天下制覇

Damn it, Japan.

Impressions:

UFOTable mostly did a really great job with the conclusion to the Tethe’alla arc with a few very bizarre decisions that I’m still scratching my head over. The music and direction were spot on for Lloyd and Colette’s reunion as well as certain parts of Lloyd coming to grips with Kratos being daddy. Well, leaving aside the tentacles that hate birthday presents at least. That was juuuuuuuuust a tad corny in the middle of two much better sequences. There’s nothing new about big crystal prisons entrapping girls in their own minds, but it was still nice imagery all the same. The action does remain a bit… how to say… gimpy… compared to the Sylvarant chapters and UFOTable’s productions in general, but at least watching them all abuse a giant dragon was nice, especially given my memories of how irritating that boss battle actually is.

Like I said though, there’s a lot of the direction that really didn’t fit. I get that they’re placing a pretty big focus on Presea in this adaptation over the game, but it was a really bizarre choice to have her be the one to struggle out of the barrier. It makes logical sense in the animeverse since she’s the only one tripping on Ex-Sphere power of those four, but for her to give a speech in the process about Colette and how great she is? Not so much. She doesn’t even known non-brain dead Colette. It would have been a lot better if her little heroic speech was focused on Alicia or the Crucians treating people like tools instead of how Colette hasn’t done anything wrong. It was a good speech and good scene, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like it was written for Lloyd or Genis and then they changed their mind and had to use Presea instead. Rodyle was also not handled well at all. All he ever did was press a giant button repeatedly until Zelos knifed him… at which point he pressed the button again and spawned robot tentacles. Yeah, that was… not so good. Why not just make him grab the pendant, damn it? Why must you put tentacles into everything, Japan?

Overall though, UFOTable’s continuing to do a really good job with distilling Symphonia down to the important and best parts of both the characters and the story by still continuing to focus on the characters instead of getting bogged down in the needless nonsensical world building details that plague the Tales series in general. I just wish there weren’t entire seasons between each episode.