The characters are drifting from their personalities.
 

Think about it.

Black Mage-started out evil. Other then destroying a few towns and hurting people who had it coming to them, he hasn't done anything evil lately. This last strip shows it.

Red mage - what was he obsessed with first? EXP. I don't think he's even mentioned it for 400 episodes. I don't remember him talking about it since the giant... giant fell on them when they tried to go to Elfenland. And the crazy plans? He had one or two battling Ur, but there haven't been as many.

Fighter - Ok, he's remained mostly loyal. He's still stupid.

Thief - hasn't stolen anything for a zillion episodes if you don't count the money in the Jeff escipade. And the contracts? Nada... Microprint? Nothing.

Garland - He's given up his right to be called clueless ever since the amnesia peppers.

Bikkie - we don't see enough of him to tell if he's changed or not.

Dri'zzel - See Bikkie.

Vilbert - hasn't been very emo lately. Not at all.

My theory is that it's my fault. Messing witht he space-time continuem, I probably did something.

For the most part I disagree.

BM is just as evil as he always has been, he's just not consistently evil, and it is always evil without purpose. He didn't kill that shoemaker for any reason in particular, just for kicks. Those townsfolk that were annoying him? Well they were annoying.

Darko is complaining that BM hasn't been actually accomplishing anything, and hasn't gained much in the way of Blue Magic skills.

Frankly, I think Red Mage's change is due more to the fact that Brian overplayed the RPG sterotype with Red Mage. As the comic has progressed, Red Mage became more like an obsessed nerd, but not just RPG-oriented, and stopped spitting RPG jargon left & right.

Fighter, we can agree on.

I admit Thief has changed. He's still every bit as deceitful & manipulative as he ever was, but as for actually stealling stuff, that's fallen to the wayside. Of course, since his father regained his health, Thief had lost his motivation, but prior to the class change, he seemed like he just enjoyed stealing stuff.

The last time I remember Thief actually talking about stolen property, it was during the battle with Kary, just before WM smashed the bag of holding w/ all his stolen loot.

Then again, maybe he's just been neglecting Thieving because he's still getting used to the whole ninja gig, as unlike Fighter, RM & BM, Thief doesn't apparently know all the powers Ninjitsu grants him (fer example, the double-jump). Once he feels comfortable being a ninja, maybe he's start to become a Ninja-Thief.

SWB

I blame the class change.

Well with Garland it's character development, it's a good thing. At least until Brian retcons the whole incident just to screw with us.:p

Thief, well Ninja is a bigger jump than the others.
A Blue Mage is still a mage.
A Knight is a Fighter with magic. Fighter's still nice, noble and naive as ever.
Mimes are about as sad as you can get, which is why RM's less of a geek and more of a scary deviant these days. Also explains the extra evil.

A ninja however has honour codes as well as super powers. That something big. It's possible Thief now has a little voice in him telling him it's wrong to steal and screw with the law, courtesy of his class change.

Oh and his "elven superiority" thing is still apparent somewhat, though not directed at the other LWs after the Chocobo saga.

Meh. While that view of Ninjas is held by a number of fictional accounts (Naruto for one, and if you base you understanding of Ninjutsu on a kid wearing an orange track suit, you seriously should reconsider things), I've seen some that treat ninjas with far less respect (there was an episode of the Batman animated series that pops to mind). Honorless assasins for hire, is what such characters peg them with. In such accounts, ninjas usually operate like the mafia, exept trained & disciplined in the ninja arts.

From the way Brian has been characterizing Thief, I'd say this comes a bit closer to where Thief is persona-wise.

SWB

Actually I was running by old samurai movies.....

But we are dealing with stereotypes and cliches here. And Thief dealing with an suddenly imposed honour code would be pretty funny.

Uhm, Samurais aren't ninja, and fiction which has both Samurais & Ninja, usually the Ninja are the bad guys.

Also, given Thief's personality, even if there were some sort of Ninja rulebook, he'd just ignore it. Thief isn't Red Mage, rules don't rule him like they do RM. (RM tries to bend the rules to his advantage, he doesn't exactly break them. At least, according to RM he doesn't, and since the rules are usually just a fabrication of his own delusional mind, that sorta counts.)

SWB

Yeah but they usually had some sort of honour. Killing almost anyone was okay, as was burning things and poisoning water supplies, but they were "above" stealing and if they failed they'd go kamikazee or just commit seppuku.

They were still evil bastards.

And yeah I know that's not how it actually worked, but that's how they're often fictionalised, except in works that try for realism or grittiness.

And 8Bit isn't going for either, it lampoons stereotypes.

And on Thief I was thinking sort of like an irresistable force caused by the class change.

You are wrong sir! Samurai are not ninja, but ninja are samurai with two differences. Their deadly martial art, ninjutsu, which combined speed, power, and knowledge of anatomy to kill a person with one punch, and,

They don't follow bushido.

Ninja were essensially the ones to do everything samurai couldn't because of the bushido honour code. Assassination? Sure! Defying one's lord for one with better pay and/or a better chance of survival? Sure! Ninja are seen as the bad guys because they have no moral or ethical code against doing certain things, but for certain things, you needed ninja. (and ninja wwere not above stealing would never commit seppuku, agian, no Bushido). So this "ninja consience" doesn't exist, and doesn't explain Thief at all (I can remember another FF thief who wwent ninja to ESCAPE consience i.e. Shadow of FFVI)

As for Naruto, I see all the "organized" ninja as closer to samurai, and guys like Zabuza and Orochimaru (honorless assassins) as a shade closer to real ninja. ( Even though the story also has an instance of people they call samurai, who are hired swords... meh, confusing, but goot story anyay)

Well, they did annihilate his gothicular membrane with a invinclible piece of furniture, was he ever really gothic (not emo) after that?