Today, while discussing the stories of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross with a friend, I hit upon what is a hitherto unexplored angle regarding Kato's writing - Kato writes mainly about proud and grand empires falling to ruin. Seen in this light, the connections between CT and CC become a lot clearer, and CC's narrative choices look considerably more plausible.
Take, for example, the Zeal arc in CT, Masato Kato's biggest contribution to that game's story. Now I know from interactions and general posts by CT fans that it is usually considered to be one of the game's highest points. Much less talked about, however, is what its central theme is - that being a grand, if decadent civilization falling into ruin, and its survivors coping with the loss.
If we look at CC through this lens, then a fair number of its plot points snap neatly into place. For example, Guardia and Chronopolis fall because they are grand kingdoms, and Masato wanted to write about grand kingdoms falling. The inhabitants of the El Nino archipelago live in generally scattered and primitive settlements because they're the survivors of fallen kingdoms, trying to cope as best as they can (and being liberally "helped" by a dystopian supercomputer). All the doom and gloom about the future being lost resonates much more strongly when viewed from the perspective of a few bitter survivors.
CC makes sense when seen as a continuation of CT's Zeal arc. After all, it shares many of the same ingredients, and evokes a lot of similar feelings. The main difference is, CC starts from the "end", after the kingdoms have already fallen and the people have gotten used to eking out their survival.
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