Lamia Loveless

Lamia Loveless (ラミア・ラヴレス) is a fictional character in the Super Robot Wars series. In canon, she pilots the Angelg. Her name originates from the lamia, a Greek mythological creature.

Appearances

Lamia has appeared in the following games:

• Super Robot Wars Advance - Protagonist, with own selectable storyline or non-playable enemy character, depending on player selection
• Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 - Playable character
• Super Robot Wars Original Generations - Playable Character & Non-playable enemy character
• Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden - Playable Character & Non-playable enemy character

Theme Music

• Ash To Ash (Retitled Code: ATA, in the North American localization of Original Generation 2) - Default theme in all appearances
• Kiwamete Chikaku, Kagiri Naku Tooi Sekai Ni (Extremely Near, to the Exceedingly Distant World; retitled So Close, Yet So Far, in the North American localization of Original Generation 2) - Used when piloting the Vysaga in OG2/OGs.

Personality And Traits

When she first appears, Lamia Loveless is known for having a somewhat stilted speech pattern (causing her to have troubles in speaking in the proper grammar) or a stutter. She tends to be very calm and relaxed, but also a bit awkward socially. Her skills as a pilot are exceptional and efficient, and can operate complicated technology with ease. Lamia is also quite intelligent, and her gentle beauty creates an atmosphere that makes it hard for other people to approach her.

In Original Generation 2, she is very close to fellow ATX Team member, Excellen Browning, addressing her as "Ms. Excell" (Ex-Oneesama; literally Dear Sister Ex in Japanese) often (although it was really Excellen who suggested that Lamia call her that). She sometimes has trouble understanding human behavior, such as when Excellen gets Buddhas and hot cakes confused in the saying "Like a Buddha in Hell".

History

Advance Timeline

In the Advance universe, Lamia Loveless is an artificial human, built by Lemon Browning, and sent by the Shadow-Mirror to spy on the Londo Bell. She is the 17th android of the W-Series that Lemon built, which is why the Shadow-Mirror forces refer to her as W17.

If the player chooses the Real Robot route, the story begins as she just finishes battling minor aliens after her jump. She soon spots a battle between the Giganos forces and three stolen Dragonar mechas, controlled by Ken Wakaba, Tapp Oceano and Light Newman, with the first force pursuing the latter. W17 is caught in the conflict and ends up helping the Dragonar pilots, using the guise Lamia Loveless. Aid comes in form of the Argama and Lamia joins the Londo Bell, along with the Dragonar pilots.

If the player chooses the super robot route, Lamia ended up on Earth after battling minor aliens. She is quickly attacked by the Hyakki Empire forces (the enemies of the Getter Robo series), but rescued by the original Getter Team (Ryoma Nagare, Hayato Jin and Musashi Tomoe). After driving out the Hyakki Empire, Lamia is adopted to the Getter Team, under the reason that she wanted her machine to be repaired. However, Hayato was suspicious that she may have a second agenda.

Halfway through the events of Advance, Lemon and Vindel Mauser, the leader of the Shadow-Mirror, ask her to return, but she refuses, saying that her interactions with Londo Bell has made her realize that what the Shadow-Mirror does is wrong and then self-destructs her machine, driving the two away. Afterwards, it is revealed that Lemon actually rescued and repaired Lamia, after she self-destructed her machine, while correcting her stuttering speech pattern. Following this, Lemon reveals to Lamia in a conversation that since she is the only one to discover free will, she is the most successful out of the W-Series. She is then secretly given her unit back and is allowed by Lemon to rejoin her forces. In the final showdown between Londo Bell and the Shadow-Mirror, Lamia activates the dimension transposition bomb in Vindel's Zweizergain, in an attempt to stop the asteroid Axis from falling to the Earth. The epilogue of Advance concludes with Lamia, now alone in space, deciding to destroy herself for the second time, believing with her gone, all elements of the Shadow-Mirror will have been destroyed. However, her comrades stop her and convince her to keep fighting by their side. She accepts, persuaded that she will continue to live on free, the way her creator intended her to.

If the player chooses Axel Almer as the main protagonist, Lamia stays in the Shadow-Mirror until the very end. As she doesn't interact much with Londo Bell, she ends up believing fully in the methods of the Shadow-Mirror, making little to no attempts to live freely as Lemon intended her to. She's never referred as Lamia; only as W17, in Axel's scenario. In the end, she is destroyed by Axel, who comments that she, as Lemon's masterpiece, didn't turn out as her creator intended.

Original Generation Timeline

The events in the Original Generation universe are practically the same, following the scenario if she is chosen as the main protagonist in Advance, though she joins the ATX Team instead. After Vindel is defeated, she and Gilliam Yeager transport Vindel to a faraway dimension, where he will never be able to return from. Afterwards, Kai Kitamura invites her to join the newly-reformed Aggressors unit, alongside Latooni Subota, Arado Balanga and Seolla Schweizer.

