FE Anna Rework | Money is Fun

The fact that I’ve made more than one moveset for a character named Anna has made talking about this and that kind of annoying. Ah well, the title of the blog lets you know which one I’m talking about.

Fire Emblem’s Anna was one of the very first movesets I’ve ever made, not just blog-wise but even well before I started writing those she was an idea I was writing a draft for in Word along with a couple of others. As such, when there was an event ~3 years ago promoting Fire Emblem movesets (for some reason)... honestly, the mixture of amateur design, lacking the skills I currently have, and a dash of rushed writing lead to that blog being really, REALLY bad in hindsight. Multiple ideas were scrapped due to not knowing how to balance them, moves were rushed or made simplistic purely because I didn’t have any other ideas, the character wasn’t really that faithful to the original… throw in some piss-poor writing and I’m really surprised I was one of the winners for that event.

I’ve wanted to remake her kit for a while, but for at least a year prior, the only idea has been “remake it” without actually knowing what I wanted to do with it. Even now… I’m completely uncertain if what I’ve created fits the character, given the kind of source material she has. So instead, the focus of this blog is just to have some fun with the character, pulling out some ideas that I think fit. If it doesn’t and somebody else could do better, that’s fine by me - if anything I’d really like to hear what others think would be better if they have any ideas.

Anyways, you get the idea; how about we just start talking about the character now?

FE ANNA REWORK

Design Intent:

Deg Anna’s kit again ended up being a lot more difficult than I expected, but that was primarily my fault. I had two gimmicks I wanted to commit to, and make sure they’re ultimately able to share the spotlight together (at least that’s what I’m hoping for) but whether or not it’s too convoluted is something I’m a bit worried about. Despite that though, that led to some ideas I’m very excited to talk about.

The first aspect of her to translate over is the nimble, speedy trickster attitude she has in the games I pulled from. For context, I only used three Annas for this moveset: Awakening’s (the Trickster class, which uses a sword and staff), Fates’ (the Adventurer class, using a bow and staff), and my interpretation of Three Houses’ (which ended up being an Assassin, using a sword and bow) – as you can tell, that created a nice balance between those three listed weapons, so why not use all of them? So while you are completely free to come at me with pitchforks for proposing another FE swordfighter, she doesn’t have too many sword moves in her kit overall, and they have very good reasons for being there. As each weapon has their quirks (the sword is… a sword, the bow is a mildly unique form of ranged gameplay, and the staff has some interesting gimmicks of its own), Anna ends up being a rather distinct fighter with them alone.

But then there’s her second gimmick: Anna likes money. She REALLY likes money. She’s also an exceptionally merchant who is proficient in both the goods she sells and the currency used to exchange them.

I had to massively simplify it in a lot of ways (so there’s no market simulator or MASSIVE variety of items, although maybe someday I could delve into what that’d look like separately), but this does lead to a few extra mechanics for the player to have fun with. Along with a fourth weapon which we’ll talk about later, she can also manage a resource mechanic for herself (Gold) to get better in a variety of ways, such as getting better gear for herself, strengthening certain attacks, or even changing her playstyle in a pretty significant way. Gold itself is very simple to gain and lose so you’ll barely have to worry about that, but it’s how you use it that’ll force you to think and judge how and when you should go in.

As you can probably tell even by now, this is a rather compacted moveset. There are a lot of ideas I threw in, some even possibly contradicting each other, but I almost feel like that’s part of the fun – Anna isn’t the most grounded or serious character at any point in the series, so having such a weird character get a rather oddball kit could turn out to be fitting in a way.

Stats:

Size/Weight:

I’m certain it’s obvious to you guys what her size would be. Fire Emblem doesn’t really give out character heights that well (especially not on the 3DS), some are definitely taller than others but for the most part, at least for me, everyone’s heights tend to blend together a bit. I don’t really think it’s difficult to imagine Anna being around that same height as the others, Marth and Robin and etc., and proportionate from there. She’s human-sized in Smash, even if I were wrong and she had a specific canonical height I don’t think you’d blame me.

As for weight however, she’d actually be pretty light on the overall scale: I’d put her at around 86, or the same as Duck Hunt and Sonic. Given she’s a character who definitely relies on her speed to deal with encounters, there’s little reason to give her great defense by default.

note that I said default, that’ll be super important later

Speed:

As I mentioned above, Anna tends to be a speedy little bugger in the source games, going first and/or hitting twice extremely often as well as being a large pain in the ass to hit for most opponents. This would not go unnoticed. However, that’s not inherently easy to translate to Smash; make a character too quick and they’re suddenly better at many more things than they probably should be, make them too slow and it’s missing the point…

I feel like for her running speed, a good balance between Marcina and Chroy wouldn’t be bad. Around 2.045 (under Palutena but a bit better than Yoshi) would feel pretty speedy, but not quite give the feeling you’re zooming around at the speed of sound. Couple that with a good but not amazing air speed (~1.18, a bit better than Game & Watch/Mii Swordfighter, but worse than DK’s) and a very solid walk (

Impressive for a character who canonically wears heels at times, huh?

although I guess that’s meaningless because of Zoot Suit’s bullshit

Jumps/Falling Speed/Gravity:

Anna would have solid jumps, definitely above average but not FANTASTIC ones. As stupid as this sounds… Robin has really good fullhop and shorthop heights for our purposes, so around her level would work great. Anna would obviously only have one air jump, but I think it’d be similarly good, about K. Rool/Bowser’s air jump (who have the same air jump height, neat).

As for falling speed, I think this is one more stat where Anna will be a sort of in-betweener for the various FE stats – she wouldn’t fall like a rock but she definitely shouldn’t take her time in the air either. This might just be main bias talking, but conveniently, K. Rool’s falling speeds (both normal and fast) are both satisfyingly weighty – at 1.7 and 2.72 respectively (around the 25th fastest in the game).

