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EP. REVIEW: Tales of Zestiria the X


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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 9:00 pm Reply with quote
Regarding why Alisha can head off on her own: She's *Sorey's* Squire, not a Sub-Lord of Lailah. Sorey is Lailah's vessal, and all sub-lords have to remain in whatever vessel the prime lord is using (namely, the Shepherd). Squires, being human, don't have that sort of thing going on, so Alisha is free to go wherever she wants.

The differences between the game and the anime are interesting, but I'm not going to discuss them, at least not at the moment.
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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 9:11 pm Reply with quote
Treecko Tempo wrote:
Dessa wrote:
Also, in the post-story Alisha DLC spoiler[Alisha has taken over the mantle of Shepherd].

I think you mean spoiler[Rose, because Alisha becomes her Squire.]


Yes, thank you, I keep getting words mixed up with my keyboard half broken ^^;
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#844391



Joined: 09 Sep 2015
Posts: 517
PostPosted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 11:56 pm Reply with quote
Sorey reminds me of Shiro from fate/stay night. "I will save everyone and make the world a happy place!" Usually just before he gets his ass kicked heh.

The lord of calamity is right in one sense, if malevolence is created from negative human feelings then it's not going away anytime soon so long as humans are humans. If anything I'm surprised humanity has survived as long as it has, you would have thought the evil would have already overrun the world at this point with no shepherd around for so long.
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Shuffleblade



Joined: 26 Sep 2016
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 1:46 am Reply with quote
Having a reviewer that hasn't played the game really makes for an interesting read since how she intepreted things were different from how viewers that know the source material do(obviously). Very entertaining, looking forward to the second season.
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Generations



Joined: 21 Jul 2016
Posts: 204
PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 3:59 am Reply with quote
As a final episode for the season, that was more than a little underwhelming. At first I was glad at some of the changes they did, but overall they didn't seem to have gone anywhere with it.

Here's some of the changes from the game, both good and ill:

Rose and Dezel. In the anime, Rose was aware of Dezel's presence though she could not see him. In the game, Rose could neither hear nor see any seraphim and only became attuned to their presence thanks to becoming the Shepherd's squire. spoiler[Dezel was living in Rose to use her as a mock vessel and an instrument of his revenge against the one who killed his friend and ruined the name of the Windriders, basically controlling her moves when she's unconscious without her consent.] This is an acceptable change, since it puts Rose and Dezel closer to the group and that whole 'ghosts' thing was just a minor comic relief subplot that wasn't really that entertaining in the game.

The Lord of Calamity's speech. This is probably one of the worst changes they did for the anime, because it made the Lord of Calamity more stock as a villain. In the anime, he was more chatty before fighting and kept going on and on about the typical 'malevolence came from man' speech that we've heard over a million times already. In the game, the Lord of Calamity didn't single out man as a source of malevolence, but attributed it to all living things (which makes sense). Humans, seraphim, and all living beings can be affected by malevolence, and his goal was to corrupt the supposedly-incorruptible Shepherd (aka Sorey).

The Lord of Calamity fight. Again, kind of an unnecessary change. In the anime, Sorey attacks and the LoC does that thing where he catches it and uses his minions to fight the heroes. In the game, the Lord of Calamity's own domain is so strong that it actually nullifies Sorey's own Shepherd domain and disconnects him from his seraphim, effectively rendering them both useless and invisible to him. It was at that point that he had to run away to prevent them from being corrupted by malevolence, having lost his domain's protection.

Acquiring Rose. In the anime, Rose became Sorey's companion as payment of what he owed her for getting them into Ladylake without papers. In the game, you paid that debt earlier by doing a sidequest. After fighting and being defeated by the Lord of Calamity, Sorey is saved by Rose as they fall off a cliff. There, they recuperate at Rose's assassin's guild hideout, and after meeting Dezel and doing an investigation into an underground ruin, Rose becomes his squire. Again, this is a fairly good change, since that whole 'underground ruin' thing was just minor joke setup for Rose and her becoming the squire then didn't really make that much more sense there. Whether the anime will, however, we'll find out eventually.

Sorey's fight with the general. While the fight with the general also happened in the game, the scene where Sorey purifies the general and gets angry at him for being responsible for Alisha's attack is anime-only. And... I don't get this scene. It LOOKED like it was going somewhere, but that tension ran for all of two seconds before he was the same as always. What was even the point of adding that scene?

Overall, I can't judge the anime fairly on its own merits since I can't forget what I already know of the game, but I do recommend playing the game since the anime skipped a ton of good character development and changed some strange plot points that were better left untouched. Also, I'm surprised that no one talked about the awkward 'boob talk' and self-groping scene in the previous episode. Because if there's anything Zestiria didn't have, it's the Tales Of standard 'small boobs girl compares herself to huge boobs girl of party'. Which has never been funny since the history of time.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 9:59 am Reply with quote
This is mostly directed at the above post, because there are some game nits that need to be picked there:

1. Rose and Dezel: It wasn't Rose becoming Sorey's Squire that allowed her to see Seraphim, it was her overcoming her fear of "ghosts" that allowed it. Basically, she had a (sort of) self-imposed mental block: she couldn't see them because she *didn't want* to see them, and only when that block was removed did she begin to see them.

