Forum - View topicREVIEW: Xenosaga: The Animation DVD 1
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CorneredAngel
 Posts: 854 Location: New York, NY |
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<i>Another is Albedo, a technical reference to light refraction which explains the color scheme used for that character's design.<i>
It becomes obvious a bit later on in the game (...and possibly in the anime) that Albedo's name is actually a reference to the other meaning of the term, which derives from alchemy and psychology. /Xeno-series fanboy. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I think I'll just play through the game again. I prefer the games style and playing it was pretty much like watching Anime anyway. Call me when they make a Episode II animation.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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After playing through most of the first one, I wish they'd just made a CG flick out of it rather than making me go through all those terrible combat/dungeon sequences just to get to the 45-minute cutscenes.
It's pretty clear the director of the game wanted to make a movie instead, why not just let him? |
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5466 |
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I wondered the same thing, but once I played Episode III the reason became "deeper" than I realized. 
And out of curiosity, did this volume show off Shion's personal weapon which was that orange M.W.S. on her left arm?
If that ever happens (which is slim to none), it better be better than the game because in terms of plot, it was pretty lacking (yeah, we learned a lot more about Jr., but Shion and KOS-MOS got seriously shafted there). And by better I mean inserting the plot points that were supposedly "removed" in Episode II game. 
On another note, I have this aching feeling on renting this volume just for giggles. |
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AuraShadow
 Posts: 242 Location: Texas |
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(reposting what I wrote under the shelf-life column)
I actually saw the Xenosaga dub at animefest this year and it was AMAZING! Chris Ayres had such dedication to the dub and from the stories he told us about it went leaps and bounds to make sure that it stayed true for it's fans. (Like there was a mispronunciation of one of the names so he called back in every actor that had said that name to redo their lines) Not only that but his voice actor choices were spot on in most cases and he very much seemed to avoid using the big named voice actors in roles they didn't fit. He used actors that fit the characters rather than just the weight of their names, which makes all the difference nowadays. Didn't they use the phrase "Little Master" in the games as well? I thought it was fine in the anime as it was in the games. Last edited by AuraShadow on Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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darkchibi07
Posts: 5466 |
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Yes, that was definitely in the games as well. It's still a creepy translation overall though. 
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AuraShadow
Posts: 242 Location: Texas |
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lol It never sounded weird to me but meh I'm in my first year in japanese so maybe when I get hire up I'll think that way 
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I could not agree with you more. Although I didn't hate the gameplay that much, but found it pretty generic. After beating the game, I wished someone would just fill in the gaps with a few more cutscenes and relase it as a film or something.
Yeah, I realize that its probably not gonna happen. I didn't hate the plot of episode II, although it would have been nice if it didn't completely abandon the stuff going on with Shion and KOS-MOS so much. Really, though what I didn't like was the graphics. They ditched the Animeish 3D CGI look I loved so much from Ep I and went with the more realistic style. |
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daedelus
 Posts: 743 Location: Texas City, TX (ajd: 6/11/05) |
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Just an interesting tidbit: For those fans who preordered Episode 2 directly from Namco(it was just Namco back then), received a free limited edition DVD that included virtually all of the cutscenes from Episode 1. It clocks in at over 4 hours. I watched it right before beginning Ep 2 and it was a great recap of the story. I was hoping they would make the same offer when Ep 3 was coming out, but alas, no such offer was made. I consider it to be one of my most prized possesions. I saw the first episode at Atsui-Con, and just like AuraShadow, I got to listen to the english dub director Chris Ayres speak very passionately about how hard he worked to stay true to the fans. I really appreciated his level of commitment. I love all things Xenosaga, so I'm really looking forward to this. EDIT: spelling error |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18179 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Nope. And if it explains anything about the review or the ratings I gave the series, I should point out that I have never played the game. All the anime-game comparisons are purely based on online research rather than actual experience. (But that also means that I do know what the thing with KOS-MOS's eye color changing actually means. Will be curious to see if they explain that anywhere later in this series, since I've heard that doesn't get dealt with until much, much later in the game play.) |
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Xenofan 29A
 Posts: 378 |
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This debate's been going on for years since Ep I came out, and before that, people were lamblasting Xenogears for the same thing. Simply put, either game (Xenogears or Xenosaga) is too long and too complex to condense into a 2 hour movie or a 12 episode anime series. The anime version of Xenosaga failed partially for this reason, and partially because it was badly made. As a hardened RPG veteran, I thought that the gameplay in XS1 was quite good. The dungeons were very lengthy, but they had good atmosphere and architechture. Comapare them to, say, Final Fantasy X, in which the "dungeons" were bland, not terribly difficult, and generally exceedingly linear. The combat was a lot more difficult than a lot of recent RPGs, and I think that's a part of what turned people off. There were a lot of customizable elements, some enemies seemed to take very little damage most of the time, and there was no typical run command.
It shows up in the "filler" episode. Augh! Thinking about that episode makes me angry.
