Fic Recommendation: Chrono Reflect by Azure Sandora · 3:31am Jul 7th, 2020
I like video games. I'm not a HARDCORE GAMER, but I've been around for most of the home video game trend. I started with an Atari 2600 and kept up to the current generation.1
One of my favorite games has always been Chrono Trigger, the classic 1995 SNES time travel JRPG. I've played and replayed it multiple times (bought and rebought it for other platforms too.) When it came to the sequel, Chrono Cross, I liked it, but I wasn't enthusiastic about replaying it. I thought there were too many characters, the magic system seemed unnecessarily complex and the fact that it was tied into the story of the game only made things more confusing. 2
But overall, I liked both games and while Square Enix hasn't shown any desire to continue with the franchise, they've still inspired plenty of fans around the world.
Which brings me to Azure Sandora's Chrono Reflect.
Written in late 2016 and continuing into summer of 2017, Chrono Reflect is both a crossover with Equestria Girls and an unofficial sequel to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.
One fine day, following a prophetic but confusing dream, things start getting strange around Canterlot High for everyone's favorite fashionista. 3 She starts seeing strange after images of alternate versions of CHS and its inhabitants. She leaves class with a splitting headache only to find Sunset Shimmer, who's also recognized something is going wrong. The two attempt to go through the portal to Equestria in search of answers, but halfway through they encounter a monster very familiar to Chrono Trigger fans.
Sunset and Rarity are separated4 and Rarity finds herself in what seems to be the same Canterlot High, but everything is different. Rainbow Dash is meek and submissive, Fluttershy is an angry violent bitch, Applejack is all frilly and fancy calling herself "Applejewel," Pinkie Pie has gone all goth Lolita, and Twilight has more fashion sense and isn't quite as awkward and science-crazy as she once was. There's no magic in this world and things seem a bit less bright and colorful.
And then, Rarity discovers that here, she died in a car accident ten years ago.
From there, Rarity begins an epic journey through five parallel realities, encountering new versions of her friends, trying to find out what happened to her world, how to find Sunset Shimmer, and how to get back. What she finds is exciting, fun... and heartbreaking.
Oh yeah. Much like the games its crossing over with, Chrono Reflect can be fun and silly one minute, then turn right around and hit you hard with tragedy and tears. There's plenty of action (maybe a little too much, but we'll get there in a minute), plenty of character development, a few pretty interesting subplots and uses of characters.
And for you shipping fans, yes, there's some shipping going on. But not necessarily between Rarity and who you might expect. As someone who doesn't really care about shipping or romance subplots in general, I can say that given the set up and progression, this one does feel natural and plausible.
However, like any story, there are some flaws that we need to address.
First off, the story hews TOO close to trying to replicate the feel of the games. It apes Chrono Cross the most in this regard, with the use of that game's Element magic system. And with that comes a variety of attack names and other effects that are described once then never again. On the other hand, there are some attacks and moves our heroines do where the exact same phrase is repeated multiple times. This does not translate well to text and comes off as redundant.5
In fact, a lot of the fights come off as redundant. There's usually at least one major fight scene every two or so chapters and you might find your eyes glazing over and skipping to the end of the scene after a while. You can only read about the characters using certain moves so many times before you just stop caring.
Another problem is the characters all seem to have similar vocabularies, making it difficult to tell who's speaking and who isn't. This isn't so much a problem for Twilight and Rarity, but the alternates of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy we spend the most time with also seem to speak in (largely) the same way. This is especially egregious in Fluttershy's case as she's supposedly from a primitive world and while most of her speech is intended to be broken English, occasionally there's a multisyllabic word that just seems out of place.
Speaking of Fluttershy, there's a subplot with her I am not enamored with. This concerns a sensitive subject for some, so I'm putting it under a spoiler block. Trigger warnings should be considered in effect during this section.
To put it bluntly... last chance to back out of reading this part...
Fluttershy gets raped. It's off camera, there's no details, and the rapist in question is killed, but yeah. Not really a big fan of that. The situation as created by the story does make for a logical reason for it to happen, but that's cold comfort. End result is Fluttershy more or less freaking out every time a man gets close to her, or worse, touches her.
But what really squicks me out is that she kinda gets over it when she willingly has sex with her world's version of Big Mac. So, loving caring sex resolves rape trauma? Yeah, I don't think it works that way. 6
The above aside though, the story overall is pretty solid. There's some surprise plot twists you won't see coming, but they are adequately foreshadowed. And the story's use of Pinkie Pie is VERY well done and heartbreaking in its own right. Not saying much on that front because I really don't want to spoil it for you.
If you're looking for an interesting fantasy adventure featuring the EQG versions of our girls, want a good Rarity-focused story with epic stakes, or are just a fan of both EQG and the Chrono game series7, this story has plenty of what your looking for.
Overall, I'd say it's worth your time. It's not one of the all time greats, but it scratches just about every itch you could possibly have for any give EQG fanfic.
1 The progression has been Atari 2600 - NES- SNES- PS1- PS2- PS3- PS4. Not sure if or when I'll go for the next gen consoles, it'll depend on what games come out after launch.
2 I'm pretty sure there were some FF7 style translation errors too, because even looking up plot summaries online, I still couldn't begin to explain what the hell was going on in that game.
3 Who, in addition to being fabulous, also apparently can also kick several different types of ass with a broom handle, as the first chapter shows. Also, timeline-wise, this story was begun before the release of Legend of Everfree, so yeah, there's a few liberties taken with character traits, since all we had at the time this story was published were the first three movies.
4 And we won't see Sunset again for a very long time. This is Rarity's story and the focus very much remains on her. Sorry Sunset fans.
5 It also, being a sequel/crossover with a JRPG, has many, many anime tropes that we have all seen many, MANY times which might be a turnoff to some readers. I accepted this as par for the course, but your mileage may vary.
6It's also implied that she's pregnant after her tryst with Mac, and there's some really iffy stuff about virginal purity there as well, but neither of these is a dealbreaker for me.
7 And can deal with the elements for my criticisms above.
