never be allowed to undertake anything creatively again, beyond perhaps directing the middle school production of Our Town ["... but George, it could never work... you're a Jedi, I'm a Senator..." "... Oh Emily... your skin is... so smooth... not like the sand of my home planet... so coarse... AHRG! I'm so angry!!!"]).
I apologize if any of the above was taken in the wrong way. (except to you, George)
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: CT Last Names
« on: June 06, 2006, 03:38:25 am »Or a Jesus metaphor, since Chrono Trigger came out before Star Wars Episode 1.
Besides, it's Midichlorians.
It's also horrible, bad, fantastically bad and wrong. Doesn't matter if Chrono Trigger came out before Episode 1. Gina was just a single mom tryin' to make her way in the Modern Age. Where's dad? I dunno. Maybe he's dead, or maybe mom got knocked up and had to drop out of college to raise her spiky-haired lovechild. Or maybe his folks are divorced.
Meaningless corrections about the misspellings of unbelievably dumb Lucasian shroom-induced plot devices aside... the point is, I think this would be an awful, awful, awful place to take our discussion of CT's plot. I groaned in the theater -- very loudly -- during Episode 1. (so did a lot of other people) The Jesus parallel (... "metaphor?"...) just does not work because it's so bludgeoningly obtuse it drags the rest of the story down with it. It's baggage. It takes away from the story, rather than adding to it. Which is kind of the point I was making with my one-word, apparently misspelled (although I don't frankly care) reply: do we WANT the Chrono storyline to take on the color of Episode 1?... I sure don't.
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Chrono Compendium Discussion / Correction on Criosphinx
« on: June 04, 2006, 08:11:10 pm »
The entry on Criosphinx has not what I'd call an "error" in it... but it does go a little far afield of the origin of the name. Of course, it's a Sphinx because of the riddling, and the story with oedipus is spot-on. But the bit about crio meaning "I create" is not relevent.
The Criosphinx in Egyptian mythology is simply a ram-headed sphinx (the classic Sphinx, such as the one at Giza, are human-headed). Criosphinxes are associated with the Egyptian god Amun, and are most famously depicted in a row of sphinx statues guarding the route between Luxor Temple and Karnak.
The Crio- in Criosphinx comes from Greek -- Krios means Ram.
The Criosphinx in Egyptian mythology is simply a ram-headed sphinx (the classic Sphinx, such as the one at Giza, are human-headed). Criosphinxes are associated with the Egyptian god Amun, and are most famously depicted in a row of sphinx statues guarding the route between Luxor Temple and Karnak.
The Crio- in Criosphinx comes from Greek -- Krios means Ram.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: I know why Frog talks like Shakespeare
« on: June 04, 2006, 06:01:11 pm »
A couple things, after reading through this thread.
Ted Woolsey (and why is it so popular to piņata the guy who brought us all the 16-bit RPGs we love?) probably translated Frog the way he did to draw a correlate between him and Cyan from FF6. IIRC, Cyan was translated using "Middle English" because Cyan's dialogue in the Japanese FF6 was keigo/kenjogo, and the feel of Woolsey's "Middle English" was the best way to approximate this. I personally think a Chivalric Frog works better than the actual Japanese Frog -- but then again, I also happen to think that Ozzie, Slash and Flea work better than a spread of condiments (and that the three Gurus are awesome with Biblically-inspired names), but hey, that's just me.
On the subject of Woolsey's "Middle English"... He did it wrong. Now I'm not beating up on Ted here, because I think in general he did an awesome job of presenting us with games that have obviously touched and inspired us in uncountable ways. But one thing nobody else has brought up yet in this discussion is that "thou" is completely misused in both CT and FF6.
The way it's commonly misused is to give the impression of respect; you respect someone by setting them above you, and using "thou." Woolsey used this because he believed it was as near an approximation of the Japanese concept of "honorifics" that the English language was capable of, and this mistaken impression is largely born out of the fact that "thou" sounds archaic to modern ears and, therefore, you must be honoring something if you're speaking in the old tongue. Right?
