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「導き出した答え」 (Michibikidashita kotae)
“The Chosen Answer”
God damn Zestiria, just when I’m all hyped for writing an end post what do you give me? Cliff hanger, thirteenth episode, month long wait; boom, mike drop. You serious, I’m supposed to make time in a stacked spring (and NHL playoff season) to return to a show few will likely remember? Eh, probably overstated—I will definitely be watching and finishing coverage like a proper blogger—but I’m still peeved we have to wait until the end of April for the actual ending.
To Zestiria’s credit, however, the reasoning behind an additional episode is sensible enough. With next to nothing revealed previously regarding the Lord of Calamity, we needed an explanation for his actions. Having the Lord created from the curse of the previous Shepherd is actually pretty dark all things considered, and tying the world’s corrupted state to Michael’s personal grievance deliciously ironic. Yeah, Heldalf certainly started things with his patriotic allegiance, but Michael is not blameless either. It’s one thing to sacrifice yourself for example, but another to add your own niece onto that personal vendetta. Michael’s actions represent a moral conundrum which meshes well with Sorey’s/Rose’s earlier struggles because no one correct answer exists. He could see Heldalf succeed in ruining his life and work, or curse him and place the consequences on future generations. It’s a great bit of development, although one which was really needed several episodes ago and not before the big finale. Thankfully, however, most of the major outstanding plot questions have now been answered.
What really got me though was how this story will actually boil down to the power of friendship. For one the big bad Lord of Calamity is actually a nice guy you see, he just went north to lessen his impact on others. Might just be me, but I found this bit hilarious when juxtaposed with Heldalf’s spiel to Maotelus about the battle being over the fate of mankind. Why fight if you still care? Well, I guess the curse technically answers that one. Then of course we have Sorey who finally learned of the Avatar ways and decided if one fusion armatization is good enough, why not four? Not as impressive as Goku going full blonde I must admit, but I’ll definitely take a Super Shepherd if it yields some impressive fireworks (that sword swinging doesn’t really cut it). Plus it explains how Sorey will purify the impossible and save the day.
With a month or so to go until the final showdown, Zestiria’s problem will likely be remembrance more than success. As God Eater discovered, mid-cour breaks are amazing viewer reduction strategies, plus also help in muddying the memory. Me though, I just hope the show ends on a good note. A decent boss fight, maybe a happy ending, it’s all that’s really needed. Who knows, might even be a related game announcement around that time. Either way, we shall all find soon what Zestiria has left in store.
Preview
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Zestiria the X has actually been losing viewership because of the focus on Alisha and Rose actually, which is hilarious because of the controversey caused by Alisha’s vocal minority of fans. Though Sorey, Edna, and Mikleo merchandise is selling lots, unlike Alishas’s that sell worse than Rose.
They toned down Heldalf’s backstory heavily, which showed as soon as he was cursed killed people around him, ostracized him in Rolance, killed all his loved ones and friends, turned people into Hellions just from his presence including his newborn son who he killed cause he thought it was devilspawn, and showed he’d tried to murder himself dozens of times through countless methods till he became a Hellion as a pack of Hellions were trying to eat him alive. It also changed Heldalf’s role in Camlann’s ruin pretty badly too. Michael tolerated Heldalf and his men because they could protect the village, but Hyland, who sought to kill the famed general of Rolance, attacked the town and planned to kill everyone from the start. Between sacrificing his men for nothing or choosing to retreat, he chose to retreat. Of course Hyland planned to kill him even if he did that and set a trap anyways. Another problem is that Michael never told anyone he transported Maotelus from Rolance’s Church as their object of worship to Artorius Throne, which is why him getting corrupted was something neither nation could have known.
If Maotelus was full corrupted he would be a rampaging monster, and if he isn’t then he can purify himself because he’s always had the power to do that and did it before in Berseria. The whole “Humans having this much malevolence is impossible” doesn’t make sense either as Maotelus has seen plenty of malevolence that high and knows that malevolence has threatened to consume the world numerous times in the past that makes Heldalf look like chump change malevolence. The whole reason the earth is corrupted and everything is because the land itself is that Maotelus corrupts his essel, a fact the shows creators have lost sight of despite episode 0 showing the devestation of the earth due to his malevolence.
