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「風になる」 (Kaze ni naru)
“Be like the Wind”
Laugh, cry, hold the head in complete confusion? I’m not sure which emotion best summarizes Zestiria at this point. After last week’s sprint through the story scenery, the show apparently decided we needed a breather before the big fight, throwing some more Berseria snippets at us alongside some Dezel development. Curious choice to flesh these aspects out now, but no one said Zesteria ever played by the rules.
Normally I would have serious gripes with how Zestiria has largely fallen apart of late, but like last week I just got a kick out of the majority of things here. The Lord of Calamity in particular got a laugh out of me, just upping and leaving with nary a word said because, you know, telling the Shepherd of your evil plans is what all the lame villains do. That or the guy is simply lonely and wants some company while visiting his flaming mountain retreat. Then there was Lunarre who actually did die, having accomplished, well, nothing. It was Alisha’s knights and Alisha/Sorey which made Lunarre’s death hilarious though, just looking him over all confused while burying him and speaking as though they were in on the joke. And don’t even get me started on the bloody cooking again.
The big event, however, of course lies with Dezel and his noble sacrifice. Dezel’s death proves at the minimum that Zestiria can yield emotions at the right time, although for me a good chunk of the impact was lost from Dezel being largely developmentally ignored up until now. While significantly better compared to Alisha’s earlier brush with suffering, this scene really needed some form of audience attachment–specifically for anime-only viewers–to maximize its effect. Nevertheless though by being the hero, Dezel provided Sorey his first casualty in his “never kill” mantra, a critical piece of development for testing Sorey’s adherence to his beliefs. If he wants to abide by his pledge, Sorey must accept losses to succeed, but if he abandons it in favour of saving everyone, he’ll be reneging on the key part of himself. It’s an interesting conundrum, and one which likely won’t be explored further because guess what, we only have one episode left! Probably. I don’t even want to think about how Sorey purifying the Lord of Calamity will work when it’s been explicitly stated the Lord cannot be purified. At this point I can probably chalk everything up to the power of friendship solving all and I wouldn’t be that far from the mark. After all, Dezel did magically purify Symonne.
With one episode left in this season, we are likely looking at one hell of a rush job next week, or some seriously well-concealed sequel announcement. I honestly have no idea what to expect, between the obvious hints regarding some further Berseria tease to whether the Lord of Calamity will even perish at Sorey’s hand. Even at this stage Zestiria has a lot of unresolved plot elements and not much time to answer them all. Nevertheless I am a simple man, so long as we get a meaty boss battle to send us off, I’m willing to overlook such minor details.
Preview
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Gameplayers say the anime now has nothing in common with the game’s plot progression, having majorly deviated from the source story ever since Pendrago (which loosely adapted the game’s events).
They’re expecting the final battle to also go differently as well.
It diverged even before then when they had Rose and Dezel’s backstory changed.
Or the silly idea that purification somehow forces malevolence into the Shepherd. It doesn’t, because that’s not how the power of the Silver Flame works. That’s how Innominat the Suppressor’s power works.
I’ve heard gamers have been quite bitter about the anime’s changes.
Of course, this would lead to the eternal question of how faithful an adaptation should be to the source material…
Depends on the changes I find. Some of the revisions here have definitely helped (i.e. regarding Rose and Alisha), but a lot of the recent episodes have thrown most of that earlier development out the window. Really needed another season to make the whole thing work properly.
It depends on where you go, or who you speak to. Some people who played the game consider the anime is an improvement, but the majority of people I’ve come across don’t think that it’s better than the game, especially regarding Alisha. To be more specific those who think the anime an improvement were those who like Alisha, and those who either don’t like her or don’t care about her, think that the anime is a gigantic mess, and see her and Rose as the cause.
i have a feeling, that we get an 80% Tales of Berseria and 20% Tales of Zestiria ending…
its a proof, in how much they trust the remain Zestiria story and secrets, none. So they try to spice it up now with Berseria, and rip of the Zestiria soul, they want to transfer Sorey into an Velvet follower?.. i hope not
i am confused, and hope that last episode will open my eyes
Technically (i think) the first Shepard, was this Guy Velvet wanted to kill.. i am right? this also add more confusing vibes
Artorius wasn’t the first Shepherd by a long shot, in fact Sorey more resembles the shepherd that came long before Artorius, Siegfried (yes, that isn’t just the name of Zaveid’s gun).
Fanboy orgasm moments (AFTER PLAYING TALES OF BERSERIA):
-The town of Merichio (oh the nostalgia~).
-Grimoire.
-The Scarlet Night.
I was really hoping Grimoire would drop a comment to Edna regarding her brother Eizen, for example the similarity of their appearance or such, too bad it didn’t happen.
https://randomc.net/image/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X%20-%2023%20-%20Large%2021.jpg
They “stole” this shot from Berseria.
http://i63.tinypic.com/33jr24n.jpg
Grimoirh’s appearance was forced all things considered. She’s apathetic to the point that being threatened to be murdered by Velvet doesn’t even make her bat an eye. She was also apathetic to her fan club of Normins and other Seraphs. Kids who show respect are her weakness despite that.