Wrong. Thou began originally as the second person singular pronoun of English. When the French came to rule England, the French royal habit of royalty being addressed with plural pronouns (i.e. "the Royal We") came into use, and down the line a distinction between English's two second person pronouns developed which was similar to that which is still employed in modern French: "thou" was still exclusively singular, as the French pronoun "tu," but was used more often than not to express a closeness/familiarity between the speaker and the listener. The pronoun "you," however, as with the French pronoun "vous," was either exclusively plural, or singular when there is distance/formality necessary between speaker and listener. This is why English translations of the Bible still carry the use of the "thou" pronouns: the most revolutionary idea of early Christianity was the closeness between God and man, such that you could call God "thou" and he wouldn't be offended, because y'all were just that tight. You feel me?
In the end, Frog is much more memorable in CT the way he was presented in our English translation. I think he would have been less-so if CT's English port remained true to the J characterization of him... you can only have so many down-to-business, plain-spoken badasses in an ensemble before they all start to bleed together... and between Crono, Ayla and Magus you have to wonder how Frog would have been able to stand out if the decision hadn't been made to have him attempt to emulate more of a chivalric persona.
Ted Woolsey (and why is it so popular to piņata the guy who brought us all the 16-bit RPGs we love?) probably translated Frog the way he did to draw a correlate between him and Cyan from FF6. IIRC, Cyan was translated using "Middle English" because Cyan's dialogue in the Japanese FF6 was keigo/kenjogo, and the feel of Woolsey's "Middle English" was the best way to approximate this. I personally think a Chivalric Frog works better than the actual Japanese Frog -- but then again, I also happen to think that Ozzie, Slash and Flea work better than a spread of condiments (and that the three Gurus are awesome with Biblically-inspired names), but hey, that's just me.
On the subject of Woolsey's "Middle English"... He did it wrong. Now I'm not beating up on Ted here, because I think in general he did an awesome job of presenting us with games that have obviously touched and inspired us in uncountable ways. But one thing nobody else has brought up yet in this discussion is that "thou" is completely misused in both CT and FF6.
The way it's commonly misused is to give the impression of respect; you respect someone by setting them above you, and using "thou." Woolsey used this because he believed it was as near an approximation of the Japanese concept of "honorifics" that the English language was capable of, and this mistaken impression is largely born out of the fact that "thou" sounds archaic to modern ears and, therefore, you must be honoring something if you're speaking in the old tongue. Right?
Wrong. Thou began originally as the second person singular pronoun of English. When the French came to rule England, the French royal habit of royalty being addressed with plural pronouns (i.e. "the Royal We") came into use, and down the line a distinction between English's two second person pronouns developed which was similar to that which is still employed in modern French: "thou" was still exclusively singular, as the French pronoun "tu," but was used more often than not to express a closeness/familiarity between the speaker and the listener. The pronoun "you," however, as with the French pronoun "vous," was either exclusively plural, or singular when there is distance/formality necessary between speaker and listener. This is why English translations of the Bible still carry the use of the "thou" pronouns: the most revolutionary idea of early Christianity was the closeness between God and man, such that you could call God "thou" and he wouldn't be offended, because y'all were just that tight. You feel me?
In the end, Frog is much more memorable in CT the way he was presented in our English translation. I think he would have been less-so if CT's English port remained true to the J characterization of him... you can only have so many down-to-business, plain-spoken badasses in an ensemble before they all start to bleed together... and between Crono, Ayla and Magus you have to wonder how Frog would have been able to stand out if the decision hadn't been made to have him attempt to emulate more of a chivalric persona.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: CT Last Names
« on: June 04, 2006, 05:18:42 pm »Hey, I'm not the one who proposed Crono was immaculately conceived by the Entity. Someone else did that.