Show Spoiler ▼
Also they completely skipped the parts that showed Mikleo and Soreys connection to all this because it’s a big part of it. That incompetent Shepherd like all the other terrible Shepherds Lailah had chosen Michael dies for his sins regardless. Michael and his sister were raised from their youth by Lailah as well, who made him a Shepherd when he was a little boy, something he never wanted either and abandoned the first chance he got to build Camlann. In fact she’s so bad at her job it’s why Zenrus raised Sorey and Mayvin gets on her case ingame. Hell Maotelus even partly corrupted sends Sorey Heldalf’s backstory through the Earthen Historia because Lailah sucks at her job that much.
Show Spoiler ▼
@TheVoid
“Though Sorey, Edna, and Mikleo merchandise is selling lots, unlike Alishas’s that sell worse than Rose.”
Kindly provide the link and an example of the Alisha merchandise, thank you in advance.
I’m not him but did you know that Alisha had her own manga? Most people don’t and for good reason. Because it flopped so badly that it’s now out of print despite not even being a year old. https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=120102
Heh that just reaffirms my opinion this development was needed significantly earlier in the show. A lot of that missing Heldalf backstory for example would have fit perfectly with the theme Zestiria was developing earlier in the season. Really shows how far off the rails Zestiria has gone in the past ~6 episodes.
It’s actually not the split cour that made ToZX lose viewers but rather the last episode of the first cour. Thing is Alisha isn’t that popular of a character, yes, people like her but not enough justify making the show about her. And the controversy was really just based off of hearsay, in reality not many people cared that much about that much about her, and in fact many were sick of hearing people whine about her. As a direct result of all of that the anime’s been losing viewers with every new episode from the first season. The decision to include Alisha in the first season finale was really the straw that broke the camel’s back and a lot of people dropped it. People who liked Alisha have always been a minority, which is why her merchandise doesn’t sell, the anime doesn’t done anything to increase her popularity, but rather has just made people even more sick of her.
The anime’s changes have all ranged from weird to just plain incomprehensible.
The worset part was that some of the alisha fans would go as far as to fabricate nonsense about rose’s character just for the sake of making her seem like a problem when she wasnt
Yeah that was terrible, and when they told the truth, that Alisha was never meant to be an important character. Alisha fans got upset because it didn’t match up to their views. So they’d use early trailers as an example despite the fact that those trailers never showed in any post Marlind event.
Once the head writer came out and outright admitted that Alisha was created as a side character all those rumors were rendered as false.Alisha lacks chemistry with Sorey and the seraphim because she was designed not to have an, hence why the anime doesn’t allow her to talk to them.
I’m not pinning lost viewers on any character focus/season break, rather the likelihood just taking a month off between now and the last episode will have everyone forget this show is still technically airing :P. It’s why I mentioned God Eater, because that adaptation had a similar unannounced break between episodes 8 and 9 which completely wrecked the interested viewership.
Really interesting hearing about the Alisha/Rose rivalry though, I never knew it was actually that ridiculous. I found Alisha too perfect in some ways in the show, but personally never had a problem. For me Rose was the better character, mostly because of her improved development and more logical mental struggles.
The reason why people know that most of the viewership went down during season 1 and not because of the wait between season’s 1 and 2 is the weekly ratings held by Nico Nico Douga. The viewership was already cut in half by the time that the Berseria episodes aired.
And even with the changes with Rose she isn’t as good as she could have been, according to Yamamoto the game’s head writer originally she and meant to clash more ending in both characters acknowledging that the other had a good point, and thus causing growth in the entire, which would make up for the ending when Rose Show Spoiler ▼
. She never cared about Alisha, the “rivalry” was always very one-sided and really just there on a meta perspective, since the creators pointed out that there was nothing Alisha could ever really do to help Sorey’s development as a character could be more of a hindrance than anything else. Needless to say a lot of Alisha fans were not happy with being told this. Ironically the anime proves the creators were right, especially in this episode since Show Spoiler ▼
and not only that but interacting with her did nothing for Sorey’s character.
