Elsword: El-ui Yeoin

It does a pretty good job being a faithful adaptation of the story Hamel-Lanox. There isn't much they did differently compared to the game's story dialog.

The voice acting is fine too, if you're used to hearing the game voices, then you'll probably be fine with the voices here too. The only complaint is the over-acting of some bits, but it's not the worse.

The art isn't bad at first but, overtime the characters have weird distortion to their faces. It can be pretty distracting at times but it's also funny to watch.

The biggest complaint with the show are the characters, in the game ... they all usually have equal amount of attention in the story, but here characters like Rena and Raven are hardly focused on. The presentation of the character's base personality comes off as typical clichés. The forced shipping is also in full force. The overall fanservice they have feels like too much, it should have been cut in half. I would of liked if they spent more time on the characters (other than shipping), considering they're the biggest part of Elsword.

Overall I was surprised this got a full 12 episodes to it. If they were ever to do this again the story would probably be Atlas-Elysion, which in my opinion are much more interesting regions to focus on. I would only really recommend this to people who've at least played the game, other than that, it would just feels weird to people that haven't

Yeah give an anime adaptation of an MMO and start it past the mid point of the game's plot...BRILLIANT!!!!!!

Ok, so sarcasm aside, Elsword is an anime LA didn't even expected to get an anime and LA being a rather early fan of Elsword and played the game for hundreds of hours but had fallen off it (Computer issues) much later, LA still liked this grindfest of an MMO.

So how does the anime stand to the MMO?...well...

The most bizarre thing about this anime is that it starts the anime at the mid-point (start of Hamel to be precise) with the all of the El Party members ... having already grown to their 2nd Job Classes, so this is telling that this is for the fans however it utterly isolates the newbies wanting to get into this MMO through the anime in the first place, it's just a weird choice even starting here where it did. The only point LA thinks to defend this decision is that Elsword wanted to get into the action quickly thus chose a pretty heavy story-centric point of the story with the majority of the cast being complete aside from four that later joins. But nonetheless seeing many of Elsword's more action-packed events happen in animated form is a pretty good trade off.

Character-wise we have our typical character tropes we usually see in their job orientated MMO's. Elsword is the hot-blooded dense guy, Aisha is the tsundere, Raven is the brooding emo, Rena is the mature one, Eve is the kuudere, Chung is the nice guy heavy and Elesis is the leader and LA's favourite character of this anime (and by extension was LA's main in the actual game), the thing is for the most part, characters isn't what drive the plot, it's the "next goal" and the more obvious "save the world" plot cliche. The only ones to get some sense of character development are Elsword and Ignia with the link being wanting to save people, just HOW they do it becomes conflict to the two of them, Elsword himself also gets a dilemma with betrayal as to how too kind-hearted he is. Chung and Ara gets one if only because of their family members being brought over to the demon side and how they try to get over it in some cases, finally Add gets one of him not being a jerk to the rest of the El Party, the rest of the main cast well uhhh...well your gonna be out of luck. Overall, character development wise due to the rather big main cast roster, it's rather all over the place, as again it's more plot-driven than a character driven narrative.

The main point of this anime is yes an advertisement to the MMO and everything but it kinda brings the MMO to an animated form and it did it's job all things considering, bringing references, shipping characters (seriously the shipping moments in this anime is outrageous, it's almost blatantly tongue and cheek about it) and elements to the game brought to life and telling a rather simple story of good vs. evil (ohh come on...it is simple!, a detriment to the game as well mainly because we have a party of good guys wanting to kill the demons and save Elrios, basic goal is this, being honest here. If we're speaking world lore that's different but what the anime gives us...then yes it's simple.)

In terms of animation done by DR Movie did a pretty great job, from the crisp character designs, good backgrounding and the even better battles shown is greatly detailed. If there is one other reason to watch Elsword besides being a fan of the game, is that the animation is GORGEOUS or AMAZING to look at..this coming from a Korean studio in the first place!, however as detailed as most of the animation gets, it does get shoddy at times with blatant slips of quality here and there for the most part are rare, but still animation is gorgeous or amazing when it does want to be.

The thing is for voice acting, LA has some experience in the Korean voice acting (as in LA has heard it quite often in childhood) and from this LA will say that Koreans have a thing to over exaggerate their vocal inflictions in a cartoony way in comparison to Japanese where it's more refined and professional. Now is LA saying the Korean voice acting is terrible, ABSOLUTELY NOT, the Korean voice actors fit into their characters well and for the most part is great, what LA is merely saying is that with LA's experience with the Korean language and everything it's just something LA picked up while watching this anime and there will obviously be a disparity to Korean and Japanese voice actors in the long run of things. Overall decent Korean voice acting which "kinda" got annoying with some squeaky vocals here and there...*cough* Ara and Aisha *cough*.

Elsword's anime by it's definition is an advertisement for the MMO and though with a bizarre plot choice, varying character developments in which your favorite character "might" get shafted as a satellite character (no seriously), great technical aspects from the voice acting and animation and bringing in references and elements of the game in subtle ways, LA thinks this "advertisement" of an MMO was done is a decent way, problems yes, but nonetheless since LA was a fan of the game LA might have some bias towards this franchise. But still even with it's faults, Elsword the Animation for an MMO anime adaptation was handled properly, not the best adaptation LA has ever seen but is a decent watch nonetheless.

I'll start this review by saying this: I really LOVE the game. I have played it for years and I'll never stop to love it. But I really can't say the same about the anime.

The story is really simple, perfect for a game where you have to kick lots of ass, but not so perfect for an anime serie. It's too predictable and it makes it boring.

Characters are simple, but the problem here is that, ok, this anime is for Elsword players, so the public already knows their background, but even though they talk a lot, and I mean A LOT, they have absolutely no ... depht, their conversations are all so poor and boring that they're even impossible to be listened (mostly because the voice acting is the worst thing every human on this planet would like to hear).
We see that Chung, Add and Ara are just introduced to the team, but they act like they have been knowing each other for an eternity, in the beginning Elesis tries to seem suspicious about Add, but it fades almost istantly.
And it is appropriate to mention that if you know that someone you love and care about is in danger, probably injured, I don't think you would just think "well, whatever, she has been through worse, she'll just be okay even if we don't try to search for her and help her, let's continue our adventure like she has never existed before!"

Now, the art. At the beginning, it was good. Nothing special, but good. The more we approach to the end, the more it gets worse and less detailed.

Sound is pretty appropriate for the battles, but battles are boring and rare, they just have to hit demons one time and they explode for no reason, there's not even the need to use skills (in fact they almost don't use them).

I really love the game, so I think this anime is just an insult to it. Just a gigantic tornado of fanservice for shippers and for a great part of the huge fandom.