2. The Lord of Calamity fight: well, calling it a fight is being very, very generous. Sorey's resonance was crushed by the LoC's domain, which meant he couldn't see or summon any of the Seraphim. He didn't "run away" after that, the LoC departed, leaving Sorey to fight Hellanized soldiers without anyone to help. Sorey would've died then, but Rose saved him, getting hurt herself in the process.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 12:07 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
But the bad guys still look down at them, calling the two women in question, Alisha, the princess of the country and a knight, and Rose, leader of a merchant/assassin guild, girls (I do not know their age so I can't explore that angle).


I think you're reading to much into that. I can easily picture the guy calling Sorey 'kozou' that called those two 'komusume' (girls). It is about treating not treating them like adults (which none of them are) but children getting in the way of adults doing their jobs. The fact that he had so many soldiers there shows he wasn't looking down on Alisha (not sure he knew who Rose was).
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 12:34 pm Reply with quote
SilverTalon01 wrote:
zrnzle500 wrote:
But the bad guys still look down at them, calling the two women in question, Alisha, the princess of the country and a knight, and Rose, leader of a merchant/assassin guild, girls (I do not know their age so I can't explore that angle).


I think you're reading to much into that. I can easily picture the guy calling Sorey 'kozou' that called those two 'komusume' (girls). It is about treating not treating them like adults (which none of them are) but children getting in the way of adults doing their jobs. The fact that he had so many soldiers there shows he wasn't looking down on Alisha (not sure he knew who Rose was).


No he was looking down on them. One of the times he referred to them he basically said "How haven't you beaten them yet?! They're just two girls." Whether that was because their age or gender, that clearly is looking down on them, and since looking down on women for their gender is hardly a rare thing, I would contend it is at least plausible that it could in part be their gender for which he looked down upon them. After rewatching the confrontation between the hellionized Landon and Sorey, he only refers to him by his title, Shepard, never seeming to regard him as a meddling child but an enemy he needed to take out personally. Granted he also refers to Alisha by her title as well, though also calling her an idealistic fool in the same sentence so not necessarily out of respect for her as a person but it's not nothing.

The number of soldiers there was entirely incidental to his respect for them. It was in the command center. Only the most arrogant and/or stupid commander would not have a good deal of soldiers to guard him in case the enemy was of a mind to shake up their chain of command so to speak.

My point was not to say that the show's world is particularly unprogressive when it comes to how women are viewed in society, just that it was not as uniformly progressive on the subject as chaccide seemed to contend, though they were not wrong on the male main characters' commendable attitude on the subject. I don't really want to make a big deal on this point, as I frankly wouldn't have saw fit to mention it if chaccide had not made the point that they did.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 3:13 pm Reply with quote
Generations wrote:
Sorey's fight with the general. While the fight with the general also happened in the game, the scene where Sorey purifies the general and gets angry at him for being responsible for Alisha's attack is anime-only. And... I don't get this scene. It LOOKED like it was going somewhere, but that tension ran for all of two seconds before he was the same as always. What was even the point of adding that scene?


Much like Jesus trashing the temple, it's to show that our messianic hero is capable of human emotions. Sorey's been an all loving pure pure boy the whole series but we finally see him get genuinely pissed off at some one for hurting his waifu. That he lets himself feel that anger but also doesn't let it consume him speaks more to his strength of character.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 7:30 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Presumably his little book contained a spell to heal Alisha, because we see him keeping watch over her after Rose asked for (or demanded) his help, and the princess does survive to become Sorey's squire.


Actually Rebecca, the Celestial Record doesn't contain any healing spells; it's just a record of ages past. Most likely Sorey asked one of them (or all of them) to cast their healing magic on her since every playable Seraph has a healing arte in their artes list.

Came for DarkLeomon's appearance, was not disappointed. I wish he'd been voiced by George C. Cole in the game (as well as the dub for this) instead of Patrick Seitz (nothing against the Seitz mind you) because that would have been the perfect reference. Come on, One Punch Man did it! XD

As for the episode itself, it was great in its structuring, and has everything all set up for the second half in 2017. I can agree the fight with the hellionized General Landon looked like it was going to lead to something drastic and quickly dropped whatever buildup it had, but a better way to look at it is that it proved that Sorey is still human and he still feels things like other humans do. Just because he's the Shepherd doesn't mean he's forbidden from ever feeling anything again. He's allowed to get angry and cry just like anyone else, otherwise there's no way for anyone to relate to him and he'd become a lot less likable as a protagonist. I'd daresay he'd be the worst kind of Gary Stu if that were to be the case.

Overall, I have to say the anime has done a much better job getting through the game's events than the game itself did, due to the latter's poor pacing and unexplained portions (rushed development is nothing new for the Tales series though, it's been happening since Abyss). It's a little funny because the mindset used to be that animated adaptations of games were always frowned upon due to how off the rails they were, but then again most games didn't really have much of a story to work with back in those days. It's just really amazing when an adaptation does a much better job of telling and structuring the story than the original source material, especially when it doesn't have the luxury of pacing that a game does. Honestly, I don't think I could ever touch Zestiria again game-wise (it was such a frustrating experience for me and I won't sugarcoat that), but I will definitely be picking up the English dub when it gets a home release on Blu-Ray.
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chaccide



Joined: 16 Aug 2016
Posts: 295
PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:35 pm Reply with quote
zrnzle500 wrote:
chaccide wrote:
One thing I really like about this show is that not only do the women kick ass, but the men fully expect them to. Not one male thinks he needs to stop them from acting, or protect them from themselves or anyone else. (Unlike certain other popular shows this season...)


But the bad guys still look down at them, calling the two women in question, Alisha, the princess of the country and a knight, and Rose, leader of a merchant/assassin guild, girls (I do not know their age so I can't explore that angle). Sure the protagonists are respectably trusting in their ability to defend themselves, but the men of the show fully expecting them to kick ass? Aside from the protagonists, that doesn't appear to be the case. I don't hold it against the show and that attitude towards women is definitely par for the course of that time period. But I will repeat that it is commendable that some of the characters don't think that way, especially since they are the protags.


Of course the bad guys are going to be sexist. They're also racists who want to enslave their own populations. They're most of the bad "ists" in the book. Nobody looks to villains for positive attitudes about women. The opinions that matter and the ones I'm referring to are those of the good guys. Those tell the true heart and attitude of the show, and not once do the heroes try to protect the little women or stop them from their missions. They accept that they can handle what they take on and watch them go without a quibble. Not one says otherwise, so yeah they fully expect the women of this show to kick ass.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 10:13 pm Reply with quote
^I agree that villains aren't and don't need to be role models (though I would say the best villains are the ones who don't just represent all the bad "-isms" in the book). I agree that it is commendable for the show to have male characters with such attitudes towards women and the opinions of the protagonists are more important to this end than any other characters. I was just trying to suggest that their attitude may not have been as widely held in their world as your post seemed to imply.

Side Question for anyone: Were the bad guys racists who wanted to enslave their own people? I might have missed something if that is the case.
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Generations



Joined: 21 Jul 2016
Posts: 204
PostPosted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 2:02 am Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Much like Jesus trashing the temple, it's to show that our messianic hero is capable of human emotions. Sorey's been an all loving pure pure boy the whole series but we finally see him get genuinely pissed off at some one for hurting his waifu. That he lets himself feel that anger but also doesn't let it consume him speaks more to his strength of character.


That would have been a strong and gripping scene if it didn't last all of but two seconds and if it didn't just come out of nowhere to cap out the season. Seriously, that general was like 'ooga booga!' out of the bushes and the scene ends within a minute.


zrnzle500 wrote:
Side Question for anyone: Were the bad guys racists who wanted to enslave their own people? I might have missed something if that is the case.


A lot of the regular-human non-malevolence villains are mostly self-serving unscrupulous greedy people, not really going so far into enslaving.

As I said in a previous comment, Alisha is actually fighting more than just Bartlow. There's also military chancellor Mathia (who leads the royal army), the administrator of law Professor Simon, and Archbishop Nathael, Hyland's equivalent of the pope to Rolance's regular pope.spoiler[Rolance's pope is probably the FIRST pope in a JRPG that isn't evil.]

All of them don't believe in the existence of the Shepherd legend (he hasn't shown up in a thousand years after all), and believe that Sorey and Alisha were merely using each other to stage a coup against the kingdom. They also believed a scandal would break out if people found out the royal family was supporting what they believed to be a false Shepherd. But since he had already gained the favour of the populace, they instead wanted to control him and in turn the people -- especially at the time, when with the war looming, people's morale was low.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 4:53 am Reply with quote
That scene when Sorey was boring holes into Alisha with those big eyes gave me a real jump scare when they cut to her staring right back, with her zombie-colored skin and hair and only her eyes lit up like Christmas. Yikes! Shocked

The way they'd been framing it all, with the massive amounts of blood pouring out of her before, and his covering her body with the blankets, and her conversational narration made me think she'd died and he was talking to her spirit. I don't think I was entirely convinced she hadn't died until she was clearly alive the next day. Smile
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Luke's JRPG Channel





PostPosted: Tue Sep 27, 2016 3:38 pm Reply with quote
I enjoyed this from start to finish, I liked the differences from the game, It was definitely better and I also liked seeing Berseria involved.

Makes me want to play the game again that's for sure.
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