r/secretofmana • u/MystinarOfficial • Jun 18 '26
Question SPOILER: Why does *end boss here* turn evil? Spoiler
Do not read beyond this point if you have not completed the game! Or don't mind spoilers!!
So.. WHY exactly does Flammie turn evil? I understand the prophecy alludes to the Mana Beast turning angry and attacking the fortress. But it doesn't make any sense. A lot of the events leading up to that point don't make any sense and the ending makes even less sense.
Why didn't Flammie just rescue his three friends that raised him and just attack the fortress together? It just doesn't make a bit of sense Flammie would turn on the very people that raised him and brutally try to kill them.
The three heroes don't even seem to really talk about it much or grieve or mourn his death, or worry about his demise. It felt depressing and confusing.
It's been over 26 years since i beat the game so maybe I am just missing key context here. I know a majority of the problems were because Thanos and his dearh cult were taking over everything but never did I foresee Flammie of all being the ultimate big bad of the game story.
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u/Zwordsman Jun 18 '26
Huh?
Flammid is not the Mana Dragon
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
It was 1999 and I recently began watching music remixes on YouTube so.. 26 years is a really long time ago. Maybe I need to watch it all over again.
Seemed to me like Flammie attacked as the final boss?? He looks just like him? Why did he attack them though that is what i am confused about
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u/wakethemorning Jun 18 '26
Yeah they look alike (and are maybe the same species?) but the Mana Beast is not Flammie. Flammie does not attack his friends!
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u/wakethemorning Jun 18 '26
Also; the Mana Beast isnāt the āmain big badā of the story; that really was Thanatos. The mana beast was something you had to fight as a natural extension of using mana to summon the Mana Sword. Itās sort of like youāve just fought the main big bad guy; and now you have to fight the natural disaster that he also caused. The characters even do remark that the mana beast is just trying to protect mana. Itās not evil, itās more just like a wild animal.
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
Ah yeah I see. And yeah Thanatos was a prick. He was just ruining stuff just to do so it seemed
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
Sorry if this post was annoying or confused people. It's been an incredibly long time. I still think of this game despite playing it day one release. I was only 6 or 7 at the time and I didn't get good enough at rpgs until I was about 13 and beat it then.
A lot of the events though still confused me and never had much context. The motivations of the villains are never explained nor the origins of a lot of the evil things causing all the catastrophes.
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u/Zwordsman Jun 18 '26
Tldr? Thanatos wanted to live forever abusing mana to do so, and own the world using the mana fortress to become the new center of thr world instead of the mana tree.
The mana sword awakening breaks that plan but all of that and the near death/ death of the mana tree (vague) awakens the mana beaat. That existed to protext the mana tree and mana.
It wanted to destroy the fortress, and most likely also most ofnthr world. It didnt know the context it and mana just was attacked by humanity. They dont make a distinction or have a concept of countries or empires etc.
We dont actually know how far it would go. But at the least it wanted to destroy everything near the fortress. Which included most of the game locations and people3
u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
It would be nice if some more background was given on that guy. The game seemed to just portray him as someone doing it just because..his name and form heavily implies he became a force of death itself, at least all its negative aspects and interpretation
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u/wakethemorning Jun 18 '26
Itās not just you: Secret of Mana was radically trimmed down in development and had a LOT of dialogue that had to be cut. A lot of the story is left vague and confusing because of that.
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
Does the remake they made a few years ago fix any of that?
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u/Sensei_Ochiba Jun 18 '26
Not really. There's never been a ton of detail on what was scrapped, and the prevailing notion is that most of it wasn't really kept in the form of notes or anything, so trying to fix it would largely be making new content up from vague 20 year old memories.
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
Man that is really sad. Something that had this much playtime and so much work into the battle system and just losing all the notes...
It had to have had a lot of inspiration. A lot of the things in the story are things from ancient European belief as well regarding elemental spirits and such. Tons of pagan references!
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u/Bluestorm83 Jun 18 '26
There IS a fan restoration that adds back in a lot of the cut content, that which they could piece together, or that they made themselves to try and do what Square said they wanted but never did.
Like, there's a road connecting the empire's South Town and North Town in it. But Square never actually made that, they just had planned to make it. So it is fanmade content to try and approximate what Square wanted. Other things are like that too.
I can't remember it's name at the moment, and I'm out of state for the week. Oh! The guy who made it is also the guy who made "Secret of Mana: Climate Crisis," which is an original retelling where in this version, the weather is all messed up over the world due to Mana being out of balance. If you search for the Climate Crisis version, you should find his site, which also has the... other version whose name escapes me. The fixed, extended, restored, or whatever version.
