First Impressions / Valkyria Chronicles

OP Sequence

OP: 「明日へのキズナ」 (Asu he no Kizuna) by HIMEKA
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

 

Summary:

As the town of Bruhl in the country of Gallia prepares for the attack from the Empire, a girl named Alicia Melchiott who’s in the Town Watch hears that there’s a spy. She finds this alleged spy sketching pictures of trout by the river and captures him, but he doesn’t act like a spy and claims that he’s Welkin Gunther. Alicia doesn’t believe him because there’s a war hero with the same last name. She locks him up and refuses to release him even after he mentions that there’s someone who’s waiting for him. When he ends up escaping anyway, she is forced to chase after him. Alicia can’t bring herself to shoot him, and soon something more important comes up: they spot the approaching Imperial Army. Welkin hides them from the enemy scouts and then leads Alicia to where his little sister is, but along the way, they are seen and shot at by the enemy. The two manage to make it to the Gunther house and find Welkin’s little sister Isara inside. Alicia doesn’t trust them until Isara saves her life by shooting an Imperial soldier who was trying to sneak up on the house. Isara then reveals that there are weapons inside the barn, and since the house is now under heavy attack, Alicia tosses a hand grenade outside at the enemy. As it turns out, there is one more big weapon at their disposal in the barn: a tank.

ED Sequence

ED: 「アノ風ニノッテ」 (Ano Kaze ni Notte) by pe’zmoku
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

For a fairly new singer, HIMEKA sings a really good OP. I think my only complaint about the song is that it ends too soon, which really isn’t a complaint at all. The animation that went with it was mostly character shots, but there were a few battle scenes that looked pretty exciting and got me pumped up about the show. The ending, on the other hand, went the cutesy, light-hearted route, which is fine for an ending I guess. I don’t listen to much pe’zmoku, so the only frame of reference I have is the Bleach ED they sang, and I think the songs are on the same level (meaning that this ED didn’t really stick with me either).

Preview

I mentioned in my Spring Preview that I was a little wary of this show because I wasn’t really fond of how Tales of the Abyss turned out. A lot of the RPG elements in the Abyss game translated poorly into the anime. This first episode of Valkyria Chronicles, however, was quite good, and I didn’t notice anything that blatantly showed that this is based on a game, except maybe the way they animated shadows. The overall animation quality was fairly high, the pacing was fine (no big battles quite just yet though), and on the whole I thought the A-1 Pictures staff did a good job introducing the basic elements of the story. I haven’t played the game however (and am intentionally avoiding it now so as not to spoil myself), so if you have, your mileage may vary.

Alicia is easily my favorite character right now, which really isn’t a surprise since her voice actress Inoue Marina is part of the reason I was so interested originally in the game. Though a bit dense in the head, she goes through a wide range of emotions, leading to some great facial expressions throughout the episode. Welkin and Isara aren’t nearly as much fun to watch as her, though I was a tad amused at how Isara just presented them with grenades and then a tank. In any case, this first episode exceeded my expectations and made me want to see more, though whether or not I end up blogging it depends on how Hatsukoi Limited turns out next weekend.

52 Comments

  7. After the butchery-job of Persona:Trinity Soul, I was pleasantly surprised by this. It’s a decent, intelligent conversion of the first couple of chapters of the game. They play around with the order of events a little, to fit better with the anime format, but I can’t really fault them for that. The artwork’s nice, the OP is decent and the voice-acting seems good. I was pleased to see some of the minor characters from the game crop up. I’d been hoping for that, as the way you only ever really saw Welkin, Alicia, Isara, Rosie and Largo (of the Squad 7 characters) in cutscenes in the game was one of the few complaints I had with it.

    So yes, as a major fan of the game, I’ve come away from episode 1 of the anime cautiously optimistic.

