Tales of the Abyss

The world of Auldrant is bound by the Score, a series of prophecies from centuries past that dictate the world's future. It is considered an absolute fate that everyone lives by—even people whose actions lead to bloodshed and tears. Using magical abilities known as the Fonic Arts, a war between the nation of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and the Malkuth Empire is waged in hopes of bringing the Score's foreseen utopia to life.

Tales of the Abyss follows Luke von Fabre, who spends his days locked away in his manor after being kidnapped and losing memories as a child. One day, while honing his swordsmanship, a woman named Tear attempts to assassinate his master. Luke defends him, but the clash results in the two being teleported to a distant land. Luke and Tear’s journey back quickly escalates into a quest that will either free the world from the Score's chains or destroy it completely.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Tales of the Abyss
Side story:	Tales of the Abyss Special Fan Disc
Character:	Tales of Gekijou

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Fon Fabre, Luke

Main

Suzuki, Chihiro
Japanese

Curtiss, Jade

Main

Koyasu, Takehito
Japanese

Grants, Tear

Main

Yukana
Japanese

Asch

Main

Suzuki, Chihiro
Japanese

Cecil, Guy

Main

Matsumoto, Yasunori
Japanese

Ion

Main

Kobayashi, Yumiko
Japanese

Tatlin, Anise

Main

Momoi, Haruko
Japanese

Luzu Kimlasca Lanvaldear, Natalia

Main

Neya, Michiko
Japanese

Sync

Supporting

Kobayashi, Yumiko
Japanese

Arietta

Supporting

Yukino, Satsuki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maruyama, Hiroo

Producer

Ogata, Naohiro

Producer

Kodama, Kenji

Director

Kimura, Eriko

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"Karma (カルマ)" by BUMP OF CHICKEN (eps 1-26)

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Ending Theme

"Bouken Suisei (冒険彗星)" by Kurumi Enumoto (eps 1-26)

Reviews

Feb 26, 2022

AnimeEnjoyer420

Recommended

Recommendation: This show was so much fun to watch. The plot is pretty bonkers and the characters are interesting, so it gets an unqualified thumbs up from me for anyone that likes fantasy anime.

Positives:

+ Wild story full of twists and turns that you won't see coming. Once you get into the meat of the story, almost every episode has at least one "oh shit what" moment. For me, the viewing experience was something like watching Code Geass, or more recently, Back Arrow. It just keeps escalating with crazy plot twists until it gets really weird, and it's so much fun to just ... be along for the ride.

+ Interesting flawed protagonist in Luke. He's a spoiled little rich kid at first, and his party likes him overall, but gets exasperated with his arrogance and some of his antics. I'll keep it vague to avoid spoilers, but this essentially directly leads to him making a terrible and unforgivable mistake, which then leads to his own friends abandoning him in disgust. Some valuable context is added to explain why he is the way he is, and much of the rest of the series is about him attempting to rebuild the trust he broke with his comrades earlier in the series. It's an interesting and somewhat unique way to present a protagonist, because he is a genuinely loathsome figure at times, and I actually thought they were going to kill him off or make him a villain and have a new protagonist (that being Asch) at one point. But by the end of the series, he's earned back the respect of both the characters and the audience. It's a very well developed and satisfying character arc.

+ Other characters get good development over the course of the series as well. In particular, I liked what they did with Princess Natalia. She's presented early on as the sort of "childhood friend that's bound to lose" archetype, being engaged to Luke from birth as a matter of royal politics but with no romantic feelings between them. But her character develops largely independent of Luke (this isn't a harem series after all), and the matter of her parentage that comes up midway through the series really elevates her as one of the best characters in a series that has several.

+ The OP and ED are both bops.

+ The voice acting is strong throughout, but the highlight is of course Jouji Nakata hamming it up in the way that only he can as Van, Luke's mentor and swordfighting teacher.

+ Animation and artwork is quite good, easily on par with or exceeding modern standards even though it came out roughly 15 years ago as I write this review. The CGI doesn't look amazing, but again, I've seen far worse in anime airing in 2022. There aren't a ton of extended fight scenes, but the ones that exist are well-directed and animated, dynamic and exciting. The little things like background art, city and building design, and so forth, are all very creative and nicely done.

Negatives:

- Mieu, the little floating mascot character, is useless and annoying. He has no reason to be in any scene, adds nothing of value, and his overly cutesy voice is extremely grating. It's kiddie shit in a series that should be above that.

- Inconsistent worldbuilding. They will do things like going into great detail in explaining a peripherally-important system called Planet Storm that circulates Seventh Fonons around the world, but then not actually explain what Seventh Fonons are, which is a major part of the series lore. It seems to just be a fancy word for magic particles from what I could put together, but there's a lot of missing context. Like are there 6 other kinds of fonons? We may never know.

- Cast size is a bit too large. It's not a huge problem, but it can be difficult to keep track of who everyone is at times and what their significance is, and I imagine it would be even more so if you were watching week by week instead of watching the whole thing in 2 weeks like I did. Just a handful fewer characters would make a big difference.