But one change I’d like to make is her gravity, which is something I never really talk about. If you didn’t know, gravity does two things: it affects how fast the character’s falling speed kicks in and how quickly they’ll reach max regular falling speed once they start falling (hence why some characters have sharper jumps than others, and why Fox is just a rock, it’s due to different gravity stats)… and it turns out I’ve been wrong before because it’s actually gravity that affects how resistant a character is to vertical knockback instead of falling speed. As such, I’d actually like to change Anna’s a bit and lower her gravity compared to someone like K. Rool – while she’d have the same falling speed as the former, she’d actually feel more like Cloud and Shulk in floatiness.

And I don’t mean that they’re floaty, I just mean I don’t have a different word, and that you can probably tell what I’m getting at.

Also, one more thing. Gravity also affects how high a character can jump, as a character with lower gravity would go higher even if they had the exact same jump stats as someone with a higher gravity. That wouldn’t affect Anna’s aforementioned jump heights, she’d still go the same heights as Robin does, compensating for her different stats.

Design and Alts:

This will be a pretty short section as it doesn’t matter too much, but I think it’s something important to mention. There are a lot of Annas and by extension there are a lot of different Anna designs, so which ones do we use?

I think that the best version to use for the default, if they don’t jokingly just create an entirely new design that is Smash-specific (because “oh now Smash has a unique Anna” or something, that’d be nice), would be to use the Awakening design: it’s the design of the first playable Anna in the series, it’s very distinct and iconic to her despite being a class-specific outfit, and it’s the one that’s been in Smash for 2 games now so I think it’d be fair to say that the team would probably pick it.

I won’t list off my “objective list of guaranteed Anna alts”, but instead I’ll just propose some that I think have a really good chance. Her default Fates, Three Houses, and Warriors interpretations are very obvious candidates, and while it wouldn’t really fit Heroes’ more detached axe-using Anna she’d almost certainly be added too. I can also picture her original design and her “merchant” design from Awakening (without the massive bag, unfortunately) being used, and finally, while it’s only because of the blue hair being super unique in the series, maybe the Hot Springs design could be used too.

As a reminder, every single Anna in the series is a different Anna, so canonically, all of her alts would actually be different people, meaning that just like Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings you could have an 8-fighter FFA between all of them and it wouldn’t be non-canon.

Gimmick #1: Gold

Anna loves gold, I’ve made that clear, and if you’ve played nearly any Fire Emblem game a decent amount, you probably already know this. As such, her main gimmick centers around this.

Gold is a pretty simple mechanic by itself, simply being a number shown over Anna’s UI super similar to Hero’s (but without the meter). For every match, Anna starts off with 2000 gold, but from there doesn’t get any more for free. The mechanic then relies on the damage dealt and taken by her: relative to the percentage taken, she will either gain gold if she hits an opponent or lose gold if she gets hit. This is automatically skewed in her favour: while she gains 100 gold for each % dealt (i.e. a 14% move will give her 140), she will only lose 60 for each % she takes, meaning that you’d have to be losing really hard to start losing more money than you gain. While dying doesn’t decrease your gold any further than the damage taken from the killing blow, you don’t gain any gold upon respawning, nor are there any bonuses for defeating an opponent.

This mechanic is a very important part of Anna’s gameplan overall, as a lot of her moves rely on her spending funds for various things, which we’ll get into when the time comes. Due to that, I won’t go much further into it here, as you currently only need to know how the mechanic works and that it’s important to .

Gimmick #2: Weapon Durability

This’ll also come into play when I describe the moves and weapons that involve this later, but yeah, Anna has weapon durability.

Certain weapons in Anna’s kit will have a set amount of uses. The durability mechanic itself will vary in how it works, but it is (mostly) consistent for every weapon in her kit. As you already know, Anna wields three main weapons: a sword, a staff, and a bow. They each come with their own mechanics regarding durability.

Swords have a mechanic very similar to Steve’s tools, where they will only take damage if they successfully touch an opponent, whether it be their unprotected flesh or their shield (although you do damage your gear against invincible opponents, nothing happens against intangible/dodging ones). This allows Anna to whiff her sword strikes without worrying about spending durability in the process.

Bows and one half of Anna’s staff moves are similar to Robin’s weapons, as upon use they will automatically burn a point of durability regardless of when or how you used the attack. These moves will require Anna players to be more careful about how they use them.

And finally, while some staff moves follow this rule, certain ones don’t use the mechanic at all, and can be used as much as the player desires. These will be specifically pointed out as we get to them, as well as any other unique exceptions to these rules.

Exactly how damage is represented is something that can go either way, really… if they want to show it being damaged they could either show the weapon starting to glow red on and off, progressively getting more rapid the closer they are to breaking, or they could take the Robin path and give Anna that durability meter above her UI to fulfil the same purpose. And of course they could always not show durability and force both players to know their numbers in advance and keep track of it mentally… but honestly I like the meter more, so I’d rather go with that.

If Anna breaks a sword or bow, her moves will become either pathetically terrible or completely useless respectively – sword moves will still involve their regular animation but will instead only have Anna attack with her hand (which as you can imagine sucks ass), but bow moves still play out their animation with zero hitboxes to speak of, lag still included. If she breaks a staff however, only the move that she used the staff for will be unusable.

As for getting weapons back… she can either die and refresh the durability for all of her default weapons + replace any that were missing, but for the other method, we’ll have to discuss a different move.

Moveset:

The wack-ass order I’ll be covering this b:

I vastly prefer saving all four Specials for last normally, but in Anna’s case… I’m going to be experimenting a bit with how the blog is formatted, and I’ll briefly explain why.

Apart from her relatively high amount of gimmicks and unique mechanics, Anna’s kit can be separated into 4 main categories based on which weapon/playstyle she’s utilizing, and constantly bouncing back and forth between ideas seems like it’d make reading a regular blog significantly harder. Along with that, a couple of moves need me to establish yet another gimmick of hers, so I figured we could try discussing things in a different order. If it works it works, if it doesn’t I’ll learn from this and try to make things better in the future.

So the order will go like this: Down Special is really important (plays a massive role in her kit) so I’ll cover that first, then I can follow that with 3 of the 4 standard categories, and because the fourth one needs something established first, I’ll cover the respective Special when we get there, then the fourth category, then we’ll wrap up with the remaining Specials and it’ll all be good. Hopefully that isn’t too confusing.