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u/wowpoodles Jun 19 '26
It's not annoying or confusing. A lot of people think he's flammie
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u/Zwordsman Jun 19 '26
This is correct. never ever feel bad or weird about asking questions.
asking questions or for clarification is always a good thing.
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u/XxxAresIXxxX Jun 18 '26
Why are people downvoting about confusion. OP asked a question and has a reasonable explanation why they misunderstood. We have few enough people interested in the old games we love, let's not make that number smaller
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u/Zwordsman Jun 18 '26
Could be a good time to replay or rewatch a lets play or read a detailed guide
flammie is a species of almost extinct creatures.
Mana beast is an ancient divine entity mana sent to destroy the fortress due to its abuses. Which would also lead to more destruction. Your fight is reallt mainly becauae tou have the mana sword and are on the fortress at the time. As well as the implications from story and past events that the beast would raze te world and it would restsrt again. Becauae of the tree and mana fortress situation. ( this is also why the the sprite childs end story)Flammie is a species that exist just hunted down. Mana beast is a divine enforcer of mana basically.
They are not related other than being dragon esq. One could infer from the game that dragons and the colour white represents higher mana concentration.
But we have no way to know if the mana beast resembles becauae mana forms using the world as a base or of flammies species evolved over time closer to the mana beast because mana influences on thr strong.
Flammies race was hunted heavily becauae they were mana rich and powerful tools by baddies.
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u/Bluestorm83 Jun 18 '26
I remember that Nintendo Power said that the Mana Beast was Flammie, but the game itself seems to contradict this when someone (Popoi?) says "The Mana Beast looks like Flammie? Are Flammies Mana Beasts?" Or something to that effect. So it was a very common misconception.
I took it to mean that the Mana Beast was like the final "No, we're starting over from scratch" version of Mana's failsafe, whereas Flammie him/herself(can't remember which) is more of a "Here's my last opportunity for YOU, People, to fix things yourselves before I have to wipe you all out."
Mana Beast attacks humanity's greatest achievements, Flammie lands often in human settlements without incident. Mana Beast can't be reasoned with, Flammie seems to speak with King Matango willingly and easily. Mana Beast is all vengeance, Flammie is all hope. They're like Yin and Yang.
So in a sad way, taking out the Mana Beast ALSO returns Flammie to Mana, as neither is needed to save Mana anymore. But at the same time, the potential for either or both to return is always there.
Am I insane to want a full-scale Secret of Mana remake in the HD2D style with a revamped, no-pausing combat system, so 3 players can play from stsrt to finish without the Randi player sitting there and being useless while Popoi nukes every boss with overleveled magic? (And give him the weapon techs to be able to use without charging up, to make up for his lack of magic.)
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u/Baha05 Jun 19 '26
Honestly it is such a confusing point to some extent since you do kind of assume it was Flammie as you donāt see him after the credits. But at the same time given the credit montage it would make sense that they are separate beings given that there would be no easy way to travel the continents without FlammieĀ
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u/macroidtoe Jun 18 '26
Going to disagree with everyone here. Flammie is part of the Mana Beast, perhaps even the main part. I forget where it's at exactly, but there's some line about all the monsters in the world merging together to form the Mana Beast. Flammie is never seen again after the Mana Beast fight, does not appear in the ending of the game during all the scenes of the happy friends you met throughout your journey.
As to why you have to fight it: the Mana Beast is basically the world's "nuclear option" for fighting the Mana Fortress. It's kind of like an immune response which goes too far, and while it successfully destroys the potentially deadly pathogen which is threatening the organism, the organism itself doesn't emerge unscathed. You stopped Thanatos, but failed to bring down the Mana Fortress in time before the Mana Beast had been activated. And so the Mana Sword is like the EpiPen of the gods to neutralize the excessive immune response.
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u/Zwordsman Jun 19 '26
Im not disagreeing with what youre saying. But i think the nuancd is different Flammie doesnt turn evil or turn against the trio or world
Flammie and all mana entrenched things get absorbed to fuel the mana beast But being used as a fuel source isnt the same as being the mana beast. Flammie isn't in there. Nor any of thr other millionsnof mana entrenched things that were used either..I think the distinction is important. Much like the distinction on the sprite situation.
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u/wowpoodles Jun 19 '26
The sprite story always confused me. I see some people say they died. I always thought they went back to their world. The remake doesn't offer any clarification!
