LogFAQs > #895397903

26. Tidus (Final Fantasy X)

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/e/e7/FFX_Artwork_Tidus.png/revision/latest?cb=20140809034111

"Listen to my story. This...may be our last chance."

Tidus needs to learn the difference between pants and shorts, and that combining them is not an ideal solution.

He's also the exact person that Spira needed to jolt them out of their endless spiral of death. Tidus is an interesting protagonist for an RPG, or any game, really. A lot of main characters go through the process of exploring through and learning more about the world they already inhabit. They gain maturity, and through it, the power to change what they can and accept what they can't. Even characters with amnesia who are theoretically completely blank slates tend to follow this path. It's a good story structure, after all.

Tidus isn't like that. Spira is not Tidus' world. I mean, it technically is, but he might as well be on another planet for how alien it is to him. When Tidus washes up on the shores of Besaid, he sees people playing Blitzball and goes "hey I know this!". Every reaction after that is "what the fuck?" Tidus does not particularly like Spira. He finds a lot of its practices harmful or outdated. He finds the summoner's quest as a whole to be seriously questionable. He finds people's arbirtrary hatred of the Al Bhed to be despicable. And Tidus, bless his soul, isn't very good at keeping quiet. He has to continuously feign amnesia from the 'Sin toxin' to explain how surprised and/or apalled he is by Spira's practices. After a while he stops bothering with the excuse.

The way Tidus acts is kind of immature. People tell him as much. Tidus is kind of immature - he's a sports star jock with big daddy issues who obviously craves attention. But that's also Tidus' biggest strength. He doesn't back down even when others tell him to stop. At the beginning of the game, Tidus looks almost like a fool as people try to explain to him how Spira works. By the mid-to-end game, they're the ones appearing embarrassed with themselves as they keep giving him excuses that he refuses to buy. One example that I love is the side plot of Tidus helping the Besaid Aurochs finally win some Blitzball games. Within a week he's changed their motto from "do our best" to "win", and it encapsulates Tidus's role in the story. He's a catalyst for change that jolts Spira out of its endless cycle of Sin and brings forth a better future through determination and no small amount of self-sacrifice.

Outside of that, Tidus is also just a well-written character. His issues with Jecht are very realistically written and is one of the most memorable relationships in the series despite the player personally encountering Jecht very few times. Over time his outward immaturity is tempered into a more measured determination that lets him face the final events of the game with no regrets. There's also some stuff about being a dream and blah blah but that's not what Tidus is about. He's a character that gets far too little credit even within his series' own fanbase.
---

Black Turtle did a pretty good job.