天下制覇

But still containing two men scared to death of vaginas.

New Season Disclaimer:

I’ll make a post for almost all new series (barring sequels) with a wrap-up and bullet point opinion of each once the premier week is over. Remember that these are just my kneejerk reactions to the first 20 minutes of shows, many of which in genres that I don’t even particularly like, but I do believe in giving every new series at least an episode to interest me.

Impressions:

I’ll play nice with the spoilers this week. It’s impossible for me to really seperate myself from the source since I’ve played the game through twice now, and am considering starting a third run… so I’m really not even going to try. They started this one out slowly. Really slowly. I’m not sure if that actually means much of anything though because if you cut out all the BS fed ex quests and backtracking from Abyss, you have about a 25 hour game… and since they don’t need to show the random battles or other general RPG… uh… RPGness, that probably drops it down to about 5 hours of actual stuff to cover, so they’ve got more than enough room to space things out a bit. Oh well, the longer we put off meeting Ion, the better I suppose, even if it’s just one week.

I was very happy to see Natalia a little early, even if she pretty much did nothing but bitch at Luke while Gay Guy flirted with him. They even added some hand holding to get Hinano on board. Boy is she going to be disappointed when… well… spoilers can wait. That’s fine though, Talia’s so much better than Tear, Ion, and Anise, who we’re going to be stuck with for the next 4-5 episodes at a bare minimum. Yes, I know Ion’s not a girl, but he may as well be. They also ramped up Luke’s headaches to show a little better that he was actually going a bit crazy and not just hearing voices. Otherwise, they pretty much took stuff directly from the game, right down to the conversation Luke has with the gardener about how gardening sucks. You’re a true champion of the people, Luke. They even had Guy’s bedroom conversation with Luke, though didn’t show him retreating in a panic when a maid showed up. Score one for cutting down on the Guy x Luke vibes. I do find it funny that they gave Tear a bladed staff instead of her silly little bubble shooting staff in the game.

As expected from Sunrise’s Pizza Hut sponsored show, the production values were excellent across the board, albeit with a few hiccups in distance shots. Music was well done, though I honestly expected them to use a few more tracks from the game, but am pleased that they didn’t. Again, they could have cut down on the exposition at the start and/or during the meeting with Van since they’re going to rehash that in a couple episodes anyway, but blah blah blah "sticking to the game." They’re going to have to make some cuts somewhere, I just hope it’s not something important. They seem to be completely ignoring all the skits so far, which is probably for the best anyway. The action sequences were well done, but we’ve seen them in pretty much their entirety from the promos already, so it’s hard to be too impressed there.

I had planned on covering this from the start anyway since I’ve been rabidly devouring any and all Tales games I could get my grubby hands on for the last decade, so I’m a bit of a fan. I’m on board with this one for good or bad. It shouldn’t be too hard to cover either since I already know everything that’s going to happen anyway. Between this running, Symphonia’s OVA getting its Tethe’alla chapters, and Vesperia just having Yuri and Raven, it’s a good time to be a Tales fan.

Abyss OP (From start of Karma)

Game OP

Preview:

Not the cheagles. Not the goddamned cheagles!