To start, we’ll go with the explanation to any remaining questions you’d have about durability: Down B.

Down Special: Open Shop

Upon use, Anna slams down a large backpack filled with weapons next to her and begins to rummage through it idly, and depending on how you inputted the Special, one of two Monado Arts-like menus appear; if you tapped, you will pull up a selection of three swords, and if you held for at least 16 frames (one quarter of a second) you will instead pull out a selection of three bows.

For both types of weapons, the selection will be of three qualities: Bronze, Iron, and Silver, forming a downwards-pointing triangle with the selection being ordered clockwise. Bronze on the top left is the cheapest selection, only being around ~1000G and therefore being very easy to purchase, but being the weakest type of the three. Silver is at the bottom and costs a whopping 7000G (basically 70% dealt), and is the strongest by far, while the top right is Iron at around 3000G, acting as a middle ground between the two. However, the durability of each weapon decreases as the quality goes up: Bronze takes a long time to break, Iron lasts a decent amount longer than an average Levin Sword would, and Silver weapons break rather quickly. Selection and payment is very easy, just point the movement stick in the desired direction and click B or A to select the weapon, if Anna has enough gold she will purchase it, if she doesn’t or is purchasing a weapon she already has a full-durability copy of, nothing will happen and an error sound will play.

Upon purchasing, that new weapon will instantly replace her old one, and in the case of buying a weapon she already has, it will instead completely refresh its durability.

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Pretty self-explanatory, honestly – it’s the move you pull out when you need (or just plain want) a new weapon, it’s useless offensively, and if you’re a big enough schmuck to use it while close to an opponent you’re probably asking to get F-Smashed or worse.

There’s a little bit of a choose-your-own-playstyle aspect to this given the varying strength and durability of the weapons. Bronze is the obvious “worst” one but it’s by far the most durable and therefore reliable (it takes a while for a bronze weapon to break, plus it’s the cheapest so it’s super easy to get another one), along with possibly being better at combos. Not by much, mind you, but the difference between an opponent being launched just close enough for you to follow up and them being launched a little too far can matter a lot. Silver is the choice of the hour for the confident players, those who have money to spare, don’t mind needing to replace it relatively soon, and are optimistic things will turn out well for them – getting hit by a silver weapon is BAD and despite the high investment cost it is worth it if you can consistently use it well (even if It screws with your other mechanics a bit). And iron’s exactly what you think it is, not as weak as bronze but not as fragile as silver, a good choice for still getting a power boost without committing that hard to it.

Don’t forget that while swords only lose durability on with the opponent (whether they’re vulnerable, invincible, or shielding), bows lose durability no matter what if they’re used (although they only lose durability once the arrow is fired, so if you land prematurely or get hit it’ll be fine). Therefore, while getting a silver sword will likely play out well unless you suck ass/die/both, the more fragile bows require you make your shots count, and you might want to consider that downside when purchasing.

Neutral Special: Nest Egg (as a gimmick)

At all times, Anna carries a bag of gold with her. It’s stored in hammerspace so you can’t see it and at the start of the match it doesn’t have much in it, but that’s just how it is sometimes.

This move has two variations, depending on whether you tap or hold the initial input. And because of how both inputs are basically two different moves + there’s a lot to explain for the first input, I’ll explain it like it’s two separate moves to help things stay reasonable.

By tapping, Anna will pull out the bag and open it, peering into it with an expression depending on how much gold is in there (such as a cheeky grin with a satisfying amount, or a pout if there isn’t much left). From there, you have a couple of options – you can either add gold by pressing and holding the button again (Anna will begin to dump gold in at fixed times, 200G every 30 frames) or remove 200G at the same rate by tapping. You can also cancel the move at any time by doing pretty much anything other than press B, and given the fixed rate of depositing and extracting, it’s fully possible for a good player to load/remove gold one frame and cancel the next. Just keep in mind that cancelling isn’t immediate and Anna will be vulnerable for a moment, similar to K. Rool picking up his crown.

Gold comes directly from the aforementioned gimmick and meter – Anna has not only the regular gold counter but also an extra one that displays how much is in her bag. As I said, Anna will start with 2000G “in her pockets”, but her bag will also be automatically loaded with a separate 400G. To put gold into her bag, she pulls from her regular gimmick, subtracting from her regular counter’s amount and adding to the bag (or vice-versa). Due to this, while she can use money she has on hand for multiple things (such as buying weapons or… later moves), money she puts into the bag cannot be used for non-bag-related things unless pulled out again, but as an additional bonus you can never lose bag money from being hit.

Just for clarification, if Anna doesn’t have enough gold to subtract from or add to the bag, that respective action fails – she does the animation without the gold and gives the screen a displeased look. The bag can only contain multiples of 200, just for simplicity’s sake, and caps off at 2000.

With that out of the way, what does gold in the bag do?

The bag has two functions, ive and active. ively, holding gold affects Anna’s stats depending on how much is in there – the more gold in the bag, the heavier and slower Anna gets, increasing her weight + gravity while decreasing her speed and jump heights. This would increase her weight by up to ~1.25X, make her fall noticeably faster, and decrease her movement speeds and jump heights by 0.8X – she’d become as heavy as Wario (who isn’t that heavy but is technically a heavyweight – Bowser and the like are superheavyweights, Wario’s just a heavyweight), but her movement would be significantly worse, only running a little faster than Falco but slower than Wario, having a nuked air speed due to being basically K. Rool’s, and functional but lackluster jumps.

If you want an explanation as to why her regular gold meter doesn’t affect her but the bag does, it is entirely for gameplay purposes; it’s more interesting to me that the regular amount acts as a regular gauge like Hero’s and the investment of the bag directly affects you. As such, just in case, apologies are in order towards Awful regarding the inability to grab people (but still attack them) when your face is missing.

