Tales of Phantasia OVA

[Merc]

It's only one episode into the OVA, but I think I can start off with a review for it nonetheless. Unfortunately, how I want to start off with a review for it is by, sadly enough, saying that it was a big disappointment.

I wanted to really like it, and they did a lot of things right, but they unfortunately messed up the most important things to an anime.

So, what did they mess up on?

It certainly wasn't art at all. It's incredibly pretty, as OVAs are in the habit of being. The art is about as near a perfect port from the awesome character designs by Kousuke Fujishima to the anime medium as can get. Considering Fujishima is the mangaka of Ah! Megami-sama and You're Under Arrest, you can get a good idea of how well drawn it is. I'm sure all the ToP fans know what his character designs look like anyhow. Given it's also only 4 episodes, it's hard to imagine they'll have run out of their budget money before the series is done.

The music fits the story pretty well, and it's really nice too. I might hunt for an OST of it later. The voice acting was top notch too. Characterization, even with the background butchering, seems fairly accurate too. Some of them didn't get many lines though, so I might change in opinion on that.

So what were the problems?

The problems lay in the story. While the animation was fluid (if slightly boring), the storyline certainly wasn't. It skips through many events that should have been considered key, and they bastardized a lot of elements from the story to add new things to keep it 'original' and separate from the game.

What results is an episode that people who've never played the game cannot follow and the people who have feel jipped. If they felt the need to cut out events for the sake of time because its a 4 episode OVA, then why did they insert something as utterly worthless as the council scene?

Also, while incredibly amusing interactions happened between Arche and Klarth, as Drac pointed out when we talked over the pros and cons of the ep (mostly cons), it doesn't make much sense.

<Dracos> Part of klarth's charm was that he was the odd-ball experimental shaman who no one believed.
<Ami-chan> Yep, and here he's one of their big guns. >_>;
<Dracos> Obviously if some military superpower believed in his capabilities prior to being helped out by cless and mint, there'd be others who would have been trained to do that.

Mint has to get -permission- to help out in the war, so that she can later recruit Arche and Klarth, because the two are -indespensible- members of the war effort. A far cry from the game story and a change which doesn't really benefit the anime.

While I usually lump choreography into story telling, Drac has it as a separate category, so I'll separate it for the purpose of the review, though like the story telling it also sucked. Cless' scenes...outside of him killing random canon fodder enemies, the only time we've seen him really is when he needed rescuing at the beginning. Not the impressive main hero we're accustomed to.

Chester doesn't get much time to shine. Mint does nothing useful as a healer and in fact gets delegated into a diplomat type role during this ep. Klarth, as was mentioned, is a big gun who wipes out a good chunk of the monsters. Arche, like Cless, doesn't do much, getting out only two spells, a lightning and a fire storm. And the lightning was there more for the 'jokeline punch' or something to end a scene.

The one impressive scene lasted all of 28 seconds, which was the summoning of Maxwell. And that was 8 seconds of Maxwell summoning and 20 seconds of light show, by the way.

Rating? For someone who's never played Tales of Phantasia, 2 out of 10. For someone who has, 3.5 out of 10.

In fact, I'd say pretty much just watch the opening and Arche/Klarth scenes. For those of you who got the Aoi-Anime subs, I've even gotten the time frames for you! Time frames are 7:09-8:39, 11:30-13:37, and 19:43-21:37. Don't bother with the rest!

[Dracos]

Damn, you beat me.

Nothing really to add.  Actually, just a bit.

Merc touched a few of the glaring problems.  Had he touched them all, his review would've been three times as long.  And I'm not referring to simple differences from anime to game in terms of internal storyline, but just incoherent segments or the classic make sense crap of: "Hey, this cannon, of which there is only one and was invented here, has a name everyone recognizes!  Even if it was hidden!"  Or the whole squad of magic users underground who clearly couldn't help with the war effort up top.  I could go on, but it was pretty bad.

Return of the edit:

Merc reminded me of something he'd forgotten in his review.

That of indignation.

This is something that while 'coherent' in their version, shouldn't have been changed.  Indignation, in the original, was the crown jewel of magic spells (storyline wise).  It was the holy ultimate magic developed by Edward D. Morrison to combat Dhaos.  Second only to his time magic that he developed and his descendents finished.  In here, it's a pretty wussy spell, not looking like that much more than lightning in terms of overall effect.  Sure, it fits closer to how Indignation developed in later games... but this was supposed to be the original divine indignation, the holy wrath of the game!~ ;_;

It was quite horrible :\

Dracos

[Shuten]

So basically if you haven't played the game you'll be completely lost and if you have the changes will piss you off. Interesting... I'll probably watch it to the end myself mainly because I like Arche quite a bit and for me this is the only way to really see her in action without playing the game. I really don't have the time when I'm online to play it and also do what I need to do.

On the upside I did like the opening song myself even if the lyrics are decidedly uninspired. The vocalist does a decent job with what is essentially a very lackluster song.

Now if I could only find out who the vocalist was and the name of the song I'd have something to work with to hopefully track it down.


Sincerely,
Shuten

[Merc]

Episode two has come out by Aoi-Anime, and this episode shows a small amount of improvement on most of the faults of the first episode. I think characterization stayed fairly accurate, and the pacing and choreography didn't suck so badly.

This episode was actually mostly set-up though, and nothing in the way of action really happened. Arche threw in a few laughs my way, Klarth was a bit of a goofball know-it-all, and we got to see a bit more of Chester near the end which allowed him to shine a bit more. But as I said, nothing really happened.

The set-up actually helped the story in my opinion though. Admittedly, they really should have handled set-up in the first episode and only parts of this one, (this being a 4 episode OVA, I believe) but if nothing else, it helped the dragging/skipping story a bit.

Still, while the improvements were a bit lackluster as improvements go, the ending of the episode was well handled, and set-up for a potentially good episode 3. It also presents the possibility of Cless not SUCKING ASS, like he has been. He's an incredible bore for the supposed main character and hero, and that's a crying shame.

[Dracos]

So anyone ever watch the end of this?

Dracos