Exclusively in Original Generations, Lemon did not repair her speech device completely, instead just updating it, as she stated that completely repairing it would cause Lamia to lose all her memories. However, as times passed, the speech device became worse than before (from a comical point-of-view, after her speech device was repaired, attacking will sometimes cause her voice to totally change without her consent, reflecting the other roles of Kaori Shimizu, her voice actress, which sometimes range from an enthusiastic girl or to a very cutesy voice, very contradicting on Lamia's personality).

After joining the Aggressors, for some unknown reason, Lamia left behind her Angelg and piloted a Guarlion instead (she did pilot Angelg at one occasion to help out the Cry Wolves squadron). During a visit to an exhibition of the VTX-001 Bartoll in China, along with her fellow Aggressors team members and Kusuha Mizuha, Lamia was abducted and placed into the core of a Bartool unit, which gives the mass-produced Bartools abilities equivalent to hers. Professor Wilhelm von Juergen attempted to make her submit completely to him, but after remembering ATX Team leader, Kyosuke Nanbu's promise at the end of Original Generation 2, Lamia was able to resist Juergen's influence. She is later placed inside a manned Bartool unit. In the non-canonical OVA, Super Robot Wars Original Generation: The Animation, the Bartool was launched to space where she met Kyosuke and was briefly taken over by the ODE System, before she was bailed out and taken to safety.

In the bonus segment of Super Robot Wars Original Generations, she would encounter Kyosuke inside the Hellgate facility. Unfortunately for her, right after he successfully rescued her, Juergen, piloting a Valsion Custom Type-CF, delivered a shot at Kyosuke's Alt Eisen Riese, seemingly aiming for Lamia, who was grasped in its fingers. Thrown out of the reach from the team, the Original Generation characters proclaim a missing-in-action status on Lamia, while they proceed to defeat Juergen.

In the subsequent continuation of Original Generation Gaiden, however, Lamia was in fact not destroyed. She was hauled off by Duminuss while the Earth Federation Army fought Juergen, and after Duminuss slain Juergen, she resumed the operation of the ODE System and once again put Lamia in its core. She was brainwashed to the point that she referred herself as W17 once more and put in Juergen's Valsion Custom Type-CF and was sent out with a squad of Bartolls to confront Kyosuke and his friends. Duminuss' purpose to use her was the fact that she recognized the Earth Federation Army's anguish after they failed to save Lamia from Juergen, thus if they failed to save her a second time, it will completely destroy their morale. Unknown to Duminuss, Lamia somewhat managed to retain some of her old memories, as one of Duminuss' homunculi Despoiniz spoke with her.

Lamia fought the Earth Federation Army twice, and in the second encounter, she also faced Axel Almer, who managed to survive the battle inside the White Star, and has a change of mind about the Earth Federation. After her defeat, Lamia was about to execute the order from Duminuss in case she suffered defeat: To destroy herself using Code: ATA. However, Axel pursued her and chastised about her decision, even going so far of mentioning names like Lemon. Somehow Lamia was able to get a hold of herself by hearing those names, enabling Axel to activate Code: DTD (Dust To Dust), a command to override the self destruction sequence, and bailed her out from the Valsion, freeing her from Duminuss' influence. When Lamia woke up, Axel had already left the vicinity.

She is later reunited with Axel during a rescue mission of the Cry Wolves squad, and Lamia showed her gratitude to him. She joins the assault on the Swordian Fortress and confronted Duminuss, as well as defeating Dark Brain and later, Shu Shirakawa.

Trivia

• The title of Lamia's theme song in both the English localziation and the original Japanese version of Original Generation 2 is a reference to Code ATA -- short for Ash To Ash -- the self-destruct code used by the Shadow-Mirror.

• Lamia shares many similarities with Signum from the animated Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, where many of the Angelg's attacks are similar to Signum's spells. They also share similar backgrounds and personalities, in that Signum was once a cold artificial intelligence of the Book of Darkness, until she began to warm up into a better person, upon meeting Hayate Yagami. Perhaps not ironically, both Lamia and Signum also share the same voice actress, and she used the same voice volume on voicing both characters.

• Her role in Original Generation Gaiden mirrors Master Asia of G Gundam in the Super Robot Wars R storyline. After the ODE incident, Lamia was thought to be dead, until it's revealed that she's alive, under the control of Duminuss. And when the protagonists confronted her after the ODE Incident, it was not known who was piloting the Valsion Custom CF, until it's brought down to 50% HP and it became obvious that it was Lamia. Similarly, in Super Robot Wars R, it was not known who was piloting the resurrected Devil Gundam, until the player attacked it once, revealing a resurrected Master Asia as a pilot. One can also say that the Code: DTD that Axel introduced to prevent Lamia to self destruct was the answer to the Getter Ray used to wash away all the Devil Gundam Cells from Master Asia.