Summary:

Under interrogation by Jade onboard the Tartarus, Luke finally reveals that he’s the son of Duke Fabre of the Kimlasca Kingdom. Tear tries to explain that what happened was an accident, and Jade believes her after Ion vouches for her. Ion then suggests getting Luke and Tear’s help, so Jade reveals that they’re headed towards Kimlasca under orders from the Malkuth Emperor Peony The IX to stop a war. Relations are very bad right now between the two nations, so Peony has decided to send a letter proposing a peace treaty and has asked Ion to help because of his neutrality. The reason Ion is thought to be missing right now is because he escaped from Order of Lorelei rival faction leader Mohs. Ion claims that Mohs wants war, but Tear refuses to believe this. Regardless, their mission right now requires them to enter Kimlasca to deliver the letter, and Jade wants Luke’s help in getting them in. Luke demands the respect of head-bowing from Jade though, and Jade turns out not to mind doing so for something like this. Afterward, Jade lets Luke and Tear walk freely inside the ship, but he later finds them again and brings up how Luke was kidnapped in the past because Jade doesn’t think that the Malkuth military would have done something like this. Their conversation is interrupted by the sound of alarms indicating an enemy attack.

A force of ligers commanded by Largo the Black Lion – one of the Oracle Knights’ Six God-Generals – is here, and they quickly make their way into the ship. They manage to capture Luke, and Jade at first isn’t able to do anything because Luke’s life is threatened. Largo is familiar with Jade and refers to him as a necromancer, so he tries to use an item to seal off Jade’s Fonic Artes abilities. Jade surprises him by summoning his spear, and while Tear uses her Fonic Hymns to incapacitate Largo, Jade stabs him. With Largo out of the way, Jade, Tear, and Luke proceed toward the ship’s bridge and leave Ion to Anise. The latter two get captured, so Ion entrusts the letter to Anise, and Anise gets thrown out of the ship. Luke meanwhile is shocked at all the death and bloodshed, and when he gets attacked, he kills an enemy soldier while attempting to defend himself. Unfortunately, he, Tear, and Jade then get captured by Oracle Knights Legretta and Asch. Luke regains consciousness sometime later and immediately remembers how he killed someone. He’s against more fighting and killing, but Jades feel that it can’t be helped because doing nothing in this situation means that war will begin and even more people will die. Tear explains that she doesn’t kill because she likes to but because there is only life or death on the battlefield.

With Luke willing to fight again, Jade breaks them out of their prison and uses a special command to initiate an emergency shutdown of the ship. They arrive at one of the exits of the ship right as Legretta – who Tear recognizes – is returning with Ion, so they ambush her and seemingly capture her. This is short-lived though because the young Oracle Knight Arietta bursts onto the scene with her Liger, and that catches Jade and company off-guard long enough for Legretta to regain control. The tables turn once again when Guy suddenly appears, and Jade uses the opportunity to take Arietta as a hostage. Since he has the upper hand, Jade forces all of the enemy back onto the ship and then escapes with Luke, Tear, Ion, Mieu, and Guy. They get a decent distance away before having to stop because Ion needs to catch his breath, and Guy finally introduces himself to the group. Everyone welcomes him, and Guy’s fine with all of them except for Tear because of his fear of women. The group then gets attacked by another squad of Oracle Knights, and Luke can only watch as the others dispatch their enemy. He’s still traumatized by the killing, and when one of the Oracle Knights charges at him, Luke is frozen in fear. To Luke’s surprise and shock, Tear leaps in and takes the hit for him.

Preview:

After much delay, I finally got caught up on the first few episodes of Tales of the Abyss, and it turned out to be better than I thought it’d be. Granted, this is a Sunrise production, so it’s probably not really surprising that I liked it – it has high production values, is pretty fast-paced, and has an interesting and fairly likable set of characters. I’m enjoying Koyasu Takehito as Jade and Yukana as Tear (she reminds me of C.C. in the mysterious heroine sort of way), and even Luke isn’t so bad despite his more pompous and whiny moments. The only eyebrow-raising thing I have to note is that they’re using splashes of neon red to represent blood, and that seems really out-of-place and censored.

I’ve had no experience with the game, so everything story-wise is all relatively new to me, but so far it all feels very RPG-ish. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I can recognize all the classic RPG standards of gathering a group and getting captured & locked up (see: Houdini’s Postulate) and stuff. I can’t blame the anime production on that since this is indeed based off a PS2 RPG, but what Sunrise might want to work on is some better scene transitions because sometimes characters leave only to return moments later with no explanation of what happened. The best examples of this are when Jade has work to do, but he rejoins the group moments later to ask Luke about the kidnapping, and when Jade and Tear leave Luke behind to go to the bridge only to return moments later after Luke kills a soldier. In the latter example, it wasn’t long enough for them to have accomplished something, but it was long enough so that they were probably too far away to hear what was going on outside, and I just found the timing really odd. In any case, the story hasn’t really shined on its own yet, but I’ve heard good things from people who’ve played the game and have generally liked what I’ve seen so far, so I’m looking forward to what happens next and will probably continue blogging this.