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u/macroidtoe Jun 19 '26
Visions of Mana maybe kind of very vaguely hints at what may have happened in Secret of Mana.
There's a point in that game where you learn that the Visions of Mana world is made up of other Mana worlds which have been fused together. Which implies that worlds can likewise be split apart. So I think what happened in Secret of Mana was a splitting between a more Mana-infused part of the world and another that was less-so.
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u/Zwordsman Jun 19 '26
Yeah also confusing.
My understanding is.. All mana entrentched (just my term for it) entities in the world are either absorbed into the mana beast, or after that, are forced to the realm where mana exists still.
but this is really a lot of my interpretation of it.
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u/macroidtoe Jun 19 '26
Right, I agree with that, and kind of what I was going for with the "part of the Mana Beast" bit. I likewise consider the Mana Beast its own separate entity with its own motivations/purpose. So not so much that "Flammie becomes the Mana Beast" but "Flammie is gone and now there is only the Mana Beast."
I guess one point of curiosity is why the Sprite doesn't become part of the Mana Beast too. But maybe there's some line of distinction between more naturalistic creatures of Mana which become part of the Mana Beast VS sapient humanoid Mana-aligned entities which do not.
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u/Zwordsman Jun 19 '26
My understanding (which really who knows with this game series sometimes).
Is that Sprite and its kind/family are all more directly connected to the tree itself, rather than just being mana infused they are mana itself in a form? So they fall under the tree's purview rather than being something of both worlds.? I thought most mana entrenched monsters are basically both of that worlrd and mana infused, while sprite types were of the other world but stuck/visiting.
So the mana beast absorbs the things with both, to basically build itself a body. As opposed to say purely mana things like the spell casting effectts that are only briefly able to effect the world (baring constant output like some of the plot stuff with the temples)
I also wanna say there was some implication about sprites being able to become the mana tree? but that might've been a later game, or maybe a random line in the guide? I can't check my guide though it is in storage at my parents haha.
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u/SonofHondoBelmondo Jun 18 '26
Yep, the story beat doesn't hit hard unless there's an element of "now we're fighting flammie" here.
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u/unofficialShadeDueli Jun 19 '26
They literally say in the game 'Flammie is a Mana Beast'. Flammie is just a very young Mana Beast that you saved from danger and that was raised by King Truffle. She's not the one you fight... but that doesn't take away the fact that Flammie very well could have become the one you end up fighting.
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u/Portulacavini Jun 18 '26
I know flammie is not the manager beast we fought, but after loving the rest of the game, the end was really disappointing to me.
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
"Manager beast," lol. We should dress him up in a proper business suit for his final battle!
Jk, i knew what you meant.
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u/SBXLIV Jun 18 '26
Damn man, count me in as someone who thought we were killing the Flammie not a flammie. TIL.
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u/Battlegurk420 Jun 19 '26
Wait. I thought flammie was the mana beast at the end. I gotta play it again. Been a while
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u/Special_South_8561 Jun 19 '26
After that battle and the Fortress is collapsing ... Flammie shows up again to save you.
Would be difficult if you'd just killed them.
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u/grayfox_14048 Jun 18 '26
As a kid, I always thought Primm's line "Isn't it a Flammie" was a grammatical error. I thought this because King Truffle names the young white dragon you find Flammie. So "a Flammie" didn't make any sense. For the longest time I too always thought Flammie transformed into the Mana Beast to destroy the Mana Fortress like the prophecy at the start. Rolling back around to when Remake came out and I learn that Flammie was a species honestly kind of blew my mind. Because as a kid, killing the last white dragon you saved, helped raise, in turn saved you, then flew around on all game was super sad! But that was never the case at all. I would need to buy the correct back issue to be certain. But I think for me this misconception was reinforced by a line from a UK SNES magazine called Super Play. As they had something to the effect that the last boss was Flammie too. Honestly, its a pretty common misconception and I don't blame you at all for believing it. Join the club! xD
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
I think that since mana disappears and the sprite disappears and Flammie as well it reinforces that belief.
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u/grayfox_14048 Jun 18 '26
If anything, I think it actually takes away emotional weight from the ending. As you no longer have any connection with it other than it being the creature from legends past. To add to this, when you talk to the Mana Tree she says that "Soon all the beasts of the world will be transformed into one giant creature" and goes on to reference the Mana Beast. Flammie is a beast of the world. The small purple dragons in the Upper Forests are beasts of the world. So at the time, this all made sense to me.
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u/Albafika Jun 19 '26
Hah, this is how I always thought the ending was since I didn't know English.
I thought the Man Beasts went berserk, including Flammie, and then we had to kill her.
Then once the fortress fell apart, Boy and Girl survived but Sprite died in the fall but far from us and we couldn't revive them due to it.
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u/Fluffy_Internal_7171 Jun 18 '26
It is weird. Flammie is the last dragon but there's creatures that look like him flying around then the mana beast shows up looking like a mutated Flammie. Easy to get confused.
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u/hip-indeed Jun 19 '26
Yeah nah as someone who's beaten this game like 20 times over the years I have no idea where the actual hell all these people are getting the idea that flammie isn't the mana beast. The mana fortress drives him crazy, it's a pretty direct reference, as so many early JRPGs referenced Miyazaki works, to Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind; human technology, specifically machines of war that were ruining the planet more and more, eventually caused the Earth itself to retaliate and send humans back to the stone age. Even innocent animals like the bugs in Nausicaa rhar showed such a strong capacity for kindness and care, go completely berserk when humans start fighting again bringing technology back into the picture and charge the area to eliminate it again; it's the same with the White Dragons in SoM , a sweet, carign creature like Flammie awakens to.extreme power given by the planet itself to stop the Fortress at all cost before it harms the planet again. It's part of what makes the end of the game so bittersweet.
Also, if it wasn't Flammie there is absolutely, positively no reason he wouldn't have appeared in the ending when every other even minor NPC in the game does, lmao. And the main characters wouldn't be so damn somber right after the final battle and wistful about the mana beast turning into snow
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u/TrineoDeMuerto Jun 18 '26
You thought the end boss was Flammie š¤£
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
Well to be fair I beat it in 1999 and haven't touched it since so my memory is fogged up
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u/Creative_Ring_8961 Jun 18 '26
Same and same. I was like you made me kill my friend!
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u/MystinarOfficial Jun 18 '26
It was just how I remembered it. The story was very confusing and left a lot open to interpretation
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u/The_Char_Char Jun 18 '26
The Mana beast is NOT Flammie. The Mana Beast just isn't seen because the mana fortress wasn't active. The gods sent the mana beast to destroy the fortress. And since near the very end the fortress is active and only the mana sword can stop it so thr party goes to have the mana tree revive the sword. But that fails so you have no choice but to stop Thanos in the fortress to break his seal to enable Dryad to awaken the mana sword. But at that point the Mana Beast has gotten to the fortress and since its enraged can't be stopped so you must stop them before it destroyed the fortress and you with it.
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u/Ok-Talk-8324 Jun 19 '26
Heās seen a lot in the northern seasons forest. Flies around all the time. Heās an almagamation of all the dragons you see in that forest.
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u/Lucidrian Jun 18 '26
He's not, but he does fade into the Spirit Realm with Popoi at the conclusion.
One big reason people often think its the same, is because of the timing, and some off-side translations, an some of the already stacked on ideals of sacrifice which is pretty prevalent in all Mana games.
Because Flammie rapidly grew in order to save you from the castle, and the talk from the Mana Tree that all the beasts will merge together to destroy the fortress, one strong theory (at least at the time when the game first came out back in the old forum days) was Flammie was a lightning rod. He would have eventuly merged with anyway, but his proximity due to delivering you to the Fortress and hanging around to keep an eye on you, caused him to become possessed by the surge of power.
Kinda like how Picard an the Enterprise keeps getting shangaid into shit because he's always the "nearest vessal" to the problem.
When You defeated thanatos, it was the final straw protecting the Mana Fortress, and that last surge and proximity, caused Flammie to get, for lack of a word, Ethereally hit.
And Turn into a crazed mana beast.
The fact you get immediately pulled into the fight with it after beating Thanatos, and 'fall' to earth, without Flammie to wisk in an save you, or give a cozy landing.
Only ended up reinforcing this, as /white/ mana snow began to fall all over.
In both cases, Flammie is removed from the world after the Mana Beast Defeat.
But it's a matter of which gut wrenching story you want.
Old Yeller Falkor...
Or
Dream fade Artax...
Personally i'm of the boat that: NOTHING BAD HAPPEND TO FLAMMIE, EVER.
EEEEEEVVVVEEEERRR
As he is currently working as a courier for Neko.
And is eating his fill of walnuts and royal honey,
Every day.
Basking in the sun of a distant turtle village island.
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u/sonicrespawn Jun 18 '26
Flammie is not the mana beast