Dezel’s backstory was entirely built into Rose’s backstory, and in fact he’d been running around possessing her for years which is why her natural resonance was high. Even him being blind and using the wind to see. By completely changing the story to be more about Rose he lost everything about how he ended up the way he did.
It is hilarious that they are treating the Lord of Calamity being purified as somehow being harder than purifying dragons which is the stupidest, most idiotic and laughable things they could have done when dragons are the ones who can’t be purified when a LoC can be because he’s not a dang malevolence born dragon!
Hell Eizen became a damn dragon 200 years before Zestiria because he absorbed the malevolence of a Lord of Calamity who wiped out over half the population and the Shepherd died fighting him.
Purification at this stage is pretty much a convenient conflict resolution, an escape route for any and all fights Sorey and friends get into. This became apparent when the dragons last week were purified with little trouble after we were repeatedly told it was a hard and arduous task just dealing with one. The show has largely given up the attempt at making its events logically coherent in favour of advancing the story.
https://randomc.net/image/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X%20-%2023%20-%20Large%2020.jpg
If my info’s right, Lunarre never died in the game. He escapes after Sorey and co fight him. He reappears in a DLC, but still remains undefeated.
https://randomc.net/image/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X%20-%2023%20-%2034.jpg
Dezel’s blindness is revealed ingame when the gang is faced with a Gorgon-like hellion that can petrify people by looking at them. Being blind, he’s unaffected by its power.
Dezel is actually blind? Well that explains a lot regarding his appearance.
From the perspective of someone who informed himself about the game after watching the first part but didn’t actually play it, it seems like they did the first cour well and improved on the story but completely fucked up the second cour by cutting out most of the plot points which explained why things were happening and what had set them off, and rushing or ignoring important developments for some characters.
Personally I’d pin the point of collapse following the end of Alisha’s arc this season. Both last season and the first two arcs here were great for building up the main cast–especially Rose IMO–but then Zestiria decided it had to finish the central plot, and of course little time was left for such things.
It’s quite ironic because all Zestiria needed to succeed was another season of similarly paced episodes.
Actually the problem started in the first season, the last episode of the season was really bad, and a vision of what the rest of the season would be. And the problems it would have. Time wasn’t handled well in the first season, they were a lot of things that were pointless, while ignoring the stuff that did, if season had been paced properly and a lot of superfluous stuff removed then season 2 endedup better.
For instance, instead of connecting Rose to Alisha, they should have kept the connection with Rose and Sorey, that way Sorey would go into season 2 already knowing that Rose is an assassin and thus freeing up more time to tell the story, since Sorey and Rose wouldn’t need to be introduced to one another. That way the second season could have just concluded her development and moved on. Then there’s also the way how purification was handled they should have just kept it the way it was in Berseria/Zestiria and therefore allow Sorey to purify Ladylake, which would have again allowed him to spend more time in Rolance and focus on Hedalf. Remove Alisha from the last episode of season 1 and have her and Sorey separate in the previous episode, that way the last episode can focus more on Hedalf and Sorey can worry about him and the effect he has on the war. Effectively the problem with this anime is pacing, it wastes too much time with side stories and side characters (Yes, Alisha is a saide character she has third billing and isn’t even mentioned on the anime’s summary for the series) and doesn’t spend enough time on its main story, or explaining itself. In reality it 24 episodes was more than enough time to tell the story Ufotable just needed to get its priorities straight.
Heh…
Just like that, 18 minutes vanished into a puff of smoke…
Some stories end up being made in amazing ways despite only having 18 minutes, but I guess that’s because those stories were mostly smaller in scale and less complex.
And so even though Zestiria ended up being rather okay, one can’t help but feel that it could’ve been a much better presented story if only it weren’t for the external constraints holding it back, iffy changes to the story here and there notwithstanding…
Personally I would’ve cut out quite a bit (Berseria tie-in episodes for instance) and focus on the key elements of the setting and overall plot line, but then again this isn’t the Tales story I dream of making an anime anout so oh well, what can ya’ do?
I think they’ll announce a Tales of Berseria anime project this year. It’s just a feeling, I can’t see them not adapting Berseria to wrap up this universe in anime form.
They just killed off my favourite character. RIP Dezel …
Fuck that was the saddest episode preview I can think of in recent memory. Faulty writing and cliché sacrifice aside, Dezel’s demise got me hard. And I haven’t even played the game or watched the first cour. I guess after ten episodes I really got attached to the characters.
ep 24:
Well, they are now complete lose of Tales of Zestiria and even Berseria. The Final want to create his own path, and it is working. But this path i saw in some “Game”
Show Spoiler ▼
Well, i wait for Ep 25