Voting On Canon Fursonas And Other Fun Things In Fire Emblem Mobile Games

Thirteen years ago, Fire Emblem Awakening was released, with the understanding that it might be the very last entry in the series. The development team tried to include as many elements from older games as possible to give the series one last hurrah.

Fortunately, Awakening was a massive success, saving the franchise and giving us critically acclaimed games like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, games that are great, actually, like Fire Emblem Engage and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, and games that would be so good if they were good, like Fire Emblem Fates.

Fire Emblem has become such a powerhouse for Nintendo that it has almost as many characters in Smash Bros as Mario, and it was even able to close out a Nintendo Direct with Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, which is a we-don’t-actually-know-quel to Three Houses.

And of course, it’s done very well for itself in the mobile space. Fire Emblem Heroes, the gacha game spinoff is the most profitable mobile game in Nintendo’s portfolio having made $1.3 billion in lifetime revenue as of 2025. That same year, Nintendo shadow-dropped Fire Emblem Shadows, a weird mix of autobattler and social deduction which, while janky, has its fans.

If you’re not plugged into either of those mobile games, good. Gacha mechanics are terrible and predatory, and Shadows’ season pass might be more up front about being a money sink, but isn’t much better.

I, however, have the kind of mental illness that makes me genuinely invested in the plots of these games, so I’ve been lurking for a while now and am happy to explain it to people who have their life together.

They Knew What They Were Doing With Shadows

I don’t play Fire Emblem Shadows myself, mainly because, despite being an autobattler, I need to pay attention to the social deduction part and actually use spells — I mean I don’t, technically, but I’d feel like an asshole if I didn’t — and I don’t have time for it.

I do pay close attention to every new season pass, because each one gives us another Fire Emblem character’s government-assigned fursona. The premise of Shadows is that every character has a “Light” form, where they’re cute kemonomimi versions of the characters with cat ears and horns, and “Shadow” forms, which are more bestial and move onto full-furry. At least the men do, because the game is made by cowards.

What that means is that every time a returning Fire Emblem character appears, they have to have some sort of animal qualities included in their design, and it’s delightful. Lyn’s a horsey. Dimitri, who in his home game crushes a man’s skull with his bare hands, has little lion ears. Ike, who many fans strongly believe is gay, is literally a bear.

(Oh, the in-game story has a relationship that’s canonically some kind of queer, which is also very cool and hopefully carries over into the main series.)

Seeing which animals the characters get assigned is genuinely the most fun thing about following this game, and very excitingly, they just had a poll to allow fans to decide who gets their fursona revealed next.

That would be the Choose Your Legends: Shadows Cup, which allowed fans to choose who would get special Shadows versions in Heroes. Since Shadows adds characters much more slowly than Heroes, plus the specific battlepass format, this allows them to introduce four new designs at once, gauge interest in characters to add to Shadows, and means fans get some say on which character gets their fursona next.

Fire Emblem Heroes To The Polls

The main event, however, is the tenth installment of Choose Your Legends. Every year, the most popular male and female characters, as voted on by fans, get special in-game outfits, and usually a game-breakingly good kit.

Like any popularity contest, CYL has seen its fair share of drama. In the first couple of years, the poll counted characters who appeared in multiple games separately. Thus, Marth kept losing because his votes were being split across both his Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem versions, which was very frustrating.

The women’s tournament is always a bloodbath, with accusations of certain characters being “waifu bait” or only being popular because of looks, that kind of thing.

Though the funny thing is that after playing this game nine times, most fans don’t actually vote based on which character they like the most. A good chunk of fans who discuss CYL online mainly see the poll as a way to signal they want certain characters added to the game in a playable format.

Fans of Tokyo Mirage Session #FE haven’t had any new characters from their game added since the Switch port was released in 2020, despite consistently having at least one character in the Top 20 since the fourth round.

Or whatever’s funny. Gatekeeper, a popular NPC from Three Houses, won first place off the back of memes. During the second-ever CYL, Camilla from Fates was doing well in the mid-terms, so people spite-pivoted to supporting Veronica, a character original to Heroes, because Camilla had so many alts already.

Original characters doing well in CYL has become increasingly common, probably because people who are still here after ten years are more likely to be invested in the original story. Last year, three out of the four winners were FEH OCs, which might seem odd, but if you drill down into it makes sense.

Sharena is, ostensibly, the game’s female lead, but for the last few years, she’d been notably absent from the game’s plot and advertising and felt much more like an afterthought compared to her brother, Alfonse. Sharena fans had been rallying to support her for years, mainly in the hopes that she’d become more prominent in the story.

Baldr was the new mascot character at the time and had barely appeared, but her voice actor, Sam Slade, was a fan of the game and rallied people on the subreddit to vote for Baldr because it would be funny. She got harassed over that, even though “it would be really funny if this character won” is in fact how the game is played. Sam Slade understood the assignment, and I will hear no slander of her.

I don’t know for sure why Eikþyrnir won, but I suspect it’s either the bara fans rallying around him, or the fact that by the time he was released there was a narrative going around the developers hated men because male characters died more often and took longer to get alts compared to female characters, so when his design was first revealed, a lot of people assumed he would die, and since he didn’t fans wanted to support him.

The answer is probably both.

The thing about CYL is that it isn’t really a good measure of who’s popular, so much as which fans are very determined to get their fave some screentime in the gacha-game spinoff.

With Fortune’s Weave on the horizon, the pressure is on for fans to get their underrated faves some spotlight. The introduction of the Three Houses cast caused them to utterly sweep the 2020 votes, and a Three Houses character has been in the top four every year since except 2023.

Fortune’s Weave is going to mean an introduction of many new characters that are likely to drown out older characters. If fans of Engage, Thraccia, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions want their game represented among CYL winners, now’s the time. Who knows when the next chance will come if history repeats itself?