    Keldorne
    Reply

  10. Hmm..looks like its worth watching a couple episodes.
    I just watched the first ep of “Requiem for a Phantom” and was quite impressed. I think it deserves a ‘Snapshot’ review at least if only to give a nod to the opening by KOKIA and the background music during the episode. The two main characters look really interesting.
    Just thought I’d mention it. 😉

    Tex
    Reply

  16. What i liked about Welkin and Alicia’s relationship in the game was that it wasn’t your typical anime relationship.. None of that overly embarrassed to be around each other stuff. Hope that carried over to the anime.

    anonymii
    Reply

  18. I played the game and the firts episode of anime is not the same that the first episode of the game, but I hope that don’t have change the history in the anime for what the History in the SRPG es very Good.

    grettings from México Omni and Jaalin

    Jezreel
    Reply

  20. didn’t watchit yet nor did i play the game but the main girl was drawn pretty cute, thanks to her eyelids, too.

    looking fward, after it finished airing..so, how many weeks do i have to wait? (amount of episodes?) ^^

    tomtom
    Reply

  27. The first episode is not bad, I really enjoyed it.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    espionage9
    Reply

  31. Huh, pretty animations. What went through my thoughts first was, “Whoa, that girl likes to point her gun at people.” Sooo, never played the game but interested in this anime. So far, so good.

    Lucia
    Reply

  34. @Kaioshin Sama: It wasn’t some of the combat, it was pretty much all the combat. I’m not quite done it yet (three more eps) but the one minute battles (I swear, the best fight was between Luke and the generic soldier) and the speeding through cutscenes is what put a damper on it.

    Acerbus
    Reply

  35. It’s cool they try to retain that canvas graphic style from the game. You can see the water painting lines especially in each character’s hair, that was a graphic highlight in the game for me

    Yoz
    Reply

  39. Yes! My favourite game of 2008 makes its anime debut. Whilst I prefer the character designs from the game more than the anime, they make for a decent change. The game had some of the best scenes I’ve ever seen in the anime and I really hope they translate them well (players of the game probably know what which ones I’m talking about).

    Also, since the game is a more mission-based strategy RPG, I feel this will translate a lot better than Tales of the Abyss. My only critical point is I don’t like the design of <>> Show Spoiler ▼

    FX102
    Reply

  41. @FX: NO ME!

    And yeah, as long as Cezary shows up…if I remember correctly [spoiler] One of hs attributes was that he was a die-hard Darcsen hater.[/spoiler]

    Jusuchin (Military Otaku)
    Reply

  43. well, I played the game too and I just hope they make a great anime out of this.

    Jun Fukuyama will dub Maximilian in the anime too? In the game I could almost imagine Lelouch giving some orders.

    Yamaki
    Reply

  44. MORE OR LESS A

    Actually, Tales gives you a LITTLE (and I mean, little) bit more info than the game in regards to the ending, but the anime has the exact same ending that the game has. So I’m not really surprised that you, who has not played game, did not like the anime ending.

    Sissy
    Reply

  45. am i the only one who find it weird for them to talk casually while they are being raid by the enemy O_o

    anyway
    looks kinda nice so will watch ^ ^ hope next episode is good

    mi
    Reply

  46. i found out gamestop has the game on sale for 30 bucks, and hearing all the comments about how it was the most underrated game of last year i rushed immediately to pick it up. i agree that it’s a great conversion of the first chapters, and i thought it was awesome to see they tried (it definitely comes off a lot better in the game) to translate the water color painting effect to the show. if you do have a ps3 and don’t have this game i would also suggest rushing out to get it cause gamestop’s online website has it backordered already O_O

    RickyMack
    Reply

  47. As a giant fan of the game this anime is pure shit. The characters look horrible and already there have been far too many unnecessary changes from the games story.

    Only highlight was the soundtrack, and that’s because it’s the exact same as the game. And the ED is atrocious.

    Why couldn’t they have gotten a better studio than this A-1 team?

    Karisu
    Reply

Leave a Reply

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