There is a more active change, however – sprinkled throughout Anna’s kit are moves that include her bag being thrown around or swung as a weapon, separate from the durability mechanic yet completely reliant on this one. Obviously, the strength and speed of the bag attacks change depending on how much gold is in there, but to help make the bag worth it, the frame data for the moves aren’t affected as much as you might have expected. We’ll get to those moves eventually, but the idea should be clear.

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Hoo boy.

The intent behind this move is to give Anna a slightly more dynamic playstyle than otherwise – putting gold into her might end up being more of a downgrade than an upgrade, but who knows, perhaps things change throughout a match. It might be similar to the Squirtle/Ivysaur/Charizard scenario, where it’s better to leave the bag empty at lower percentages where a lighter weight is actually beneficial and speed is more important, but as the match goes on, you can gradually (or drastically) raise your weight to survive better and slug the opponent with some moves that went from impractical to terrifying. Or you can play the fun way and start slapping skulls with your retirement funds from the get-go.

Kind of like Granberia, but y’know, balanced better ;)

To be clear though, regarding her standards that involve the bag, DO NOT interpret “weaker” as “weaker but better at comboing” – they’re slower, weaker, and significantly worse than her swords for combos, which were already not that great for chaining moves in the first place. They are bad moves without gold in them. Functional and useable, but bad.

Neutral Special: Nest Egg (as an attack)

I said this move has two variations? We weren’t done yet: if you hold instead of tapping, Anna will instead use the bag as an attack, depending on how much gold is in it. For reference, the bag’s maximum size is roughly the same as the bag she’s sitting on in her official render, and shrinks depending on how little gold’s in it – at 200G it’s a little bigger than her hand.

If you try to use this attack while the bag is completely empty, Anna will throw the sack and do absolutely nothing to the opponent with it – it won’t harm them, it’ll leave her open, and the bag will flutter to the ground. Don’t waste your time with that.

If you use this attack while the bag has somewhere between 200-1000G in it, Anna will wind back and throw it as hard as she can forward. Due to the changing size and weight, the speed, distance and strength of the move changes based on the size of the bag – when it’s little more than a coin purse Anna can sling it like a baseball for a decent projectile in a pinch (going as far as FD and only barely landing on the ledge if you’re standing on the opposite one), at 600G it becomes significantly weightier and Anna can only overhead chuck it a bit more than halfway across FD, and at the maximum 1000G she can huck it about a roll’s distance away at best; 400G and 800G are neatly in between. Getting hit by the bag grows progressively worse and worse too – at minimum G the move deals 7% at most and is more of a gimping/emergency interrupt tool at best (such as if Anna can’t get to a charging opponent in time and has to throw something), but with higher Gs the move starts to feel more like a smash attack with high damage and knockback. In exchange, a bit of startup gets added each time, with the coin purse being rather quick to throw out but the heavy bag taking ~20 frames.

As for 1200G and above… Anna gives up on throwing them and just overhead bonks the opponent in the head with them, Ganon/Dedede style. They are far more similar to each other than the bag throw, each only being progressively slower (1200G being about as slow as or a little slower than Ganon F-Smash, 2000G being slower than Falcon Punch) but bigger/stronger in exchange (you’re probably going to die around 80% center-stage by 1.2KG, and avoid getting hit by 2KG at all costs ‘cuz that one’s a whopper). However, there’s an additional property: Anna drops the bag while swinging it downwards. Onstage that doesn’t mean too much (we’ll get to that), but if Anna’s standing by the ledge… picture Villager bowling ball but getting hit by it is bare minimum as strong as Falcon Punch.

Also at from 1200G onwards the bag spikes as it falls further than a grounded slam, and at 2000G it dunks about as harshly as Ganondorf’s ballerina toe and Dedede’s Up B. Because it’s funny.

Finally, Anna dropping her bag after each use is significant, as she loses the bag in doing so. If it lands onstage, it then sits there, not interacting with or getting in the way of the fighters. But it being there is not meaningless.

While the bag is onstage but not in Anna’s inventory, she cannot use either form of Neutral B or any of her standards involving the bag (if needed, she can still do the animations for them, but they’ll be bagless and similar to Steve at best she’ll get shitty hand hitboxes that basically do nothing but meme) until she gets her bag back, which can happen in two ways. If she gets close to her bag, she can press Neutral B to almost instantly pick it up and put it away, restoring her bag attacks without losing anything. She’ll also instantly get it back if it falls offstage and touches a blast zone… but will lose all of the gold she had in the bag, and it’ll reset to 0G.

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While thinking about this move, I kept flip-flopping between having the bag be interactable with the opponent or not. If the opponent can’t do anything about it, it’s far easier for Anna to play around with it, change her playstyle on the fly much easier (partially rewarding good placement and space management), and removes a bit of weight from the player’s shoulders as it’s one less thing to worry about. But if I made it interactable, there’s then an additional factor of potential fun where it not only slightly screws with certain opponents (forcing someone to move around or attack an obstacle that never despawns normally is fun) but also encouraging a bit of risk/reward thinking on the opponent’s part in certain situations, such as choosing between attempting to gimp Anna or kicking the bag further out of her reach and/or offstage. Both are options I’m fond of, and I fully wrote out the explanation for the latter initially.

Ultimately however, I want both the light bag and heavy bag playstyles to be as equal as possible, and while I think it’s fine to lose the bag in exchange for that frankly ridiculous edgeguarding projectile/have to go get it back if it lands onstage, I think letting the opponent dispose of it punishes heavy bag-preferring Anna players a little too much.

All that being said, while this move is pretty good in certain situations, it’s absolutely more of a gimmick/highly situational extra option, and I believe that’s fine given how the other version of this move works. You can either hard read an opponent at certain times in neutral for one hell of a smack (either at range or just flat-out Falcon Punch ‘em), or you can be rewarded for good timing by completely shutting down certain recoveries with one good hit. Additionally, while it gets far slower and harder to do as the bag gets heavier, you can also use this move to simply set the bag down and temporarily switch back to your speedy form without taking the time to unload the bag and reload it later, made especially useful in a pinch since picking the bag back up takes no time at all.

