e l e m e n t mysterious even in the light of day, nature keeps her veil intact

reason
flattery will get you nowhere with me
First of all, Tales of the Abyss wasn't a game I expected to love as much as I do now. A few days before the English release, I read that it was by the same team responsible for Tales of Symphonia so I decided to pick up a copy after it was released (of course, the $40 price tag was a factor as well). I fell in love with it after playing for only a few hours. And that usually doesn't happen. The graphics were awesome, the battle system was incredibly fun, the music was lovely, the plot was intriguing and complex, and the characters. Ohman. I loved so many of them. The game took everything I love about ToS and made it ten times better. Aside from some annoying glitches and painful loading times, the game turned out to be an amazing and original RPG.

I'm not sure it's necessary for me to explain why Jade is my favorite character, because hell, everyone likes Jade. How could you not? But this is my site and I'm going to explain, and hopefully write something more than unintelligible fangirl squee.

I never thought much about Jade's character after flipping through the little insert in the game box, aside from "is that Pac-Man?!" and "he looks awfully cheerful for a Necromancer." But after getting my ass saved from the Liger Queen by him, hearing his snarky comments to Luke aboard the Tartarus, the subsequent Oracle Knight asskicking, and various acts of awesome that followed, I admitted to my friend who I dragged over to start the game with me, "I think I love him." Said friend was quick to point out that I am a total weirdo, because,
1. "He is probably gay."
2. "He looks like you." and,
3. "He's not real."
I, of course, ignored those completely valid points and Jade grew to become my favorite character in Tales of the Abyss. He has the most unique personality I've ever encountered in a video game; no character is safe from his sarcasm and you can never quite tell if he's being malicious or lighthearted. Jade had some of the best lines in the game, which I've taken the liberty of transcribing for you. But Jade proved to be much more than comic relief; in fact, it turned about that he was actually responsible for much of the game's conflict. And even after finding out about his past Jade's character still remained mysterious, even to the player. He does reveal a lot to Luke, but even at the end of the game you can never quite tell what he's actually thinking. To me, that just made him all the more interesting, because I'm a whore for analyzing characters :3. I really like the ambiguous aspects of his character, perhaps even more so than his humor and sarcasm.

So basically, Jade is hilarious, clever, complex, kick-ass in battle, and all kinds of pure awesomeness. Anything else I could say would be that unintelligible fangirl squee that I mentioned before, so I'll leave it at that.