Popoi (ポポイ Popoi) is a playable character from Secret of Mana. A Sprite from the world of Secret of Mana, they are mischievous and boastful, but caring. Popoi's age and gender are unknown, but they are 3 ft. 1 in. tall (95 cm) and weigh 71 lbs (32 kg).
Story[]
Randi first meets Popoi at the Dwarf Village, where they are found to be collaborating with the Dwarf Elder to scam people for money at the latter's freak show. Due to a massive flood in the Upper Land that washed them away into Gaia's Navel, Popoi has memory loss and doesn't remember anything about their past. At the Dwarf Elder's suggestion, Popoi joins Randi in hopes of recovering their memories, eventually reuniting with their grandfather in the Wind Palace, but deciding to continue aiding Randi in his quest. Popoi is the most mischievous member of the group and often plays the role of comic relief. As an orphan, they understand how Randi feels growing up without parents. In the Mana Fortress, the party realizes that destroying the Mana Beast will diminish mana and wipe out all of the beings connected to the world by it, including Popoi. Popoi cheers them on to save the world instead. In the ending Popoi fades away along with mana, the final game screenshot shows their spirit watching over the world.
Gameplay[]
Popoi's default weapon is the boomerang, also joining with a bow, and their specialty in battle is attacking magic, which delivers devastating amounts of damage from a safe distance. This is especially important because Popoi is the exact opposite of Randi in terms of parameters: Popoi's attack, defense and HP are the lowest of the team, and they learn special attacks with weapons very slowly.
Other appearances[]
Circle of Mana[]
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius[]
Echoes of Mana[]
In Echoes of Mana, Popoi appears while the Chapter 2 and Chapter 5. In Chapter 5 Quilto/Quilta searching for a Fairy for heading out to the holy Manaland. While a dialog with Fairies from their village, Popoi suddenly appears. The Fairy from Trials of Mana told about: "Nooo!? Only humans chosen by a fairie can have the Mana Sword." Popoi said: "Really? I don't remember choosing Big Bro? He kinda just found it." This means: Popoi is a Fairy from Holy-Manaland.
Trivia[]
- Early translations of their name spelled it as Popoie.
- Gold statues of Popoi are used for saving the player's game in Legend of Mana.
- In the original SNES translation, Popoi is referred to with masculine pronouns in the Dwarf village, and later while on the Sandship. A guard says "He ate up ALL the ship's food!". Another says "'Zat your friend? Show him outta here!" This was most likely in error as the rest of the game follows the Japanese script in referring to Popoi with gender-neutral words. In the remake, this error is fixed.
- A potential reconciliation for the sandship dialogue, in-universe, is simply that the characters speaking are not familiar with sprites and assuming Popoi is male.
- Echoes of Mana still uses gender-neutral words for the sprite. Echoes of Mana also reveals that Popoi is in fact a Fairy. Other Fairies in the Mana series are interpreted as female.
- Popoi uses the masculine-leaning pronoun オイラ, a dialect variant of 俺, in the Japanese version (and the more polite ボク during the con trick in the dwarven village). Note that Japanese pronouns are typically not limited to only one gender, but simply indicate degrees of masculinity, femininity, age and social status.
Gallery[]
Sprites[]
Artwork[]
See also[]