CW Neptunia Canon (no ontology)
From Compile Worlds
This page relies on Keiji's current understanding of Victory, which he has not yet finished playing... it may change as time goes on.
Different Neptunia canons are established in Neptunia 1 (Original), Neptunia 2 (Sisters), and the anime. Any pair out of these three are inconsistent with each other, but the anime is most true to Sisters.
CW canon is most true to Original, but somehow manages to shoehorn in the existance of the younger sisters, repurposes the Oracles (other than Histoire, though she is not called an Oracle in CW either) as normal people who happen to work at the appropriate Basilicom, and repurposes the Four Felons in their own separate ways (except for Trick, who is just retconned entirely out of existence).
The prologue of Neptunia 3 (Victory) can be seen as happening immediately or a couple of years after Sisters in the same canon, without causing any inconsistencies. During this prologue, Neptune gets portaled to what is described as a parallel dimension both by the characters in the game and by the creators of the game from an out-of-character perspective too. The rest of the game (so far) takes place in this parallel dimension. For convenience, the dimension that Neptune was previously in shall be called the Sisters Dimension (as Sisters took place here), while the parallel dimension she gets portaled to shall be called the Victory Dimension. It may well be that Compile Heart's decision to call it a parallel dimension is them hanging a lampshade on the fact that the first two games' canons were so inconsistent with each other.
Both Victory and the anime assert the existence of the two parallel worlds, that Neptune hails from the Sisters dimension, that Plutia hails from the Victory dimension, and that Noire, Blanc, Vert and Histoire each have two versions, one in each dimension. While those versions have different outfits, they share identical bodies (except for Histoire's case where V!Histoire is a much smaller book fairy than S!Histoire), personalities, voice actors.
In Victory, After Neptune got sent to the Victory dimension, she met Plutia, V!Noire, and V!Histoire. V!Noire isn't even a CPU yet; Plutia only just became one and only just founded Planeptune. Before Plutia founded Planeptune, the only CPU was V!Blanc, so Lowee was the only "Land of Faith" as such.
So, while in the Sisters Dimension the lands and their CPUs were implied to just have always existed somehow, in the Victory Dimension it's made clear that CPUs are not born CPUs, but instead they become CPUs (by ingesting a CPU Memory from a Memory Core), and the Lands of Faith didn't always exist either: the CPUs had to found them. In fact, Neptune specifically says about how she was surprised that CPUs aren't just born CPUs.
In the first two games, the Shares Legend (little box that lists all the nations plus Arfoire, with colored bars showing the percentage of shares in each) colored the bars as follows:
- Planeptune - Purple
- Lastation - Black
- Leanbox - Green
- Lowee - White
- Arfoire (also called "Others") - Red
Which makes sense. The first four are the correct national colors, and we all know that Arfoire/"Others" is just evil.
But what I noticed as soon as I played Victory was that, only Planeptune and Lowee were listed to start with. Planeptune was Purple as it should be, but Lowee was Red, not White. My first thought was, does Arfoire have something to do with it?
Later on, you get access to the world map (Victory has a map inside a map system, so you can't see Lowee at all until part way through Chapter 2). And on the world map, Lowee wasn't white and snowy at all. It was red, red from forests of autumnal trees, and with a very red colored shrine/temple that would be the Basilicom.
Then I suddenly realised, of course...
Chao: obviously it's red because Suzuri is there
...Blanc's Victory Outfit is the Autumnal Dress, and I knew this from the first game. (Her normal Sisters outfit is the white dress.) So, red dress, red nation, red color in the legend. It all fits.
And in some ways Lowee is depicted as the enemy in this game, but I'm not sure where they're going with that yet. They certainly have no affiliation with the Seven Sages, who are the only other characters so far that can be considered the main villains, as there is a cutscene where one of the Seven goes to taunt Blanc.
So, what this is all leading up to is my slight adjustment of canon:
Victory isn't actually a parallel dimension. It's the past.
Neptune time travelled into the past; the events of Victory happen; several thousand years pass, and the CPUs forget they were ever not CPUs; the first game happens.
There are more arguments to support this. The first is the allusion to real world companies.
As we know, Lowee is Nintendo, Planeptune is Sega, Lastation is Sony, and Leanbox is Microsoft. That is the order in which nations are founded in Victory, and it's also the order in which those companies entered the video game industry. Furthermore, besides greyscale colors, the famicom and NES used red predominately. Nintendo became associated with white with the DS and Wii, around 2005-2006ish. After that, they are very much white... before that, they had no association with white. Which ties in with Lowee being red in the past and white in the future.
The Seven Sages are:
- Arfoire, who also appears in the first game, and is then killed and only "appears" in the second as a concept, or a spirit, and doesn't appear in body
- I'll also point out that Arfoire in the first game is just bent on world destruction, while Arfoire in the anime and also in Victory is more rational. This implies that the first game does indeed take place far in the future, after Arfoire has been driven mad by something that either happened during Victory or in the thousands of years between. The anime explicitly features Plutia and Peashy travelling from the Victory Dimension to the Sisters Dimension, so it's quite possible that the Arfoire in the anime is the "younger", more rational Arfoire from Victory, instead of the mad Arfoire from the first game. Also, Arfoire never physically appears in the second game, and as the anime is most true to the second game out of any of them it makes more sense for them to pick V!Arfoire than Original!Arfoire.
- Warechu, who appears in the second game but not the first.
- Rei and Anonydeath. These characters do not appear at all in the first two games, but do appear in the anime.
- Croire, the red book fairy.
- Copypaste, a lovable idiot in a giant mech designed for creating illegitimate copies of games.
- Mr. Badd, a businessmen who pretends to be Blanc's right-hand man before stealing her country from her.
