Posted by  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Summary:
After Tear wakes back up, she heals her own arm and apologizes to Luke for not protecting him since he’s a civilian and she’s a soldier. The group then finds out via a letter from Anise that she’s reached the Naval Port of Kaitzur near the Malkuth-Kimlasca border. Guy knows that if they go there, they can meet up with Van, and so the group makes haste. They kill many monsters along the way, and even Luke participates in the battles. When they reach Kaitzur, they find Anise trying to plead her way through the border crossing, but she gets turned back. With Anise back in the group, their problem is now a lack of passports, and that problem is solved when Van appears. Tear initially raises her weapon against him, but Van and Jade convince her to back down for the time being until things can get sorted out. Tear accuses her brother of sending the six God-Generals, but Van explains that although those six are technically his subordinates, they are allied with Mohs’s faction and probably acted under Mohs’s orders.
Tear refuses to believe this and thinks instead that Mohs wants peace. She starts to point out how Mohs had her searching for something, but she stops mid-sentence as she realizes what he was having her do. Van figures out that Tear was supposed to look for the Seventh Fonstone, and Luke turns out to be the only person who doesn’t know what that is. The others thus have to explain to him that 2000 years ago, Yulia Jue recited a Score (prophecy) for the future of the world. This Score was so long that the fonstones it was recorded in were huge, and over time, they broke. Part of them became the ring of fonstones around the planet, and part fell to the planet. Malkuth and Kimlasca fought over the ones that fell to the planet because possession of them means being able to know the future of the world. The Seventh, however, is one that Yulia hid, and many people have been searching for it. In any case, with things cleared up now, the group passes through the border crossing and into the port with Van. Unfortunately, right as they arrive, the port comes under attack by Arietta. Although she reveals to Van that Asch is making her do this, Arietta nevertheless kidnaps the maintenance chief and demands that Luke and Ion go to Choral Castle if they want him back.
Van’s decision is to not go save the maintenance chief because he doesn’t want to endanger Luke or Ion, and he leaves to go deal with Arietta himself. Ion and the others, however, decide to go to Choral Castle anyway after two of the maintenance chief’s subordinates beg them to go save the man. Guy is also interested in Choral Castle because it’s where Luke was found seven years ago after being kidnapped, and so the group makes their way to the castle. Once outside, Luke wonders if the six God-Generals are here, and he questions who they are, so Jade explains that there are six of them: Legretta the Quick, Arietta the Wild, Largo the Black Lion, Sync the Tempest, Dist the Reaper, and Asch the Bloody. The group then makes their way inside, and when Anise pretends to be frightened by a rat and tries to hug Luke, she accidentally grabs Guy instead. This triggers a painful memory inside of Guy of a woman falling towards him, and he throws Anise off before returning back to normal. Because of this, Guy reveals that he wasn’t always afraid of women and that he’s missing a very specific part of his memory: the memories of when his family died.
The conversation about Guy is cut short when one of Arietta’s monsters suddenly appears and kidnaps Luke, and Arietta herself prevents the others from saving him. Arietta has a grudge against Anise for taking Ion away from her and a grudge against everyone else for killing her mother. The mother she’s referring to is the liger queen that the group had killed back in the Cheagle Woods, and Ion explains that Arietta was raised by monsters after losing her parents in the previous war. Despite this, Jade, Guy, and Anise show no mercy towards her monster allies, and they soon capture her as well. Luke meanwhile has been put in a machine that Dist and Sync are attending to, and both receive special disks from it. Dist gets away, but Sync is attacked by and loses his disk to Guy. Guy also manages to take off Sync’s mask, but Sync then flees. In the aftermath, Jade seems to recognize the machine that Luke was put in, and Guy gives Jade the disk. They then return to port with the maintenance chief and Arietta, and they’re once again reunited with Van for the journey back to Luke’s home.
Preview:
 |
 |
 |
In what’s sure to become an every-single-episode sort of thing, this week again had me thinking how RPG-like this series is. I almost even yelled “SIDEQUEST” when the two guys appeared to as Ion to help get the maintenance chief back. Actually, Choral Castle turned out to be a relatively important place considering all the stuff that happened there, so it wasn’t really a sidequest at all. What ended up bothering me about it is how quickly the group got there, with virtually no transition from the port to the castle or information on where the castle is situated. As I mentioned last week, Sunrise needs to do a better job of transitions so that successive scenes like this don’t feel so unconnected. At least the trip to Kaitzur included the slaughtering of many monsters, probably to represent some point in the game where you had to slosh through a lot of them. I realize they can’t do that for every time the group goes to a different location, but normally either the group is shown traveling or the scene changes to a different place to put the focus elsewhere while the heroes are implied to be making the journey.