As for Alisha originally the creators called her to task for her beliefs and her attitude. In the game Sorey doesn’t live in a bubble he speaks to people outside of Alisha’s group,and really not everyone liked her, she had a lot of political enemies not just Bartlow, and that was because she was a person who valued and argued honor before reason, never once realizing that honor and chivalry doesn’t put food on the table. And on top of that her foreceful attitude and stubborness made people less willing to listen to her. She was so enamored with being the princess knight that she couldn’the tell when it was time to take off the armor and simply be the princess of Hyland. In fact at times she seemed to forget that she is in fact the princess, and allowed herself to be put in a subservient position of a knight which gave her enemies power over her. Which is something that the anime glosses over if not removes outright in favor of treating her as perfect.
As for how Alisha was a hindrance to Sorey it was because she’s the princess of Hyland and Sorey needs to be neutral to both countries. Having Alisha as a squire was seen as Sorey showing favoritism to Hyland and resulted in Hyland using her against him and Rolance denouncing him as Shepherd. Even after both countries agreed to end the war, the game acknowledged that still a lot work to be done. And when given the chance to have Alisha join (because Alisha was still enamored with the idea of heroics), Sorey denies her, reminding her that she’s just taking the first step towards her goals, and she should focus on making that come true and not her fantasy.
Ironically it was only by putting down her spear and taking up a less active role that she could actually help Sorey, basically the opposite of anime Alisha’s story. Needless to say I actually prefer game, novel, and manga Alisha to anime Alisha.
I wonder if the anime’s changes (esp on Alisha) were decided by ufotable with Namco Bandai’s approval, or if Namco Bandai ordered ufotable to make those changes.
Considering how Bandai Namco is ignoring the anime’s changes,and no one from Bamco is on the staff for the anime either,so it’s likely that the whole thing was Ufotable’s idea, misguided attempt to win over a crowd that wasn’t worth the effort.
Hmm probably not entirely. Ufotable was only hired to produce the show, guaranteed Bandai would have given them some direction regarding the story. Might not have been specifics, but Bandai would not remain that hands off for an adaptation of their own intellectual property.
Huh, so all the reviews I’ve seen bashing Zestiria over Rose “supplanting” Alisha as the “main heroine” were nothing more than a vocal minority, and now that the story is being forced to change to make Alisha appear more relevant, it’s actually having the opposite effect and pushing MORE people away?
The situation sounds quite familiar to an anime that just ended…hmmm…
hahahaha irony can be such a perplexing mistress.
As i finished watching this ep, all i could ask myself was: “wow…this series really doesnt know what it means to pace itself properly.” Why is it that 12 eps in an it feels as if the series has been doing nothing but dragging its feet
It’s my main problem with the show. The first half was set up perfectly as a third season foundation, but it’s as though the writers suddenly remembered they don’t have that luxury and have to finish within the season. The whole thing just turned into a dilapidated mess overnight, and that doesn’t even cover the month-long wait we now have lol.
I like Alisha, so I want to say that it’s not her getting more focus that’s the most root problem, it’s that the anime is just really poorly paced and planned in general. Sure, we see lots of Alisha in the first season, but the first half of the season is largely her suffering from the natural disasters and showing how helpless she and normal humans in general are against malevolence. And then entire war plotline was just… very badly explained. There’s no clear presentation of what Alisha’s ideals even really are (aside from not killing people), where they come from, why Rose targeted her, etc, and Rose just kinda deciding to support her instead made Rose herself look a bit silly. Of course, Rose’s own arc was not exactly well paced either.
Maybe Alisha’s lack of popularity made people less tolerant of the anime’s flaws, but the flaws are pretty glaring to begin with.
Alisha wasn’t unpopular but she wasn’t a break out character either.Her popularity was always modest. People like her but not enough to justify bending over backwards just to give her screentime, and it doesn’t help that she’s really just a side character.
For me the issue was Alisha’s shown ideals were never really tested. Rose’s arc for example actually forced her to change, it questioned her beliefs and required her to actually analyze them. Alisha just sort of went through the motions. She did things, spoke a lot about justice, but was never seriously pushed on those beliefs, let alone questioned them herself. Even Sorey struggled more through his “cannot kill” mantra, and that bit was largely separated from any battling.
Agreed with Rose’s support too, that seemed strange to me at the time given the speed of it. Always thought Rose disliked Alisha from the first season, so having her change that fast was slightly confusing.