I don’t think this is a super defining move of Anna’s kit, but it’s definitely something for the opponent to watch out for.

Standards:

I ended up making the FFC version of this blog (basically a full rundown of every move) before I returned to this, and as such I’ve fully written all of her standards already. Which you can check out in the other blog, as I’ll be posting both of them this time around.

Honestly, while I think there were some good elements in doing that, I wasn’t really satisfied with how it turned out. Anna borrows and slightly retools a bunch of moves from other characters, sometimes for good reason (if you need a reliable swordie aerial, you know where to look), and sometimes not quite, leading to a large amount of the blog feeling like I’m just saying “yep you know how this works” or “yeah it’s basically just like that previous move I mentioned”.

So, following my original idea, this time around we’re going to simply lump together the moves that can be categorized by the weapon they use – ideally, each move gets as much spotlight as it needs before we can immediately move on, which might streamline things.

Let’s get one of the lamer parts of her kit out of the way first.

Sword Strikes:

Sword strikes take up the most moves in Anna’s kit compared to the others (but not THAT much), and that’s supposed to be for good reason. Anna ended up being a very gimmicky character with a ton of different, sometimes unreliable moves. So the point behind her having a decent amount of sword moves is to help round out her kit and allow the player to always have something consistent to fall back upon; while you can upgrade her sword attacks via Down B, it’s still a familiar sword attack, it’s just the power and durability you’re adjusting for.

F-Tilt, D-Tilt (although it’s a weird case), U-Tilt, Dash Attack, F-Air, and U-Air are all sword attacks, even Side B technically is one although we’ll get to that. This leads to your grounded standards being almost entirely sword-based, which means that until you start jumping around and using aerials you can play a pretty simple game of good spacing and pressure. They’re not the fastest attacks in the world but something mostly consistent is that they all have rather solid startup for sword attacks, maybe someone like Lucina might slightly outspeed you in the frame data department but the difference mostly won’t be much.

F-Tilt, U-Tilt, Dash Attack and F-Air are the simpler attacks to explain as they borrow the heaviest from other characters, U-Tilt in particular I have to it is just a lightly tweaked Chrom/Lucina U-Tilt with different frame data (slightly longer startup, but slightly less endlag), but there’s at least a little more to talk about with the rest.

F-Tilt is roughly borrowed from a Project M/+ move in the form of Roy’s F-Tilt, which would be a lengthy sideways stab that you can angle, so instead of a consistent large sword swipe in front of her, Anna gets a slightly faster but harder to land poking tool, good out of a pivot or while playing a careful neutral, but not as great against aerial or short opponents. And F-Air takes the classic vertical swipe you know and (maybe) like, and makes it diagonal – trades a bit of vertical range and initial speed in exchange for a consistent rectangular hitbox in front of Anna that reaches just a tiny bit further than usual and might be easier to land with (the hitbox mostly stays in one place throughout the duration). It sends the opponent pretty sideways, as a bonus, but isn’t as good for combos or pressure in exchange. Not the most different move, but perhaps those changes could help.

Dash Attack isn’t particularly unique either, but I wanted to go a bit along the K. Rool or Ganondorf route by making this a high-commitment but very rewarding move: Anna would strike twice while lunging forward, letting the move last for a while, come out surprisingly quickly (comparable to some of the quicker DAs), and having a final hit that can kill opponents rather reliably. In exchange, she’d have heavy endlag at the end of it, being extremely unsafe on shield let alone whiff. Perhaps the shield damage from having a silver sword could help, but it wouldn’t be by too much.

D-Tilt is barely a sword move but it uses the sword so it counts – Anna would hold the sword in a reverse grip and jab the hilt into the nearest opponent’s shin. Due to not using the blade, the range on this move would be extremely lackluster, being about the range of Lucas’ baby kicks at best, and this move is not strong to compensate. It does compensate though by being fast and 100% safe on shield, to a point where if Anna gets close enough to an opponent, she can jab their shield over and over again completely safe until they either escape, try to parry, or get shieldpoked. And that’s where the fun begins, because she can go for grab, do it again, bait an option and punish hard (F-Smash is good for rolls towards Anna)… and if a D-Tilt does land, she’ll probably get a followup or two off of it. Not your best poking tool, but it’s good.

Finally, I wanted to try something a bit unique with U-Air. It’d still be a pretty familiar upwards sword swipe (think Chroy/Marcina) but with some attributes heavily tweaked. Picture that classic U-Air, but it comes out significantly slower, to a point where it’s comparable to Sephiroth’s speed-wise… but in exchange for that speed, it is a high-damage move low-knockback move with very little landing lag, and has an unusually high amount of hitstun to boot, allowing for a move that is very easy to combo off of, including into itself multiple times. The main problems come from actually trying to land the move, given how slow it is and how difficult it might be to hit some grounded opponents with it, along with the inability to use the move like most U-Airs (i.e. quick moves to threaten opponents above you), but perhaps the upsides are worth it.

Anna’s sword moves are mostly intended to be reliable (if slightly unorthodox) moves to contrast some of her other abilities; she’ll have some jank moves here and there, or some moves that trade consistency for sheer power, so having some simple swordie-like swipes here and there should ideally round out Anna a bit more.

Bow Snipes:

While the sword provides solid close-range options, the bow is pretty alright for playing at range.

Anna only has two bow moves in her kit, Up Smash and N-Air. In the original version of her kit I gave her three for some reason, but given the amount of other moves competing for each input that ended up feeling unnecessary. So due to that, you only need to two angles and play around them as well as you can.

Both moves function roughly the same, Anna shoots an arrow which travels in a straight line for a while before gravity kicks in and it starts to arc downward. They kind of function between a mixture of Link and Byleth’s arrows, taking the slow speed and power of the latter (albeit toned down) while having a similar arc and feel like the former. The difference comes from how the angles and arcs change which scenario is best for each one.

