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The main theme of Fuga: Melodies of Steel is... well, actually, it's about vengeance. I mean, the game is part of a serie called "the trilogy of vengeance." It is not subtle about cycles of violence. But another really interesting theme in this game is: when does someone stop being a person and starts being a weapon?

For those unaware, the main gimmick of Fuga is that you can use the characters as live ammo for a super powerful weapon that can one-shot most bosses. This isn't a Saber "living sword no sense of self" situation, what Fuga is asking: when do these kids stop being kids and become merely bullets? When does the "soldier" part of child soldier starts superseeding the "child" part? The Berman empire frequently focus on the tank rather than the kids- saying they have to stop this monstrous machine, unaware (whether willfully or not) that these are just kids desperate to go home. Where does the tank end and where do the kids begin?

Fuga asks you about the line between human and weapon by also presenting you the opposite side: weapons that are very much machinery, yet who acts and feel like humans do. Jeanne and Hax may have been the bane of my fucking existence, you would have a really hard time arguing that they're not people in their own rights; Jeanne has emotions and desires, unfortunately. And likewise, Hax would not be acting the way he does if he only functioned under cold emotionless logic. The very fact that Hax could use himself for the Soul Cannon is proof that he had a soul- that he was a person.

You've got kids made into weapons, and weapons who really are people, and some folks who awkwardly stand in-between (namely Jihl and Hannah). Fuga asks of you: what is a person? What is a weapon? Who decides, who draws that line, who makes the final call that says "yes, this one is sentient enough to be considered a person, and no, this one is merely a machine gone rogue"?

The answer is simple. Anyone can be made into a weapon if you deshumanize them enough- and war is nothing but a giant dehumanization machine.