That explains your minimal knowledge of Mitsuda's brilliant score. If you had heard that thing in its entirety, you would wonder why Kosuke Yamashita got hired instead. And I disagree that his score takes cues from the game's style. The anime's score is terribly, terribly generic, while the game's score is an aural masterpiece. Okay, I'll stop my Mitsuda fanboyishness. One thing that gets me about this anime version is how many things are left (inexplicably) unexplained. One of the worst is spoiler[the nude Shion in the opening sequence,] which was explained in the game, but taken out of context here and never inserted into the actual series itself. |
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Josh7289
Posts: 1252 |
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I agree. The game definitely did not seem like a game...In a bad way. |
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BleuVII
 Posts: 672 Location: Tokorozawa, Japan |
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Yeah. It was one of my prized posessions too, until somebody borrowed it AND Episode II when I was out of town, didn't tell me about it, and then forgot to return it. As far as the Episode II movies go, I captured them and strung them into 10 half-hour episodes years ago. They haven't been available for quite some time, and they are very low quality, but I've toyed with the idea of putting them on youtube. As for the anime, the things that drove me away were: 1) They lazy art style. Character proportions often changed, and the whole thing just didn't look clean. I'm pretty sure there are some hentai out there with better animation. 2) Uninspired score. The opening theme is awesome, but the rest is lackluster. Coming from Mitsuda's masterpiece to this was a kick in the shins. 3) Awkward pacing. When you look at it, the animation had six hours in which to tell the story, which is plenty. Instead, they wasted time on embarrasingly awful scenes. The last three episodes were the only good ones. 4) Continuity changes. There was no excuse for this. In Japan, they re-released Episode I and II together for the DS, and it looks great. They changed some story elements around, but retold everything in a concise and understandable way. It only Namco would translate it. |
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Henry Jones
 Posts: 97 Location: Nebraska |
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Why does Xenosaga always have to be the whipping boy for this argument? I'm much more on the case of Final Fantasy X where the cinematics went so far as disrupting the enjoyment of the game by their length, and more importantly, placement. If there was a tough boss placed after a 15 minute cutscene and you lost, tough cookies. You have to sit through it again because you can't skip it. It doesn't sound like the case for you, Zac, but it always feels to me like the problem was people weren't enjoying the CONTENT of the cutscenes much more than they weren't enjoying the length. If we go back to Xenogears, it suffered from many of the same problems as Xenosaga does, with tons of curscenes with SLOW text you couldn't speed up. Sure the battle system was better, but it was marred by a frustrating encounter rate (And with a 3-D rotating dungeon and lots of similar looking terrain, it's very easy to lose your bearings). That's not accounting for the times they leave you without a goal when you go somewhere and you have to spend an hour figuring out what to do while "Bonds of Sea and Fire" loops on the soundtrack ENDLESSLY. But the story is quite good and comes together marvelously save the budget-slashed second disk. It would not be a problem for me if people complained that they took a multi-flavored, moody drama built on character tragedies and made it a more dry, candy-coated space opera built on scope, spectacle, and melodrama (The former a much more effective combination in my book). Oh yeah, and Xenosaga's ATROCIOUS character design (I know this is anime style, but garters on a war machine android=NO). But it isn't. It's always the cutscene length. Maybe it's because I didn't have too much problem with the gameplay-to-cutscene ratio. The beginning starts a little slow and going through everything that needs to be sorted through to get out of the first ship is way more drawn out than it needs to be, but I thought the rest of the game balanced it out quite well (Though I could've done without TWO guided tours of the Elsa). The story wasn't as interesting as Xenogears, but the added interactivity with the game made it involving enough that I quite enjoyed it, especially when Albedo comes into play. There are individual scenes I can watch by themselves and be sucked into it, but most of it feels like it's missing something without the gameplay. It's a lot to rant about for a petty annoyance replied to someone outside the people who caused it, but I see people revering half of Squaresoft/Square-Enix's ultra-shiny-style-over-mediocre-gameplay titles while at the same time putting Xenosaga Episode I on some sort of pedistool of mockery for its cutscenes, and it makes me shake my head. Now, if you want to put Episode II on that pedistool, that's another story. That whole game feels like a rush job built on bad ideas made worse by slowness. I mean, a whole PS 2 disc spent going almost nowhere?! Complex puzzles built on an interface that feels coated with molasses?! Cutscenes that almost flaunt their shortcomings?! It's a dog and it's a shame one has to play through that to get to the marvelous, well-oiled machine that is Episode III. As for the anime, it felt like a Readers' Digest version of the story through and through and I could not get past two episodes. It doesn't do anything really bad, but aside from bringing in Albedo early, which was fine by me, it doesn't give a unique or interesting spin on the series and mostly leaves me just wanting to play the game for more story delivered more effectively. |
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AuraShadow
Posts: 242 Location: Texas |
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Unfortunately it all comes down to your preference in Xenosaga's (or many other games for that matter) case. Many gamers want fast pace action, which would subsequently mean shorter cutscenes, and some enjoy being able to be get into a story regardless of it's length. I personally prefer story over gameplay (Hence why I'm such a huge .hack fan... .hack//GU Vol 3 out now
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There will never be a game loved by all so as much as it sucks for the fans it does make sense as to why they don't like it. Maybe that is why they made the anime the way they did, to shorten the story a bit for newcomers to get them interested in the series, and at the same time give the veterans a different take on things if they happened differnetly. |
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