天下制覇

A pity they couldn’t improve that.

Impressions:

You would think since this focuses on the time before Vesperia, they’d slot in some extra… I don’t know… character development or something for Yuri and Flynn. Naaaaah. Just toss in some stuff about Flynn’s dad and then technobabble! More technobabble! Blastias coming out your noses! Super special team powered blastias so Yuri and Flynn can hold hands as the fight the final boss! Great! Because that’s the true Tales experience. A great engine, a story about racism, enough hot air to power seventeen Hindenburgs, and a male lead of ambiguous sexuality. Only… lacking the engine. And sure, Yuri doesn’t have Reid’s man-bra, but he spends more time rolling around in the dirt with Flynn than he does ogling the hot redheads attached to them. He’s significantly less heterosexual now than he was before. Thanks, IG.

Speaking of them, since they couldn’t include the eyecandy (I really honestly did miss Judith a lot here), they better toss in a pair of worthless identical twins, except for breast size and personality. You guessed it, the flat one is feisty while the giant breasted one is a ditz who doesn’t even notice when she bludgeons people in the face with those melons. I’m not sure what the point of including them was. The only things they ever did were hit Flynn in the face with their Lacey Unmentionables +4 and have to have their asses hauled out of danger. They also replaced Repede with some kind of freakish warthog.

Production IG could take a few pointers from UFOTable on both movie making and the Tales series. This movie dragged to hell and back from about minute 10 to around minute 90, broken up only very briefly by a short little fight against wolves and a tentacle made of dead wolves. Granted, it was the most impressive fight of the movie, but that’s not meant as praise. This does not look like a theatrical production. Hell, Sunrise’s Abyss adaptation looked about as good as this and packed in more action across its first 6 episodes than this managed. Some of the action scenes, particularly the barfight, looked especially awkward too. They were overanimated, but moving slow, giving the bizarre effect like the fight was taking place neck high in molasses.

So in short. Meh. The plot’s the same kind of generic "scientist + giant red CG tentacle + dead dogs = evil" nonsense that comes straight out of Generic Fantay Plots 101, and they really didn’t do anything new or interesting with Yuri or Flynn other than homosexualize them a bit more, the action is nothing to write home about, and the art is your typical generic Production IG faire. Somebody needs to take them out behind the barn one night and beat it into them that you shouldn’t just pencil in background characters and then wander off. And hit them at least once for every CG person they abused. It’s watchable for the most part, but the middle drags like a hippo pulling an elephant uphill in the winter and never once threatens to be impressive or notable.