The final shot of this episode also made me laugh because it’s as if they were announcing “This is the adventure group as it stands right now.” For a story that’s turning out to be fairly strong, this was a very uninteresting way to end the episode. Surely there’s some spot around this point that could have been made into a cliffhanger instead of just having a goofy cover-art-like image of all the characters. Having said all that though, I still enjoyed this episode as a whole. Sunrise continues to do a good job with all the battles, and Anise is turning out to be a very fun character with all of her personality/mood swings – kudos to Momoi Haruko for how well she voices the role. The look on Anise’s face in the preview – reacting to what I assume is Natalia welcoming Luke back – is priceless as well.
Nex Episode:
Natalia: Luke! How dare you come back with women when you already have me!
Ion: But I’m a boy though…-_-‘
Mieu: Mieu’s a boy too!
That’ll be priceless
SECOND YEAH!…First post on the site 😀 and i love this show it has me hooked ;p
3rd yay!
great episode and great summary again.
For the uninitiated, Choral Castle’s pretty close to Kaitzur. For those who didn’t played the game, it’s not surprising to feel scenes are unconnected. But then again, they can’t go releasing a world map or something like that. Maybe they can do it like Final Fantasy X, lol.
wow…the story progressing way faster than i anticipated…
@Reika
Natalia: Luke! I didn’t know you were interested in older women! *Points at Jade*
:O
I’m kinda hoping that they just forget about Natalia’s bossy side.
She’s one of my favorites later on (a member of royalty that has her priorities straight and is politically active, rather than the typical princess that hasn’t really seemed to do anything with her position aside from using it to aid the party), but she’s kind of a brat when she first joins. (of course, they ditch that fairly early in the game, so unless the producers find it funny for some stupid reason and keep it around, she should stop that after an episode or two)
Also, they should have at least waited until they had their complete party and were setting out for something big to have them strike that kind of pose. Maybe at the end of the next episode or something. >_>
I think the final shot shows more than just “This is the adventure group as it stands right now.” If you pay attention to each of the character’s expression, it kinda shows their personalities. For Luke, it shows his side that’s “blissfully ignorant” of what’s happening around him. Anise’s and Ion’s expressions shows naivety and innocence. Jade shows his side that is always concern about something yet would not tell anyone. Tear’s and Guy’s expression gives a sense of mistrust towards someone (probably Van). And Van’s expression shows a hint evilness like he’s the actual “final boss” or something (which can be extracted if you paid attention in this episode). To me he gives of the feeling of the typical “act like you’re on the hero’s side while you manipulate their every movement according to your plan” bad guy. Being the leader of the six God-Generals doesn’t hurt as well.
@zeromax
Very nice analysis though there are some errors. It’s amazing how you managed to hit ‘spot-on’-s just by looking at that picture. Nice
lol @ https://randomc.net/image/Tales%20of%20the%20Abyss/Tales%20of%20the%20Abyss%20-%2004%20-%20Large%20Preview%2002.jpg
Funny how Anise is choking Mieu
Sorry for double post, but I agree with zeromax that the final shot is more than just a shot of current group. The look on everyone’s face is different, and it shows that everyone seems to be having a different agenda of what is to come. As for Luke, he’s just glad that it seems to be over and he can now go home.
Yeah, very true. The anime does the game a spot of justice. 🙂 Can’t wait till the next episode! 😀
I think the many-monster-slaughtering stuff is not significance because, in game we just do it for leveling not for story advancing, beside they add some monster-fighting scenes to showoff Luke’s fighting ,Jade’s spell (or Fonic Arts), Tear’s Fonic Hyme just fine. I agree that they should just add some walking-in-the-field scenes just for sense of traveling. It will make the anime much better.
I’m surprised with how they rushed St. Binah….a decent amount of plot introduction actually occurred there, so I’m rather bothered by how they skipped all that and went to the Fubras River, where nothing really happens except Tear learning her second fonic hymn in the game >_>
Choral Castle was okay since they capture all the main points in the game…
The final shot of this episode also made me laugh because it’s as if they were announcing “This is the adventure group as it stands right now.”
lol just wait…
It’s pretty obvious that they wanted to portrey a part of the characters personality with the last shot. But I don’t see Van as a bad guy in this, I’ve played my share of RPG’s and my guess is that from the seeing the groupshot, if there’s going to be any betraying..
