Tales of Zestiria: The X

nathanlassen Aug 15, 2016

6

When I started watching this series I had high hopes, sadly this anime doesn't come close to what I had hoped for, it contains far too many flaws in it's fantasy setup for my taste. Don't continue reading unless your fine with some spoilers!  The story starts out with the princess of a kingdom out and about, stumbling through ruines and going on crazy quests, the entire beginning of the story seems unstructured, for one the princess is naive in the extreme and acts totally unbefitting for a ruler, the main plot is built up in an amature fashion, the princess interest in ruins, which for some reason are randomely placed literally whenver convienient, furthermore it is unlogical for the pricess, the ruler of the kingdom to constantly be putting herself in danger, instead of actually ruling and having others do such tasks in her stead. Another surprise of the story is when you find out how masterful her fighting skills are for a normal teenage looking girl, who doesn't seem to have ever trained, the only hint is another non suitable warrior character, which the princess calls her master. What alos bothers me is that no background information is given, who are her parents, why are they not mentioned and what the fuck is she even doing in her kingdom?? I'm not surprised she has assasins after her (which miraculously all fail, since she's such an amazing fighter not even trained assasins can "harm" her). For me the story took an upward turn, when introduced to the main character( The shepherd) Who adds a little more direction and life to the story. Sadly that life is quickly extinguished, when you see his steriotypical naive nature, which even though far more interesting than all the other characters introduced, is made worthless rather fast as the story progresses it's "plot". Another unrealistic scene is the fight the main character has when his home is invaded my evil and all the seraphs split up for some reason to go fight it alone?- Which ends in a minor casualty and the main character without even being made a shephard yet smashes through walls and flies over a hundred meters, where earlier a seraph had to save him from a 60 meter fall.. What's more, later the lady of the lake proclaims that she cannot purify evil, only the shephard, which makes me wonder what use the seraphs are for than. To me it seems the story is made up on the go.  The animation is slightly above average, there are some scenes which are beautifully made, on the other hand the character animation makes it hard for me to take the characters seriously, for example when the princess loses all her friends (who were never properly introduced in the first place), it seemed more like a bad joke to me, an attempt to be serious. Furthermore the fighting scenes are mixed, some are made rather well and some make me wish they'd just skip the entire scene and cut the bullshit. Recommendation:  I'd recommend this anime to people who are bored and have nothing else to watch, it may not be too great and there are loads of better anime out there, but it is still above average compared to a lot of other crap out there and certainly in the top 13 of this seasons releases. I strongly however doubt that this will become anyones favorite and if your tastes are similar to mine, you'll probably get bored with this anime rather quickly.

Gaunter Dec 24, 2020

9

Among the countless varieties of computer games, jRPGs have always been somewhat special; most of them have quite a plot to boast about. Tales of Zestiria the Cross is a Japanese anime television series based on both Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria video games developed by Bandai Namco Studios that was made to promote both games. It is produced by Ufotable, directed by Haruo Sotozaki and written by Hikaru Kondo, featuring character designs by Akira Matsushima and music by Motoi Sakuraba and Go Shiina. But did it help to appreciate Berseria and Zesteria? This is the question I will try to answer.Tales of Zesteria as mentioned before is based on the game and, of course, the game has many details that have not been mentioned in the anime adaptation. Story wise, from way back, people worshiped Seraphs as Gods. Seraphs are beings that are able to use magic, however, they have always been among people. Yet, only a few are able to see them, those who can, leave their names and legacies in the history of the mankind. Sorey, the main protagonist of the series, is a human raised by the Seraphs. Long-long time ago, Shepherds, humans contracted to a powerful Seraph, were that only power keeping peace and all terrors of wars away from the humanity. They are no more, so the world sinks in malevolence. Sorey having saved the princess, finds out that the humanity is in grave danger yet again. He together with his friend Mikleo and the princess Alisha embarks on a quest to save the mankind.The fact that the series is based on the game is pretty obvious; there are so many interesting characters, with a well thought out storyline. And, of course, it is nothing special for a game, where you can devote character and story as much time as you want, however, it is all different for an anime. So, long story short, Tales of Zesteria, does not have enough episodes to work with, in result, characters do not receive enough development. Indeed, the heroes cannot be called bad, because they still get some development to work with. And this is the main problem, because not only does the series lack enough time to provide the viewer with a good story and well-developed characters, but it also tries to show the events of Tales of Berseria, which is kinda a prequel to Zesteria.And that is why it fails. Tales of Berseria alone has so many things that are needed to be explained to the viewers for them to have some kind of an understanding of what is happening, but the series also tries to focus on the events of Tales of Zesteria, so what I am trying to say is that with no time to waste, the creators should have made an anime adaptation of either Tales of Berseria, or Tales of Zesteria only. That way, it would have done the work the way it should be. But as something that should promote the game, it did its job pretty well. Even with some great misses in story and character development, Tales of Zesteria the anime is still an amazing journey, with quite a stunning animation and amazing OST. Indeed, it has problems I have already mentioned, but you might check the game and enjoy the amazing world of the both Tales games, too. Even if you do not want to check the game, do check the anime series; quite an enjoyable series to watch.

22kittycats Feb 15, 2017

5

I decided to watch this anime, cause I saw quite a hype going about it and it has 4 star rating here as well. Well disapointed describes my emotions perfectly. The first 3 episodes is an absolute bullcrap. They just throw you into this world with no explanation whatsoever, "introduces" this absurd princess, then starts juping from place to place (apparently following what the princess is doing) again not explaining what is going on properly. The whole of first episode I was just asking 'What?' and 'What's happening?'. By the time they acually introduced the main character, Soryu, I was almost ready to give up. Not that I can say anything good about him either, just another "overly excited naive hero". At least the story itself started to make more sense from there on, but they never bothered to give any backstory to anyone, so I still was left with a ton of questions. All the characters are weak as well (mostly because we don't know anything about them, other than gender name and status). I can't even say there was any character development either, cause there wasn't. Only good about this anime is it's above average animation and quite awesome soundtrack. Now, please, don't criticise me too much, but I only found out it was based on a video game after I watched it. And after finding that out I can say that it does not even work as a promotion to the game. I have no desire whatsoever to play the game after watching it. On the contrary I think it would be quite boring. That's just my opinion though, you don't have to like it...