Metichloriens!?!?!?!
*throws a knife at a poster of George Lucas*
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Re: Why was Glenn a Frog instead of a ________?
« on: June 04, 2006, 05:14:26 pm »Quote from: Legend of the PastIt woulden't matter if Belthy were to save Schala because the TD exists outside the timeline. He can't be affected by the timeline at all, that's the whole point of the Time Egg. You have to breach the Darkness Beyond Time to defeat him.Yes, but the logic still applies to Frog to an extent. When Magus returns to 12,000 BC at the end of CT and Frog to 600 AD, the curse is dispelled. Now if Magus were to time travel again, it wouldn't do anything to the curse because the curse is already lifted (= doesn't exist anymore). It's like a piece of wood, once you burn it to ashes there's no wood left...
If you opt to fight Magus as Frog, Frog doesn't instantly turn back into Glenn. It takes until the ending for that transformation to complete. I think the most likely solution is that Magus decided on a whim to lift the curse from Frog.
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Characters, Plot, and Themes / Ayla/Leah and Draggy
« on: June 04, 2006, 04:43:27 pm »
Hey hey! My first post!
Longtime Chrono fan, first time Chrono Compendium-poster.
I had two things I wanted to discuss/bring up. First is the Ayla/Leah conundrum (bear with me, I've read about ZERO forum posts since coming here... I've spent most of my time in the Encyclopedia, which is where I got the itch to post a discussion)... I don't think that either Ayla's prolonged disappearance from Prehistoria, nor the fact that Leah is her mother are necessarily paradoxes. The act of people leaving their native time periods, in and of itself, is not enough to change history so much as the condition of their ability to return being precluded.
First, remember that Marle travels to 2300 AD to meet Doan. Under the posted assumption that removing someone from their time of origin erases all their ancestors from history, Doan should not exist. But he does, I propose, because it is still possible at that point for Marle to return home and get busy with Crono. Thus the timeline is intact. Ayla leaves Prehistoria, but she is still able to return home, thus the timeline is intact.
The sunstone and the Porre mayor? Well, the sunstone is removed because the Porre mayor removed it and (at the time) had no intention of putting it back where he got it from.
The biggest piece of evidence supporting this suspension of possibility theory is Marle's journey back to 600 AD at the very beginning of CT -- now THIS is where you see someone being erased because of a condition which precludes an ancestor from continuing their line in the timestream. Marle's arrival causes Guardia to call off its search for Leene, who is never returned to the King, so Marle is erased until that condition changes.
Leah, for the same reason, can still be Ayla's mother (and in fact, this is one of the twists I like most in CC) because there remains a possibility that she can return home to Prehistoria. Futher, might I suggest a reason for her being there in the first place?... Others have proposed that her arrival in 1020 AD is an accident... but if we've learned anything from the Chrono series, it's that time travel is almost never accidental. The Entity, Lavos, FATE and the Dragon Gods dick around with the boundaries of dimensions all the time when it suits them... so it might be reasonable to suggest (if not conclude, for want of more solid evidence) that Leah was drawn to 1020 AD for the specific purpose of destroying the Guardia line. If Serge and company arrived shortly after Leah was dumped on Gaea's Navel, it's possible that Serge disrupted the planned assassination of Leah by rescuing her -- again, as often happens (manipulating people to time travel is easy -- everything after that is hard). Lavos/Time Devourer is the most likely candidate here... sending Leah someplace where she would be killed by the local wildlife would destroy Marle's lineage and disrupt the events that lead to Lavos' initial defeat. It also seems to fit the Time Devourer's M.O., as a similar thing happened when Schala sent Kid back to save Serge -- which leads one to ask, was Kid meant to save Serge, so that Serge would also save Leah (in addition to all the other stuff he was supposed to do -- poor kid! so many expectations...) and thereby preserve the timeline where Lavos was defeated at the end of CT, and could potentially be permanently defeated at the end of CC?