So, the time travel idea basically states: Victory happens first (with Neptune time traveling back from point X), then thousands of years pass, then Original happens, then three years pass, then Sisters happens, then a small amount of time (maybe a couple of years) passes, then point X happens where Neptune gets sent back to the past. With this in mind, Neptune was never born and never dies - she's in a Stable Time Loop.
And when it comes to who was the CPU of Planeptune, that's simple. Plutia was born before the events of Victory, she then becomes a CPU and founds Planeptune. Neptune then arrives, re-becomes a CPU herself (this explicitly happens in Victory: Neptune loses her CPU power then re-gains it after consuming a CPU Memory), but then instead of founding her own nation just hangs out with Plutia in Planeptune. At some point Plutia gets bored and decides napping is more fun, so Neptune becomes the official CPU (now with Plutia hanging out in Neptune's land instead of the other way round), until she gets sent back in time (when Nepgear would take over).
None of this yet explains where the Sisters came from: remember, the original game made it pretty clear they did not exist, but the second game implied they had always existed much like the older sisters. However, Victory might explain the origin of the younger sister CPUs later on. If it doesn't, I'm thinking of defaulting to the idea that they are actually adopted sisters, who are born and become CPUs in the same way as all the Victory CPUs.
As of mid-Chapter 2 in Victory, there's no known way for the CPUs or their allies to travel the dimensions - it was difficult enough for the two Histoires to even communicate with each other (yes, it took them three days to establish a connection). So, the Histoires are busy working on that.
However, the Seven Sages - Arfoire, Warechu, Rei, Anonydeath, Red Book Fairy and the two others - appear to have a method to freely travel between the Victory Dimension and the Sisters Dimension. As a specific example, Rei and Croire were the ones responsible for creating the portal while in the Sisters Dimension, but they then go on to make numerous appearances in the Victory Dimension and act like it was no big deal.
If this is true, it explains how a lot of the events in the anime could fit in: Anonydeath, Rei and Arfoire came from the Victory Dimension and travel to the Sisters Dimension, where they meet up with Warechu who came from the Sisters Dimension, and there they stay until the events of the anime are completed. Or possibly, Warechu and one or both of the unknown ones came from the Sisters Dimension, and while setting up their group they travelled to the Victory Dimension and picked up the others. Red Book Fairy could have come from either dimension.
Of course, by "travelled to the Sisters Dimension" I really mean "travelled thousands of years into the future".
Just going by memory, there is possibly further evidence directly in the canon that, if true, would support the time travel theory:
- During Sisters, I'm pretty sure I recall that someone said that there was a time long ago when Lowee was the only continent and was much bigger than it is now.
- In the anime(?), I think Arfoire also mentioned that she was born in Lowee.
Pre-Victory CW canon only stated that Arfoire was always evil, and had been killed and would not show up in CHW. Now, while Victory doesn't change the fact that she's evil (for example, here's a quote from Arfoire in Victory: "War is exactly what we require. Watching humans struggle to overpower one another is so grand!"), she is far more rational in Victory than she is by the time Original rolls around.
There is one good deed Arfoire does that I've seen so far. It's not in any of the games, but it's in the anime. When all hope looks lost, and Rei's Possessor appears set to destroy the world, Arfoire destroys her. Neptune thanks Arfoire for it, but Arfoire says they're still enemies and just walks off back to her eggplant farm, that she made earlier on purely to screw with Neptune and her friends. I'm guessing it's a typical thing of "If anyone's going to destroy the world it will be ME!!" although Arfoire doesn't actually express any desire to destroy the world at all in the anime.
[20:08:24] Keiji: By the way V!Noire is freaking awesome in this game [20:08:37] Chao: when isn't Noire awesome tho [20:08:56] Keiji: She knows her shit, and not only is she entirely competent at running her own country, but she manages to get Neptune and Plutia to stop fucking around and actually do some work [20:09:12] Keiji: Neptune and Plutia were right jerks to her earlier though [20:09:14] Keiji: it went like this [20:16:19] Keiji: Noire: founds Lastation [Three years pass, Neptune and Plutia nap in the Basilicom all day erry day while Noire works hard to build Lastation as big as Lowee] Histoire: You two are so lazy I'm throwing you out [Neptune and Plutia travel to Lastation, which involves traversing several dungeons as there's no convenient road yet] Noire: misses Plutia, talking to herself really lonely Plutia: Hi! Please let us nap here, Histoire threw us out Noire: really happy that Plutia showed up but doesn't show it of course Noire: No you lazy sods Neptune: Teach us how to be good CPUs then! Noire: Okay Noire: Here's how I invented Stella's Dungeon Noire: Now will you stay the night please? I've been really lonely these last three years Neptune: Nope! Plutia: Bye! [Neptune and Plutia run off all the way back to Planeptune] Histoire: You're back early Plutia: Hey we learned something! Neptune: talking about Stella's Dungeon Histoire: genuinely impressed that they actually learned something Histoire: Okay, what else did she teach you? Neptune: Nothing Histoire: GET OUT YOU MORONS door slam [Neptune and Plutia go back to Lastation, again] Neptune: Noire please teach us more Noire: pout Plutia: Please? Noire: more dramatic pout Noire: gets mad rightly so as they were jerks to her earlier Plutia: starts crying Neptune: Look you made Plutia cry Noire: I'm sorry D: please don't cry I won't be mad Noire: okay you can live here and I'll teach you more stuff Neptune and Plutia: yay! [and then they basically live in Lastation from that point onwards, at least til the point I am in the game]
Neptune: [describing Blanc] she's quiet, smart and calm. If left alone, she could read books for the rest of forever. Noire: So she's everything you're not.