41 Comments

  1. PS: Animezzz, Guy suddenly appears because Guy is awesome. Hmmm… I think it was because guy had been searching for Luke or something and heard rumors… *shrugs* I can’t remember exactly its been awhile since I played the game… however I do know that later on it should be explained because there’s a lot of background on Guy to be explained throughout the anime. ^^

    LENEX
  2. Yay! Two of my favorite characters show up! Asch and Guy! I love them! Guy is so cute and Asch is just plain badass. And actually, when I heard about the anime I started to play the game again and I don’t think it gives a good reason on how he found Luke. I think the rumor thing is probably right but it never really says. Whatever, he’s just amazing. ^_^

    Hanah
  3. Jade and Anise were my favorite characters in the game, and even Luke wasn’t bad despite all his obvious negative points, because I could acknowledge that it was all for better effect later on – of course, had I stopped to play the game before that one big event, I would probably have left with a bad impression of Luke.

    One thing Luke-haters should probably think about is to consider the later development of the character, especially when you put into the equation that the main theme of the game is “Karma”, just like what the theme song is called. Consider Luke using the principle of “Karma”, and you’ll see just why I think that the game was brilliantly written in terms of Luke’s progression and growth.

    tokugawa
  4. I found it werd too…, how can Guy found Luke so quickly when he was even thrown to another (enemies) country? Did he not check his own country first before search Luke in another one….

    Pea
  5. Well, Guy is pretty smart and everyone saw the light (atleast it looked that way) from the hyperessonace (I’m a bad speller so whatever) that transported Luke and Tear to Malkuth. That probably gave some sort of general direction to base his search on. He had been searching for him and probably asking around- and some of it was probably just luck.

    That and Guy is just awesome~

    Silawen
  6. I like how the anime actually differs from the game.

    In the sequence in the game, Guy actually lands on top of the oracle soldier, retrieves fon master Ion and then blocks the 2 bullet shots while saying “enter the amazing guy”
    Luke is also potrayed as far less then as asshole then he is in the game, which is refreshing to say the least.
    and one more thing is they actually show things happening that were described as text in the game IE: Anine being thrown out the window screaming “ill kill you bastards”
    Next up is choral castle and the river dungeon so they get through quite a bit of game play that way.

    Silentfate
  7. They never did explain how Guy found Luke so fast in the game (reason has always been that Guy was awesome). It would also be nice if Sunrise could animate some skit scenes from the game into the story. It’s pretty much where most of the humor in the game is from.

    drgnwing0
  8. i like this anime its story and characters are really interesting, but the main character really bugs me…his va is annoying and the way he freaks about killing people bugs me..i hope he gets that haircut we see in the opening real soon too cause his hair bugs me as well…lol

    whatchamini
  9. I do have issues with this anime, it seems to me they’re cramming too much into every single episode to be sure the viewer knows everything by the time things will get more complicated.

    ximpa
  10. @Ximpa

    I couldn’t disagree more. The game has an extremely long storyline and I believe the anime has been doing one hell of a good job in capturing everything in every episode. Complications are expected, but cramming? No way.

    Minnie
  11. hey all you dumbass that are spoiling the anime serie, Go away i know you have played the game and know the story so stop waving you epenis about your knowledge of the story and spoiling it for all those people who havent played the game or know the story. In other word STFU

    gogo
  12. Yay God Generals and Guy!

    @Ximpa
    You wanna see cramming? Go watch Tales of Symphonia OVA. Putting not even half of the game in 4 episodes each 30 minutes long. Maybe the next arc will be better.

    I agree with Minnie that Sunrise is doing a great job with each episode.

    P3
  13. Anise. Haaaaaa. Your epic fall [misspelling intended] with those words is… very epic.

    BTW, I have a hypothesis as to why Guy found Luke so fast.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    …Maybe he has supah!gay Luke senses

    …which I highly doubt.

    lena
  14. @P3: Well, putting it simply, the ToS crams in a lot of things but at least it’s got more than 4 episodes and they’re only up to like, first 1/3 of the game. ToP squeezes in the ENTIRE GAME in 4 episodes and putting it simply, it does not work. At all. They jump from like, one of the first scenes (while skipping a lot) to one of the middle scenes in the first episode while skipping actually meeting two of the parties members and just saying “o, we already found them kthnxbai”.

    Acerbus
  15. “The only eyebrow-raising thing I have to note is that they’re using splashes of neon red to represent blood, and that seems really out-of-place and censored.”

    Well, at least they don’t go from maroon colored blood to black blood like they did in Groove Adventure Rave. haha. I’d go for neon red rather that characters covered in mysterious black liquid. (Or the regular crimson red will do perfectly fine too..lol.)

    silv3rdr34ms
  16. well, there’s a reason why guy was there, which you would know if you played the game.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    f4chaos
  17. WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT, LUKE IS MADE OF AWESOME. In every possible way. Does nobody appreciate what a work of art it is to have such a perfectly executed asshole be the main character? xD <33 Gawd, I totally want to be BFF with Luke… how he manages to say the worst things at all the worst times is just fantastic.

    He’s like a spoiled little fluffy critter. A very cute one with hair that all hairdos in the world should envy. I WANT HIS HAIR D8

    ((I wish they didn’t make him less asshole-ish. The more asshole-ey he is, the more entertaining it is. xD *bricked* ))

    Mythee

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *