Symphonia is the Final Fantasy VII of the Tales Of series. Possibly not the most fun to
play nor with the best graphics, characters or writing, but the most iconic and
memorable, and the one that I personally enjoy the most, in part because I
enjoyed it so much when it was the newest RPG around. It never attained the
universal acclaim of Square's big hit, amongst RPG fans its popularity has
always been high.
It's also a good time to be a
fan. The HD remake, including the dodgy sequel, is soon to be released, and in Japan ,
that meant we could enjoy promotional campaigns in various shops and
restaurants, including some lovely desserts in Namja
Town I didn't want to eat because
they were decorated with the characters' faces. (No such qualms for Tales of
the Abyss's Mieu - stab stab stab!)
And a few days ago, the
complete blu-ray set of these OVAs came out. I remember being somewhat
disappointed back when the project was announced that there were only going to
be four episodes, but it turned out that these were just the first part of a
larger project that spanned five years, ultimately resulting in eleven
episodes, each close to twice as long as the episodes of a television anime, so
there was quite a long time for the story to be explored. I’ve already written my thoughts on the previous two chapters, but now I’ve finished the third and final part.
And I was very pleased,
because this is a story I very much like, populated by characters I really
love. Genis is one of my favourite characters in video game history, and I
loved how the final episodes made him seem more the heart and soul of the
series rather than Lloyd thanks to his friendship with Mithos. That isn't to
say I don't like Lloyd as a protagonist, who is a kind, loving and endearing
soul very capable of kicking some butt when needed. Presea the axe-weilding
little girl I will always remember, and motherly Raine with her daft Japanese
name of 'Refill' (to go with her little brother 'Genius') has a very funny
intense side. Sheena is a character type I don't usually like but won me over,
and even ridiculous lunk Regal is likeable, as by the end is Zelos when it
becomes obvious his swagger is just a front. There's a lot of hatred for dojiko
Colette, but she doesn't grate on me. Then the classic badass Kratos fills that
role probably better than any other I can think of.
The story evolves neatly from
a small-scale story about a young girl who from infancy is told she is a
'chosen one' who will become an angel to uncovering a conspiracy involving that
old anime chestnut of using people as a vessel to revive a dead but very
powerful individual. Stopping this involves travelling between worlds, each of
the heroes' allies revealing the painful secrets of their pasts and some
fantastic magical powers. There's a hint of one of those anticlimactic stories
where the bad guy gets what they want only for things not to work out as they
had hoped, suggesting that even without the intervention of the heroes, the
plan would never work, but Yggdrasil would clearly have ended up punishing the
world without intervention. The anime does a good job of taking the most
salient and iconic parts of the long game and other than a slow start pacing it
very well so that the whole story is satisfying and works primarily through the
feelings and desires of its cast.
And UFOtable most certainly
stepped up their game for these animations. Arguably the ultimate effect is
that the studio ended up losing relevance, this and other OVAs meaning they
only managed to produce one weekly series in the past few years - the
high-impact Fate/Zero - but I have the feeling that despite it being a bit of
an obscurity in the West beside the big series that come out every season, the
OVAs were quite a hit in Japan. And the fact is that it looks beautiful - the
production values are high and the already rather lovely character designs look
fantastic in motion. There's a little of the problem Sword Art Online had with
characters of opposite genders looking rather too similar when the framing is
very tight on faces, with Genis and Presea as well as Colette and Mithos
looking uncannily like one another at times, but that simply carries over from
the game and I actually find the resemblances rather cute.
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