Cress Albane

Cress Albane (クレス・アルベイン, Kuresu Arubein; literally meaning "Cless Alvein") is both a fictional character and lead protagonist from the Tales of Phantasia series. He is a 17-year-old swordsman from the small village of Toltus. He is the son of Miguel Albane, a famous swordsman and master of the local sword fighting school. As such, he has practiced sword fighting since he was a young child.

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 * —Cress Albane.

Appearance & Biography

 * Voice Actor: Johnny Bosch (English), Takeshi Kusao (Japanese), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (German), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (French), Not Known (Latin American Spanish)

Appearance
Cress is an adolescent male standing at 5 foot 7 with a lean yet athletic physique. He has blond hair, gray eyes and a red headband around his forehead. His attire consists of a black bodysuit cropped somewhat at the biceps with a cropped breastplate covering his chest and leather around his waist, which allows him to carry his sword and partially surrounds his right leg. At his arms are black fabric and white metal wrist guards extending to his elbow. He wears finger-less leather gloves. At the back of his armor, a red cloak is attached at the shoulder guards. Finally, his footwear consists of silver sabatons. He is considered to be a handsome youth in the story as Mint, Arche and Ami have all developed a crush on him.


 * Hair Color: Blond
 * Skin Color: Not Known
 * Eye Color: Gray
 * Age: 17
 * Height: 5'7" / 170 cm
 * Weight: 130 lbs. / 59 kg

Personality
Cress is a kind and caring person with a great sense of justice and a strong desire to do good. In the face of the enemy, especially Dhaos, who murdered his family as well as the villagers of his hometown, he is instead ruthless and unforgiving, driven by vengeance. Cress enjoys saying puns. He does not say many in the original game, but he picks up the habit in some escort titles such as Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3 and Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave. He intends to amuse his fellow party members by saying them but always receives contrary effects. He is a very loyal friend and is willing to risk his life for them.

Friends/Allies

 * Cress' Group

Enemies

 * Dhaos

Fighting Style
Cress, being the traditional swordsman, uses swords and other blades in battle using the Albane School of Sword Fighting (アルベイン流剣術, Alvein-ryuu Kenjutsu). As the first swordsman in the series, many of his artes are considered the archetypal swordsman artes for the series. His attack strength is, unlike the rest of the characters in the game, separated into thrust and slash stats, with his various artes depending on one or both. Many of his artes are designed to either halt or push enemies away, as for most of the game it is Cress protecting three mages from most enemies.

Cress has such artes as Sword Rain, which subjects an enemy to a flurry of stabs, and Beast, which knocks enemies back with a lion's head. Cress also has several artes to boost his own abilities to either defeat enemies quicker, in the case of Coil which boosts his attack power, or allow him to fight longer, such as the health-restoring Inspiration. Also, unlike the rest of the characters in the storyline, his artes are in fact separated into two, and then later three, distinct classes: the Deadly Skills (必殺技, Hissatsuwaza) and the Secret Skills (奥義, Ougi).

Deadly skills are learned through levels, while secret skills must, for the most part, be learned from books which have to be bought or found throughout the world. His secret skills build on his deadly skills, combining two of them into a stronger attack. Cress also introduces an even higher tier of the physical artes: the Hidden Secret Skill (秘奥義, Hi Ougi), which would later be termed the mystic arte. His Dark Blade is the first mystic arte in the series. Cress, through the agency of obtaining the Eternal Sword and its components, also uses various artes termed "space-time attacks" (時空剣技, Jikuu Kengi), which are mostly unique to him.

Another unique trait of his swordsmanship is the way his primary sword is designed; the hand guard has a tonfa-like grip sticking out perpendicular of the two other ends, allowing Cress to grip and wield the blade in a unique manner as displayed in the animation.

Notes & Trivia

 * Cress's name is romanized as Cless Alvein during the ending credits to the Japanese-only Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom, as well as in the instruction manuals for the Japanese versions of the game. Due to this, fans tend to use the name Cless when referring to him, especially in the unofficial DeJap translation of the game. However, in his cameo appearance in the US version of Tales of Eternia, his name was localized as Cress. This has carried through into Nintendo's official translation of Tales of Phantasia on the Game Boy Advance and Tales of Phantasia: The Animation by Geneon. It should be noted that Japanese people pronounce the "r" and "l" sounds the same way, so neither one of Cress's name translations is incorrect. In terms of the version that involves the "r", cress is the name of a garden herb, which is a motif shared with Mint Adenade.
 * Cress's puns in later appearances most likely stem from the Japanese dialogue "I will definitely defeat Dhaos!" (僕は絶対にダオスを倒す！, "Boku wa zettai ni Daosu wo taosu!"), where Dhaos's name when romanized in Japanese and "taosu" sound very identical. Two of the PSX translations translate this through English-worded puns ("I will douse Dhaos!" in particular), which seems to be a bit of a meme associated with Cress from that point on.
 * Both Cress and Stahn Aileron are the only known main protagonists who wear a headband. In the Tales of Fandom Gaiden bonus DVD, Cress insists that a "true hero" wears a headband and wields a sword, validating Zelos Wilder's claim that he is the lead hero of Tales of Symphonia instead of Lloyd Irving. Other lead protagonists argue with Cress and Stahn about this statement, leading to other comments that "true heroes" are merely "country bumpkins", or that they must have the ability to use Demon Fang to be known as heroes, which infuriates Kyle Dunamis since he was the only main character at that time who could not use the arte.
 * Flynn Scifo can dress as Cress in the PlayStation 3 release of Tales of Vesperia, using the title "Kind Swordsmanship Successor" (優しき剣術の継承者, "Yasashiki Kenjutsu no Keishousha"), which also grants him access to Cress's Jigenzan arte.
 * Although Cress does not appear in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology, if the Protagonist talks to Chester as a Swordsman, Chester mentions that while they look good, they do not compare to another swordsman he knows, referencing Cress.