CodeBlazeFate

As a fan of the games, this kind of half-hearted cynical half-baked crap that Hoods presented, appalls me.

Game Anime Adaptations! If you`ve been hanging around the community for long enough, you may notice a trend. Anime adaptations of video games don`t exactly have a good rep (not as bad as movie adaptations to be honest). Sure, some like say, Persona 4 The Animation, do a good job adapting the story and characters, while putting decent production values into the music, acting, and animation, but then we get shows like Blazblue Alter Memory. Shows that botch the story, wreck the characters, and overall, not give enough of a damn to satisfy the fans who clamored for its existence. What do I mean by that? Well, Let's find out, shall we?

STORY: 2/10

If you know about the games this anime was based on (Blazblue Calamity Trigger, and Blazblue Continuum Shift), then you'd know about the many different paths and endings they have, and with exception to the Calamity Trigger Reconstruction found in an updated version of Continuum Shift known as Continuum Shift Extend, the games challenge you to determine what goes where in order to piece together the true chronology of the games (and feel like a genius in the process). The anime decided to make a lot of changes; none of which are acceptable (with one exception that goes under episode 11 spoilers). The first episode condensed so much, in such choppy and cumbersome fashion, that it almost guarantees fans to be pissed. Both games have enough material to cover about 8-9 anime episodes, so there`s about 17 episodes worth of content to adapt. The first game`s storyline is cleared in the first 2 episodes. This meant, rushing a lot of the early parts of that story, along with cutting things out entirely. Then, certain subplots of BOTH GAMES were removed entirely, seeing as they take up to past the third game to resolve. This means, we only have 10 and 1/2 episodes worth of canon material left. So, we got 2 pseudo-filler episodes to permeate what's left of the 12 episode run-time, which automatically damned the story, given how much there was to adapt. Hell, the two pseudo-filler episodes could've spent some time world building like in the games, but I bet Production I.G. was too busy counting all that Psycho Pass money to bother. Then again, they gave this to Hoods, so, whatever. It's also a terrible place for newcomers since the anime offers too many changes, and if also marred by awful pacing. Episodes 1 and 2 are especially guilty of this, with episode 1 speeding through about 5 episodes worth of content, and episode 2 slowing down dramatically compared to the pacing of episode 1, making it feel like the show hit the brakes after realizing how fast it was going. Certain motivations and story elements don't add up, and the changes, most of them range from unnecessary to downright damaging, only compound this issue, along with the issues of the next category. But before we head there, I must also mention that with the amount of stuff they cut out (more than 1/2 of the important subplots) it would be impossible to adapt the third game and make it fit with this anime. They'd have to go the Tokyo Ghoul Root A route of making up new things due to how far gone it was, and given the actual quality of the series, adaptation quality aside, I don't think they could pull that off, in the off chance that they get that sequel after all.

CHARACTERS: 3/10

Let`s start with the main protagonist, Ragna, as he gets the worst treatment here. In the games, he was a badass/jerkass who always knew what witty insults and rebuttals to come up with. He often was subjected to ridicule among a majority among the other characters, and coupled with his harsh backstory, you couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy, especially since he's actually a pretty great guy if you're not an asshole to him (for most part), well, gruesome 1-man rebellion aside. Here, if you know the personality of New Dante/Donte (BrainScrachComms reference)/Dante from DMC Devil May Cry, you can see where the anime screwed Ragna up. His development is confusing and nonsensical, he is somewhat less sharp with the tongue, yet much more of a prick, and not likable here at all, even with the backstory, well except for episode 8. Most of the others have major flaws I won't even begin to point out, lest this review become insanely tedious to make.. A lot of them are also either watered down, missing distinct personality traits from the games, or given new traits that either clash with the characters, or just come off as jarring like most characters, Makoto Nanaya, and Imperator Librarius respectively.. Only a few characters suffered little damage, and the only improved character from the source material is Lambda-11, given how little screen time she had.

ART: 3/10

The object models (most of them anyway) look on par with some anime around 2013, but that's the only praise this'll get. The character models look more generic and odd, almost annoying, especially since they are rife with animation mistakes, and you will most certainly notice them and how awful hey are. Unfortunately, there are a wild amount of lip-synching problems (in the SUB no less in 2013 where studios have normally fixed that issue to a decent extent) which bog down the animation front, and given a 12 episode series done in 2013, this is inexcusable. The fights are horrendous as well. Sure some of the later ones are borderline passable albeit still very generic, but the first and last 2 battles are all dreadful, suffering from terrible choreography, random ass mini explosions due to regular poles and swords tapping the ground (no extra supernatural or sci-fi stuff to them, just plain ol` swords and poles being swung), attacks that don't behave like in the game, and random likes drawn whenever characters battle in a top down perspective, despite the fact that NOTHING IS FLASHING!!!!! Just... DBZ spam (minus flashy attacks and blasts) that way they don't have to animate good fight scenes. This proves that this doesn't just fail as an adaptation, it fails as an action show in general. How sad that the animated cutscenes for the third game Blazblue Chronophantasma (which came out mere months before this garbage did). I get that Hoods was the one responsible for this show, but goddamn, at least TRY to make your characters look good!

SOUND: 7/10

For all my bitching about this series, at least the music staff realized how important this project was. Not only did we get great remixes of the original tracks, but they even cover different music genres! Hell, since certain characters and confrontations only got their own theme in the third game (which came out only a few months before the anime did), those themes were incorporated to the great library of music in this anime. Plus, the OP and ED were both great. Just what we`d expect from this franchise. The dub, while not AS good as ANY of the games, it's still pretty decent. Sure some characters like Nu-13 and Taokaka went in less than stellar directions, but the ADR Director, Patrick Seitz, who voices Ragna no less, managed to at least salvage some of the dialogue. Some of the other performances were also pretty good as well, even if not all characters were given the same good direction as in the games, despite having the same voice actors as the third game, which also got DUBBED before this. Plus, this anime's awful adaptation of the character designs doesn't really let them lend well towards English voices. Well, the sound`s good, and that’s something I suppose.

ENJOYMENT: 2/10

Despite the great music, and decent dub, I still heavily disliked this anime, to put it lightly. The 1st and 11th episodes pissed me off to Haruhi Season 2 levels, and most of the episodes, barring episode 8, weren`t very entertaining either. The horrid fights don't help much either. It was a borderline depressing experience of pain and fury, and barring one episode, each episode made me feel that way, and boy do I never wanna come back.

OVERALL: 3/10 RAW SCORE 3.33/10

This was a horrendous series that exemplified most of what a bad video game adaptation is. The fights sucked, the characters sucked, the story sucked, and overall, was a very weak experience. In fact, it feels like Hoods only made this to shut us Blazblue fans up, which only did the opposite given how badly Hoods fucked it up. It feels heartless and soulless. Newcomers should stay away, at least until playing the games, since this did NOT show off how an anime version of Blazblue would truly be like. Well, hopefully, whenever the final game comes out, someone can adapt this series properly. Until then, we have some games to play. With that, I bid you adieu.