I'm also thinking about Draggy. When I played through CC (the first/second time), I was lead to believe that Draggy was the last of the Dragonian race. It's all left kind of vague, and seems kind of unlikely given the scale of Fort Dragonia vs. the size of Draggy's mother's bones... but if Draggy's not a Dragonian, what is he? And what then is the relationship between Dragonians and Dragons -- or for that matter, Reptites and Dinosaurs? Do Dinosaurs evolve into Dragons, paralleling a Reptite evolution into Dragonians? Any insights here, in-game or out-of-game?
Longtime Chrono fan, first time Chrono Compendium-poster.
I had two things I wanted to discuss/bring up. First is the Ayla/Leah conundrum (bear with me, I've read about ZERO forum posts since coming here... I've spent most of my time in the Encyclopedia, which is where I got the itch to post a discussion)... I don't think that either Ayla's prolonged disappearance from Prehistoria, nor the fact that Leah is her mother are necessarily paradoxes. The act of people leaving their native time periods, in and of itself, is not enough to change history so much as the condition of their ability to return being precluded.
First, remember that Marle travels to 2300 AD to meet Doan. Under the posted assumption that removing someone from their time of origin erases all their ancestors from history, Doan should not exist. But he does, I propose, because it is still possible at that point for Marle to return home and get busy with Crono. Thus the timeline is intact. Ayla leaves Prehistoria, but she is still able to return home, thus the timeline is intact.
The sunstone and the Porre mayor? Well, the sunstone is removed because the Porre mayor removed it and (at the time) had no intention of putting it back where he got it from.
The biggest piece of evidence supporting this suspension of possibility theory is Marle's journey back to 600 AD at the very beginning of CT -- now THIS is where you see someone being erased because of a condition which precludes an ancestor from continuing their line in the timestream. Marle's arrival causes Guardia to call off its search for Leene, who is never returned to the King, so Marle is erased until that condition changes.
Leah, for the same reason, can still be Ayla's mother (and in fact, this is one of the twists I like most in CC) because there remains a possibility that she can return home to Prehistoria. Futher, might I suggest a reason for her being there in the first place?... Others have proposed that her arrival in 1020 AD is an accident... but if we've learned anything from the Chrono series, it's that time travel is almost never accidental. The Entity, Lavos, FATE and the Dragon Gods dick around with the boundaries of dimensions all the time when it suits them... so it might be reasonable to suggest (if not conclude, for want of more solid evidence) that Leah was drawn to 1020 AD for the specific purpose of destroying the Guardia line. If Serge and company arrived shortly after Leah was dumped on Gaea's Navel, it's possible that Serge disrupted the planned assassination of Leah by rescuing her -- again, as often happens (manipulating people to time travel is easy -- everything after that is hard). Lavos/Time Devourer is the most likely candidate here... sending Leah someplace where she would be killed by the local wildlife would destroy Marle's lineage and disrupt the events that lead to Lavos' initial defeat. It also seems to fit the Time Devourer's M.O., as a similar thing happened when Schala sent Kid back to save Serge -- which leads one to ask, was Kid meant to save Serge, so that Serge would also save Leah (in addition to all the other stuff he was supposed to do -- poor kid! so many expectations...) and thereby preserve the timeline where Lavos was defeated at the end of CT, and could potentially be permanently defeated at the end of CC?
I'm also thinking about Draggy. When I played through CC (the first/second time), I was lead to believe that Draggy was the last of the Dragonian race. It's all left kind of vague, and seems kind of unlikely given the scale of Fort Dragonia vs. the size of Draggy's mother's bones... but if Draggy's not a Dragonian, what is he? And what then is the relationship between Dragonians and Dragons -- or for that matter, Reptites and Dinosaurs? Do Dinosaurs evolve into Dragons, paralleling a Reptite evolution into Dragonians? Any insights here, in-game or out-of-game?
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