It’s going to come from Jade (he’s the kind of person that has a hidden agenda), Tear and Guy will get to a point where they don’t know who to follow, due to misinformation, so they will start to doubt who to follow but ultimately choose to follow Luke. Van isn’t the bad guy, just misunderstood, although it’s obvious that the writers set him up as a bit off a bad guy, at least that’s what they want us to believe.
Ow and I’ve never been able to play the game (it wasn’t released in Europe), so I might be of on my predictions, but that’s what I read from the final shot.
This was a good episode it represented the game decently well.
they completely skipped St Binah and a rather important scene where Jade compares Luke ad Ion (foreshadowing) besides that, fubras river went by fast and choral castle captured all the neccesary plot devices there, next is if im not mistaken chesodonia or baticul, i forget which but i know the zao ruins are kind of soon.
I so agree with you about the transitions. I think this week was even worse than last week’s transitions. Why can’t they take what they’ve done with Geass and apply it to other animes? I was hoping this would be a good replacement for Geass but the future doesn’t look as bright after this episode.
1. No, Jade is not a baddie 🙁
2. From here on out the exposition ends and the shit starts hitting the fans! That’s always fun right!? I’d honestly say stick it out with the next few episodes – because once Luke returns to Baticul, it’s going to be a speeding bullet towards catastrophe, and that’s really where things get interesting.
jajaja is very funny.
yea next week well have priceless moments
“The final shot of this episode also made me laugh because it’s as if they were announcing “This is the adventure group as it stands right now.” For a story that’s turning out to be fairly strong, this was a very uninteresting way to end the episode.”
I think you’re in for a surprise if it all goes according to the story, my friend. 😀
This is turning out to be fairly entertaining, despite the lack of smooth transitions.
Guy knows much more about everything than he shows. Jade gives you clues to that throughout the series, especially early on. It looks like they are most likely omitting/merging the Chesedonia (fon disc) part with the ship. The picture of the journey beginning would be very misplaced next week if they are going to finish with a certain revelation.
Show Spoiler ▼
Boringgggggggggggggg!!
http://worldofanimemusic.blogspot.com
Wow, they already reached past Choral Castle? Ahh well, at least they stil have all those foreshadowing stuff. Anise is adorable!! And Sync (my fav) is already here! Yay!!
Tigerclaw>Why can’t they take what they’ve done with Geass and apply it to other animes? I was hoping this would be a good replacement for Geass …
LoLolOl! yeah! Nice idea. I like it! Really! Let’s revive that dead boss, build some redicolous plot device at the end of each episode and plot holes in the middle, screwing up every logic happening. Let us spin characters from a faction to the other without reason, Let’s do it better: let’s bring here Leoluche and Spinzaku on the double!! Fuck LOL!!
hmmm, I don’t like Anise at first but her character turn out to be interesting if only because of her mood swings (especially the gloomy one)^_^
Technically, they can’t make cliffhangers like Geass coz it everything has to be based on the game. Games don’t end scenarios (rest/save point) with cliffhangers or else ppl would just keep playing until they get exhausted.
For a series adapted from an RPG, this is going really well I think. The animation is so beautiful. Very smooth and I love the effects. The story progresses quickly and is promising. Also Yukana’s voice is soooo adorable! I would’ve played the game if only you could choose Japanese voice with English text.
One last point: Guy is SO GAY. He cares about Luke SO much. He’s always the first to rush after Luke to save him. He came all the way just to find Luke. He knows everything about Luke, where he’d go etc. AND sometimes Luke makes faces like he likes Guy too… OMG OMG OMG This is all I can think of when Guy gets screentime.
Woah, they sure are moving fast . .. this’d most likely mean Show Spoiler ▼
. . . at the rate they’re going, I’m beginning to think fillers will start coming up if this anime’ll really be 26 episodes. . . o.O
@Yukiruchan: One last point: Guy is SO GAY
*grin* just wait and see~~~
@Yukiruchan: I was clearly joking. There’s no way i could like a show raped the way Geass was raped back then o.O
Lol there’s a Lunaris san here. Could be some kind of relative to me? 😛
it takes about a minute to run to choral castle from the port