N-Air is a very standard shot forward, with about 20 frames of startup (1/3rd of a second) making it lackluster up close but not very slow at range, and as you can probably tell it’s a solid projectile to throw out… not the safest one, it has a decent amount of ending lag (often forcing you to land afterwards if used onstage) and longer than average landing lag. On the other hand, U-Smash not only shoots the arrow diagonally upwards (think of the arc like the Belmont’s axe) but can also be charged to shoot the arrow further, making it great for anti-airs and often very good for edgeguarding regardless of where you are onstage, but far worse in neutral since opponents could just run under it.

Neither of these mean that Anna is particularly good at zoning; the relatively slow startup and endlag of the arrows keep them only good for ranged pressure and threatening kills when the opponent is already in disadvantage, and a quicker character can very easily avoid them when approaching Anna (if not punish her for using them)… but it does help against opponents who like to throw out projectiles of their own, since the arc allows for Anna to shoot arrows from above and have them land on the opponent rather than always contest with them horizontally. And don’t forget that unlike swords, which only break when actively landing attacks, bows lose durability just by being used, making each shot more precious.

Just like how the sword moves are good in their own way while still probably being worse than a regular sword character’s kit, Anna’s projectiles are comfortably useful without turning her into a camping machine or making optimal play of her only revolve around ranged play – they simply exist to give her more options some characters don’t have, rather than define her kit.

Staff Memes:

Anna has a total of four staff moves, two of which we’ll cover later for reasons I bet you can already guess. These two moves, Jab and Down Smash, are mildly unique in her kit.

Both of them act very similar data-wise, they are relatively slow short-range projectiles that appear directly in front of Anna and quickly disappear: roughly the best thing I can compare it to is if the flash right before Palu’s Side B comes out (pictured above) was right next to her and was its own hitbox instead of the flame. They have enough startup and endlag to make throwing them out in neutral a very questionable decision (albeit not a terrible one), but if you can secure one off of a punish or something like a D-Tilt or throw mixup, their effects can be very helpful.

But not because of damage or kill power - both attacks deal next to no damage (4% at best, even if D-Smash is charged) and have barely enough knockback and hitstun to be considered safe on hit. But what they do offer is a little gross.

Jab (the Hexing Rod)) is a move that, instead of dealing damage the normal way, lowers the opponent’s weight stat directly by about 7 units, lingering until they lose a stock. For reference, one Jab would lower Mario’s weight stat down to Palutena/Toon Link’s, making him significantly easier to kill, and if you somehow manage to hit Bowser with 5 of them, that would be enough to lower him down to middleweight status. This might seem pointless given a similar effect could have been achieved just by hitting an opponent normally, but think of it this way – that is damage dealt in a way that is almost impossible for the opponent to get rid of or benefit from. Healing moves? They don’t increase weight so they do nothing. Rage? Not a factor. Comeback mechanics like Arcene, Sephy’s wing, or Aura? Completely unaffected. Suddenly, in exchange for slightly less viability, Anna has a way to give a massive middle finger to all of those, bying so many things.

Down Smash, the Silence staff, is a little less creative but still rather disgusting – whoever gets hit by it will find themselves unable to use any of their Specials (this includes things like unique Shield Specials or Terry’s supers) for 8 seconds. But those 8 seconds are just the minimum, because this move scales absurdly well with charging: a full-charge D-Smash, while rare, will lock the opponent out of their Specials for a whopping 24 seconds. Some characters can cope rather well, while some aren’t so lucky… and almost all suddenly have FAR worse recoveries.

Again, these moves aren’t particularly easy to land, making them unreliable despite their great rewards. And that’s without throwing in the fact that reflectors exist, which not only harshly punish poorly using the moves but also amplifies the effects by the respective multipliers; imagine getting hit by a pocketed Jab and losing 12.6 units of weight. But hey, if you do land them, good for you.

Bag Bashes

Finally, there are the bag moves, which directly change based on how you use Neutral Special if you . They range from being borderline useless to being some of the scarier heavyweight moves in the game, and one of them is even a fun little gimmick in and of itself.

As a refresher, Anna’s Neutral B let her put money into a bag which would change her stats as well as affect how the second half of the move worked, but it also affects four additional moves: F-Smash, B-Air, D-Air, and D-Throw. F-Smash, B-Air, and D-Throw are all different takes on the same idea, being overhead bag slams with some serious power behind them when the bag is full, but that’s something we should quickly cover.

How good these moves are completely depends on keeping money in Anna’s bag, because that decides both the size and power of the moves. Speed actually doesn’t matter much in this since the weight barely changes the frame data of the moves, so it just comes down to how big and heavy the blows are. At lower quantities, Anna’s doing little more than swinging a thin and light sack around, dealing extremely little damage and knockback, yet the frame data would be so abysmal compared to the strength that it’s impossible to combo off of them. At medium quantities, the moves would be decent, rather slow but rewardingly strong moves, simply average for their level… but at high quantities, Anna would become a very worrying threat with moves that can consistently delete opponents even remotely near 100%. Still technically slow moves and therefore not a constant threat, but tell that to yourself the next time you’re fighting a K. Rool and he randomly B-Airs your stock away.

Those three moves I mentioned earlier each fulfil their own roles in the right situations, F-Smash being up there with Doriyah and Pyra’s stupid F-Smash for sudden bursts of extreme power, B-Air being a risky but horrifically stronk landing or aerial punish with a very generous hitbox, and D-Throw being a throw that goes from useless move to an absurdly high damage/knockback move that can almost single-handedly turn Anna into a grappler at times. The downside isn’t just the poor frame data, but also the requirement that you’re becoming a slower/heavier character to use them due to how Neutral B works, buuuuuuuut… the downside is barely there when you’re at high percentages and just want the opponent to die.

And then there’s D-Air.

Down Air’s Section:

Down Air is stupid enough that before we move on to the remaining Specials and wrap up this blog, we’re going to use a little (or “little”) section to talk about it for a bit.

For this move, Anna would pull out her bag and hold it underneath her for a while, probably about as long as Link’s D-Air (a while). Obviously the move would also depend on the bag mechanic, with the bag getting bigger and the attack getting stronger with more cash as well as being borderline useless if the bag doesn’t have any cash, but I would also throw in a second mechanic I’m rather fond of.

This move’s hitboxes depend on how fast Anna is falling, like the aforementioned D-Air as well as some previous moves in older blogs. When using this move on an opponent beneath you, falling and fast-falling will give you two different effects. The former would make it a rather vanilla D-Air hitbox, just launching opponents diagonally away with varying strength (a pretty powerful move in its own right), while the latter turns it into a potentially disgustingly strong spike against aerial opponents for the entire duration of the move, and an incredibly strong regular finisher against grounded opponents, in exchange for having WAY more landing lag than regular use as well as probably guaranteeing your death if you attempt it offstage. However, this comes with a unique flaw: if Anna isn’t falling (such as rising from a jump or a short period of time after the peak), the move completely lacks a hitbox, making the move useless offensively until she starts falling properly.

But then there’s a third and final mechanic I think would be fun to play around with: what if the bag was an invincible, thick hurtbox? It would depend on how big the bag is, but if the bag is big enough, it’d be able to completely negate a lot of attacks thrown at it from below. Anna would still be vulnerable to attacks from the sides and above, along with anything big enough to clip through the bag at whatever size (even at max size, the bag is probably weak to some moves anyways, such as maybe Palu’s and definitely Sephiroth’s). But on top of the move being really strong, on top of it not having that much startup, suddenly Anna has a very K. Rool-esq landing option that completely forces the opponent to respect it and either get out of the way or find some other way to deal with it rather than contest her.

Still a risky move due to the endlag, and being predictable with it is almost like you’re asking to get hit, but I’d say it’s pretty good for what it’s supposed to do.

The Other Specials:

Hey, we’re almost done. Just gotta cover the last two Specials, which I promise are far simpler than the other two and a half.

But maybe not that simple.

Up Special: Rescue/Hammerne

Neutral B? This move has two different variations, although they depend on whether Anna is airborne or not instead of how the button is pressed.

In the air, Anna performs a very, very standard teleport via casting Rescue. It’s a little bit better or worse than the one Palu and Mewtwo use, it starts a couple of frames slower but lets her go noticeably further (about a Bowser-width’s extra distance) and leaves her in less landing lag (still puts her in freefall), but it’s still basically their move.

On the ground, however, Anna pulls out a very different staff and begins to cast Hammerne. Due to the length of the move (it takes a full second and a half to activate) and a second gimmick I’ll cover very soon, Anna can either shield or stop holding B (assuming she didn’t tap to start it) to cancel the move without much lag, but if she successfully casts the spell, all of her weapons/items will fully regain their maximum durability, allowing her to keep using them for a while longer.

The Hammerne staff will then promptly break.

Unlike Jab and Down Smash, which have unlimited uses for simplicity’s sake, both versions of Up B have an additional durability meter, separate both from her swords and bows but also each other. Upon successful use, both Rescue and Hammerne damage themselves – while Rescue isn’t THAT fragile and can sustain 4 uses before breaking, Hammerne is so powerful that it can only be used once before you lose it.

Instead of filling more space in Down B, both staffs can be rebought by using their respective inputs again after they break. Rescue is a relatively cheap and reasonable item to buy again, it only costs 2000G, which shouldn’t be too difficult to manage. Hammerne, on the other hand, costs a whopping 10KG to replace, making it far more valuable.

Also yes, Hammerne repairs Rescue.

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(Just as a note to the judges, Rescue’s durability is something I’m happy to adjust up or down given how unbalanced or underpowered it might be. I think 4 is a reasonable amount and a good weight on the player’s shoulders, but if you three think otherwise, just let me know and we can work something out.)

Two offhand things: Technically there are two teleporting staffs (Warp and Rescue), and Rescue’s the one that teleports allies over to the ’s spot, so it might technically be wrong to call it Rescue, even if Warp doesn’t let the warp themselves around either. The only thing I’m going to say is that I like calling it Rescue WAAAAAY more than I want to call another move Warp or Teleport.

Secondly, Hammerne was nearly going to be Heal, it was only while writing Up B that I decided it’s kind of lame to just give Anna a mediocre heal as a rather unfitting bonus, so thankfully I ed this stupid staff exists.

As for the move itself… yeah. I don’t think we need to spend too much time on them as moves, Hammerne in particular is just your last resort repair button and Rescue is a pretty bog-standard teleport in a void. But I do want to highlight the nature of limited recovery uses.

With Robin and Hero it’s pretty downplayed, Robin can lose her wind tome and shit out a new one multiple times faster than she can lose it in the first place, and Hero gets back MP pretty quickly along with having access to Zoom so if you’re forced to use Up B and you’re out of mana it’s almost guaranteed to be your fault… and it’s still not that bad with Anna, but with her it’s a very tangible part of her resource that she loses close to every time she has to recover or use her Up B in some way. 20% worth of damage might not seem like much but when that can get drained multiple times per match, you’re losing some of it by getting hit throughout the match ( you lose 60 for every 1% taken, and only gain 100 respectively), AND you’re trying to spend the gold on other things like her bag, weapons, Side B, or saving for a Hammerne.

If you play well, be stingy with Up B whenever possible (jump + airdodge should help decently at lower to mid percentages, as long as you don’t get gimped too much), and just generally be careful, things shouldn’t be too bad, and I don’t think Anna is crippled by this downside. But this is a downside nonetheless.

These do not reset on death by the way, you don’t just get a free Hammerne every stock, you get one at the start of the match and that’s it. 10000G is one hell of a lot of gold to spend on one thing so you best be careful with it.

Side Special: Spendthrift

Credit to Expand for the initial idea, by the way.

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Upon use, Anna… I’m not sure what Anna does. Crouch a little and enter a pose where she can very quickly rush forwards, I suppose.

Upon use, Anna will enter the designated Side B pose, getting ready. Exactly what the move does again depends on the input, but by tapping (to initiate) and then holding the button (second input), Anna will begin to lose gold at a steady pace, about 1000G per second, converting it into charge for this move. The move will cap at 5000G, with the charge being indicated by Anna glowing (a soft, infrequent glow at 500G, compared to a consistent strong glow at max capacity). If you try to give her more when she’s already at her max, she’ll just sit there, not losing gold but not gaining anything either, just wasting everyone’s time. This is all standard shield-cancelable stuff otherwise, and Anna retains her charge between cancels.

Once you wish to use it, by simply holding the button for about 20-22 frames (which is also the move’s startup), Anna will zoom straight forwards, doing a very anime attack (especially anime since you don’t lose any height if you use this in the air). This consumes all of the charge she currently has, but depending on how much gold she puts into it, the move gets progressively better and better.

Don’t bother trying to use the move without spending more than 500G, if you do then Anna will either launch from her spot and instantly faceplant (if she’s grounded) or fumble similarly to a useless Banjo Wonderwing if you use it in the air. The grounded trip may or may not have a hitbox, but if it does, it’s so useless it’s like it doesn’t.

From 500G to 2000G, the move isn’t bad. If it weren’t for the cost of use it’d be one of Anna’s most reliable kill moves, given it always comes out at a consistent time, has decent range (Anna zooms forward about 1/3rd of FD), and is quite stronk with a decent amount of gold put into it – with around 1500-2000G the opponent will die around 110%. Not bad.

Things get a little more interesting between 2001-4999G, because while the strength gradually ramps up as expected, Anna also begins to gain armor during the full startup and duration of the move (although it wears off during endlag). At the minimum threshold Anna only gains 5% armor, but it steadily grows by 1% every 100G she dumps in, and by the time she reaches 25 points of armor (4000G dumped) she instead gains full super armor. As a reminder of the strength, this move starts to kill opponents around 70% around the end of the charging threshold, which is pretty good.

But at the full 5000G charge, Anna becomes completely invincible for the entire startup of the move and duration of the zoom, along with going a full half of FD distance-wise. Additionally, this move’s killpower jumps from 70% to 50%. The startup does receive a nerf to at least slightly compensate, going up to about 28-30 frames instead (think Ganon F-Smash again), but still. Also if we want to get flashy, have some crit effects from FE Awakening (or whatever game her skin comes from) play, maybe darken the screen a little.

Each version deals a sizeable chunk of shield damage, even the 500-2000G versions deal a decent amount, and getting blitzed by a medium-charge Side B is pretty bad for your shield’s health. But to rub in how stylish and probably wasteful full-charge Side B is, it instantly breaks shields, so uh… don’t shield that.

All versions have the same startup (ignoring 5000G’s) and endlag, endlag which leaves her quite open.

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The main reason this, Neutral B, Down B and Hammerne all have tap and hold inputs isn’t just for the ability to use multiple different things, but it’s also to make sure that you don’t accidentally use the wrong thing – it’d suck ass if you misinputted Up B instead of Side B or something and you randomly blew your only Hammerne unintentionally, or blew Side B’s charge in a similar situation, so to make sure the is completely certain about what they’re doing, these systems are in place.

Unless your controller is broken, but in that case you’re kind of screwed anyways.

Do I need to tone this down? This is definitely silly, but I think it’s at least slightly alright.

First, the cost. I’m not just going to say full charge eats an entire 50% of hard work that could have been spent on other things or lost via damage or Rescue use, because that’s only if the Anna player only goes for the fully charged version. Buuuuuut, the good versions of this move still burns quite a bit of gold, gold you have to be absolutely certain you’ll spend well via this one single-use move.

Second… the move’s still kind of slow on startup, and even with the ridiculous max-money version the endlag is rather severe. Yeah it might break your shield, but if it doesn’t, Anna is practically asking to get hit, not to mention how open she is if it whiffs or you dodged or something. All that is pretty self-explanatory.

Also, Anna for the most part can’t combo into this, MAYBE U-Air might but if it does and that’s a problem it’s super easy to nerf it without nerfing U-Air too much. And no matter what she uses, she can’t combo into the full charge version, that’s too slow.

With all that being said, this should be a fun alternative to Anna’s gameplay – it’s maybe not the safest, most reliable, most optimal, or most practical way to play her, but hey, if you wanna burn some cash in exchange for a pocket nuke in the form of some weeb’s greatest fantasy, this move lets you do exactly that.

As a final word of advice, try not to be the dumbass who spends 5000G on charging and then proceeds to die. If you die, you lose any charge you had, to add a little bit of extra fun and risk to the move.

Farewell:

Sorry for the very slow schedule I struggle to break out of. This one I’ve been sitting on for a while, not just due to the regular motivation problems and being busy with other things, but also because of how daunting this project felt for a while.

If it helps to mention, the Fan Fighter Clash event with its staff and participants moved to Discord quite a while ago which we’ve been hanging out in ever since, and we’ve been doing a ton of mini-tournaments for it with lower stakes as well as seasons allowing for multiple tournaments in one batch and for everyone to try being a judge or participant. Pretty recently, I stepped down from the judging role to try out participating for myself, which dictates I either make new movesets or rework old ones into the required format… which means I’ve got some complete movesets I can usually just post, and some future ones that won’t be too hard to either slightly modify or straight-post here. Basically, not dead yet, just figuring out what to work on and what to post.

This one in particular was one I was already working on, but if I just gave them this blog it wouldn’t have cut it since the judges need more details than the summaries I gave above (although the Specials are fine enough that I can copy-paste them between the two), and given the dilemma between explaining all moves individually or presenting them in chunks, I wanted to give them the moveset while still giving you guys the intended original way of presenting her kit. Hence why I’m posting them simultaneously, and why the FFC version’s been done for like 3 weeks now and I haven’t posted it until now.

As I say farewell, I’ll be presenting a choice for you guys as well as the curators/leaders as to which one of these blogs is better – this version might be a bit messier but it also hopefully makes reading the boring moves a little more bearable, while the more traditional format is also an option to read if you’d prefer that. And if you’re bored, don’t have a life, or both, you can read each one for whatever reason you have. I don’t recommend it though, or at least if you do, skip over the repeated parts.

On that note, I wish you all a wonderful day.

Or night. idk.