Elsword: El-ui Yeoin

For anyone who watches and wondering why I give a good score is because I already play and read all the story of the game. And if you want to understand more about the anime then I suggest you to play the game first and read the story of the game rather than watching this anime because the start of this anime is actually the mid story of the game.

I'm sure some of you who haven't play the game might be wondering on the first episode if it really start out like that or not (and the answer is no, there's more MORE story before ... that). They also skipped how they saved the wind priest lol.

Overall, yes, I think they should do better with the story. But aside from that, the music, character, VAs, and the animations are brilliant, or as I can say, better than most anime nowadays. Let's just hope there will be another season for this anime and will do the anime with full story in the future.

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 understand that the point is for hardcore players of Elsword to enjoy the show, I am not a hardcore player but I played a lot of Grand Chase and then a bit of Elsword when it came out ... I was vaguely familiar with the characters and world, not enough that I'd say I'm knowledgeable but I could follow the basics pretty well.

That being said;
This is completely unwatchable.

The voice acting is terrible, the pacing is UNBELIEVABLY BAD and there is no characterization or depth. I could not watch past a single episode.

The only thing this could have offered was good fight choreography which ... it most certainly does not have. It's terrible all around, I have never seen such a flimsy attempt to adapt source material. It's bad.