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Jul 15, 2020

biodhe

Mixed Feelings

TLDR, I generally enjoyed watching this series but overall it was just, fine.

Now on to the review. I did not play the game so I essentially went in blind/fresh.

Is an anime series considered a success if it successfully triggers contextually accurate emotions in the viewer? Some would say it is and I would generally agree, but in the case of this anime, I'd say it was a little overdone and it ends up working against itself.

Premise/Story

On the surface, Tales of the Abyss ticks all the boxes for my kind of anime. It has elements of action, fantasy, adventure, magic and a touch ... of romance. It certainly is an interesting take on the age old premise of "young spoiled brat goes through stuff, grows up and tries to save the world", but beyond the interesting approach, the story is quite predictable like most anime these days.

The primary let down of the series, and quite common with "just fine" anime in general, is how the entire plot is based on events that could have been avoided by simple communication. X knows something Y doesn't, has no real reason to not tell Y what it is, yet has many opportunities to do so but chooses not to, and by the time Y finds out it's too late. This formula is repeated multiple times throughout virtually the entire series and at times I was left wondering what the point of the whole preceding act was.

Nonetheless, the story development is decent. It evolves into a story of the struggles between ends vs means and how 2 sides may want the same end but their means differ so much that they are willing to kill one another or die because of it.

Characters

Most of the character development is fed to you in "Oh dang! Plot twist!" style moments which gets old when used too much. I have also never watched an anime where practically all the good guys are so hypocritical. The MC is heavily chastised for not thinking for himself and when he did eventually try to think for himself he was either silenced, brushed off or chastised once again by the very same characters. This is where the question at the start of my review stems from. I did really come to dislike the characters that I was meant to dislike, abit too much. So much so that when redemption came knocking, going along with it felt too forced, but I went along with it anyway.

Now we run into the next problem: The supporting characters did such a good job at fanning the flames of dislike that by the time said redeemed characters become likable again, it almost felt like the rest of the cast didnt deserve to be associated with them. This made it hard to genuinely like some of the characters which the story eventually intended for the viewer to like.

That being said, it wasn't all bad. The series does dive pretty deep into the history and motivations for some of its characters and there are a few that I did end up liking, ironically one of them being the MC. Taking a step back and looking at the cards he was dealt and what he needed to do, I ended up really sympathizing with his situation and rooting for him. There were also some plot twists that, while predictable, were well executed and justified.

Conclusion

This may sound like a bad review but as I mentioned at the start, I did enjoy watching it general, it ticked the right genre boxes for me and had just enough to make it enjoyable. So I give it a 6/10, i.e. Ok to watch if you have time to kill and like the genres and themes.

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Jul 9, 2018

deathabarbar

Not Recommended

What a crap, the story consist of plot-holes, and plot twists, almost every episode someone changes side, or revealed that they were on the other side all along or some other terrible secret, then everyone acts the same as ever in the next episode. There is one guy who helps the enemy, but the main cast lets him escape, then next time he spies on them but, the 'smart glasses guy' says it's not a problem, then a the next episode, said guy brings the bad guys on them, resulting in others dying, then a few episides later said guy heps the main cast.
While the ... starting point and the end point of the story is clear, the inbetween is murky at best. Enemies survive clearly fatal hits for the sake of plot, the main group has the ability to teleport, only shown travelling when there is some interaction during, otherwise they can travel as much as half a continent from one scene to the next.
Generally it feels like some episodes had material for 2-3 other episodes, while there are some episodes that are just a waste of time, thus the pacing is all over the place.

The art and sound are good, but these are about the only things the show got right, though there are some inconsistencies like size differences and "interesting" design choices, but I suspect the had to follow already existing designes. The voice acting is mostly good, the annoying character has annoying VA, which I wouldn't really put as a negative.

The characters are bad, lots of side characters get introduced who barely show up later and don't really serve any purpose. The main cast seems forced, most of the things they do are for advancing the plot even at the cost of not staying in character. As already mentioned everyone has some dark secret, which doesn't really seem to impact relations, as already mentioned.

It's not enjoyable at all, I've only finished it to see where it would end up, but should have dropped 4 episodes in. The combat is boring, mostly consisting of talking while hacking at each others sword, then when it's time to finish them someone from the main cast defeats/kills the opponent in one hit, there is no casting time or the like, so they could have done so from the start which ruins any suspension. Wounds, even lethal ones, don't seem to matter, only if the plot requires the character's death.

Overall it's really bad, you are better off reading the plot somewhere. While it does have interesting concepts it fails to integrate them into the story, there really isn't anything special, except the unusually high number of turncoats, it's generic magic/fantasy hero saves the world, and bad at that.

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I'm on ep 6, and I REALLY want to drop this now... Kirukato05 - Jun 19, 2022	7 replies	by Sir-C »» Feb 26, 9:34 AM
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Tales of the Abyss

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Fon Fabre, Luke

Curtiss, Jade

Grants, Tear

Asch

Cecil, Guy

Ion

Tatlin, Anise

Luzu Kimlasca Lanvaldear, Natalia

Sync

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