I always thought the game was missing one armatization, a combination of all 4 elements.
Each button on the Joystick could have focused on one element, it would have been cool.
What the show just did was awesome.
I noticed that the quality of this episode was kinda crappy, I mean, the animation is kinda choppy in some parts, especially the fight scenes and everyone seems to be on slow mo, especially when Sorey swings his sword, and some frames were, like, skipped. Where did all the budget go? A bit sad for a last boss fight.
Ha I wasn’t imagining things it seems. I’m guessing they might be holding out for the finale given the actual boss fight was delayed one episode.
Sorey should shine more. Seems like he is losing to his two squires. The Face Slap, should done Mikleo or Leiha, not rose, for example. In this scene Rose had to much weight, no not in her slapping.. emotional one
Sorey is the Shepard, he should shine, giving Hope, giving warmth.. Al i see here is running away to fight.. I did not know that Shepards are White Knights only. Sure he is no Pope, but he should had taken more care of the church power structures. Seems like he do not care
in the end, Berseria has stolen his Zestiria soul
i hope i am not the cause for this…
Man I don’t know…
This show has become sooooo boring to me… I can’t seem to work up any interest anymore… So much so that I can’t even come up with barely decent sentences to aptly describe my POFITs regarding the show at this point…
What went wrong… What IS wrong… I’m starting to suspect that this story wasn’t even one worth telling to begin with.
I felt so much more emotionally ‘invigorated’ while going through Xillia’s story despite some absolutely preposterous narrative developments in that one, but as for this, no, almost nothing- I simply could barely feel anything for Zestiria. Could it be that the story found within the source material and other peripheral materials were much more ‘engagingly told’ than whatever it is that they’ve managed to concoct for an animated serial?
What is up with all this blandness? What ingredients of theirs that they put into the narrative cauldron that were C-grade all along? Even if I added additional properties or traits to the finished item, would the resulting item itself result in something earth-shattering as the item description ‘suggested’ it could be?
Oh God, what the hell am I missing from this narrative that my defective homo sapien brain couldn’t pick up which prevented me from at least appreciating Tales of Zestiria -the X-!? WHAT!?
Pancakes… Am I missing something? ( ; _ ; ) Is my brain in need of an information serum?
Funny how fans of two characters would go so far. Never understood why Rose (and her voice actress) got all that flak, and now Alisha is getting some too. I guess this should have stayed as the Sorey x Mikleo show. XD
Anyway, I think the real problem is actually pacing and character arc conclusion. The only character that has one is probably Rose. Alisha, Edna and Zaveid seems like they’ll never get a proper conclusion. The latter two are hardly touched at all, and I was actually reminded that Edna’s supposed to have one in this very episode. There’s still a slim hope that Velvet and Lailah may get one in the final episode, but I’m not holding my breath. Though if Velvet actually got one, it’ll just prove how bad the pacing actually is.
Won’t say I can’t wait for the next episode. It’ll be a long wait, but at least not as long as Eva 4.0 (or whatever arithmetic it is).
update:
from what i read at Daisuke, the last episode is delayed until end of April
Finally got onto watching till this ep.
Wow, things really greatly deviated from the game!
Making it able to end faster.
Knowing the Maotelus and Lailah connection shed some light.
Dezel’s death doesn’t have the impact it had in the game, kind of meh to me.
The Beseria stuff really crossover and changed the story, Merchio and Mt Killaraus.
No more Camlann and Artorius Throne finale like in the game though.
Heldalf is a lot more lonely in the anime.
One of his would be underling didn’t even go bad.
Another fought against him in directly.
Rush along to finish while adding interesting tidbits here and there.
Maybe if there is to be a game taking place after Beseria the they can retell Zesteria again!
Tales of Zesteria the XX (Double Cross), lol
Update:
Ep 25 Final:
Well my thoughts?
With the appearance of her…
https://randomc.net/image/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X/Tales%20of%20Zestiria%20the%20X%20-%2021%20-%20Large%2006.jpg
the preparations for the Final Boss “fight” gone wrong.. With her turn into an Dragon, the Story line gone south for me
and ep 25?
Show Spoiler ▼