Tales of Zestiria the Cross 2nd Season

Out of all of the games in the 'Tales of-' series, many people were skeptical at Ufotable's choice at adapting Zestiria, which was understandable given how it had one of the weakest stories in the entire series. And honestly, the skepticism backed itself up very well given the final product.

Story: Continuing with its previous season, Tales of Zestiria brings us back to the world plagued by malevolence where we follow our main protagonist, Sorey, as he fully realizes his power as the Shepherd in order to save the world from humanity's own faults and wrongdoings. At least...that's what I think the show's about? ... It's not really all that clear.

Unfortunately, the muddiness and lack of detail of my own synopsis to me shows just how difficult it is to describe Tales of Zestiria from a story sense. With the entire game adapted into roughly 25 episodes worth of material, many liberties were taken by Ufotable in order to squeeze it into this tiny, tiny runtime. But it's not just that the show was rushed, rather, the show decides to focus more on specific sections of the game (more specifically, the arc about our newest member, Rose) and run with that as the main brunt of the runtime. As an end result, the show ends up being extremely choppy and uneven in pacing, as there's this huge jarring scene transition in the middle that turns it from a character-based story about our females leads, into an overall journey deciding the fate of the world.

The consequences of these actions are both prominent and many in number. The antagonists of the series ultimately have difficult to understand motivation to the point that there might as well not be any, the amount of world building is both laughable and poorly structured, the pacing is horrendous (especially in the last few episodes), and above all, there's no emotional weight or anything to bring us this far. The last one is the biggest problem of them all because I find that there's really no reason for anything the characters do to matter so much. Sure the ending might be predictable, but at least make me feel SOMETHING for the characters when they struggle. I just found it very hard for me to even care with what was going on, let alone understand what was even happening half the time since things go from zero to one hundred in the span of an episode.

Zestiria makes a difficult case for itself because due to its vast number of problems, it becomes very hard to find anything positive to say about its story. A show becomes a trial to watch when the plotline has our heroes try and solve some kind of civil war in one episode, then already at the doorstep of the 'main antagonist' in the next. If it's any consolation, the previews where our characters banter with one another before unveiling the title for the next episode is arguably more entertaining than probably anything else that we get from here.

Overview:
- Messy writing
- Horrendous pacing
- Choppy scene transitions
- Gives the audience very little reason to care

Characters: Characters fare slightly better than the story mostly because not only is a brunt of the screentime devoted to the characters' stories, but their interactions are for the most part, quite entertaining.

As far as the cast from the first season goes, there's not really much to say. Sorey and his seraphim friends still go about his journey to save the world from malevolence and Alisha is still the princess who's dealing with power struggles in her kingdom. Sure Alisha gets a little bit of expansion to her eventually resolved problems, but the placing of it combined with the lack of the antagonist's motivation for doing anything sort of undercuts any and all tension that would've been had. Sorey however doesn't change. The show doesn't focus on him at all in any way shape or form over the course of season two, so trust me. He's still the same dopey MC with good intentions as he was before.

Despite it being Sorey's journey, the true star of season two is Rose, the spunky merchant girl who literally steals the show by being the only character with ample screentime or devoted story time to. Sure while her story's all well and good, my main gripe with her is the fact that she completely overshadows anything that's going on. The surge of world-ending malevolence is completely ignored in order to devote at least two-thirds of the show's overall runtime the personal trials of one character. While I don't think that Rose is a terrible character, the decision to make her the star of the season two was a bad one at best, especially when last season ended with our main characters meeting the big bad guy for the first time.

Both side characters and antagonists serve only one purpose: background decorations. No one aside from the main characters really have any weight on the flow of the story, as everyone that isn't an elemental seraphim or one of the three colorfully dressed humans serves only to move the story along. This becomes painfully obvious with the villains because even with watching the series in its entirety, it's not really quite clear what all of the antagonists hoped to achieve with all of this. Especially with the "Lord of Calamity" that keeps being brought up.

Overview:
+ Entertaining main cast
- Very little screentime for the main protagonist
- Rose takes up too much space
- Everyone who's not a main character is background fodder

Art: A general consensus for Ufotable is that they have top-tier animation that blends both hand-drawn animation and computer graphics together to form breathtaking scenes. (This becomes especially clear with their work in the Fate series.) With Zestiria being given that same treatment, that statement rings true once again as Zestiria has Ufotable's signature shine and beautiful animation to make the series a visually pleasing experience to watch. Alright, what's wrong with it?

You know, for being a series based on a JRPG, there's not that much fighting. There really isn't. Zestiria might as well not have any fight scenes because it seems like the show just flat out refuses to show any. Hell, when they show any fight scenes, they're always so short and unmemorable that it feels like it never even happened. The final fight with the last boss lasted THREE MINUTES. Admittedly, actual movement in Ufotable's fights is rare, but at least in other cases, they pad it with the combatants talking to each other to make it seem like the fight goes on longer than it actually is. Zestiria's fights hardly feel like a battle at all.

Overview:
+ Ufotable-level artwork
- Literally no fight scenes. (You get maybe 10-12 minutes of total fighting in the entire series.)

Sound: Season two sports a brand new OP and ED that in comparison to its season one counterparts, sounds like there's a lot more weight to the entire situation. Both its OP, "Illuminate" and its ED, "Innosense" have a lot more urgency to them and make it feel like that there's a lot more at stake for our protagonists in order to save the world. While that's an utter lie, the tracks give the show that illusion.

Personal Enjoyment: I really wanted to enjoy Tales of Zestiria, I really did. But I for the life of me don't understand what is even happening. One episode there's a hostage situation involving Alisha dealing with her power struggles, then Rose wants to take revenge on someone? And now...they're fighting the big bad guy when just two episodes ago, our characters couldn't even use the game's biggest battle mechanic of armatization like...at all. It came to a point where I sort of threw my hands up in the air and gave up on making any sense with what was going on because the show just made it that difficult to follow what was going on.

Did I like this anime?

I enjoyed the first season, not so much this one. Admittedly, the first season was painfully slow and had its own set of problems, but at least things weren't all over the place like season two.

What didn't I like about this anime?

In terms of specifics, the ending felt like a cop-out. It really feels like a huge cop-out. I wish it wasn't a cop-out.

Would I recommend this anime?

I don't really find much worth in watching Tales of Zestiria. Sure the visuals are nice, the soundtrack is pretty good, and the characters are entertaining, but the story makes everything so difficult to fully appreciate. Ufotable's attempt at pressing everything down to make it fit does a lot of harm to a story that already a lot of people weren't too keen on in the first place. As such, if you do plan on watching this, I would be sure not to keep expectations to high and just sort of go along with it. If you're not planning on watching this, then it's not worth the time.

As someone who has played the games and now watched the anime I dont like some things they did to it.

Story 5/10
While I loved the game and its what got me into the series I have to rate the story of the anime a 5/10 because while season 1 was good with minor changes season 2 has gone into major filler and is skipping like half the story do to fitting it into 13 episodes.
While I appreciate the Berseria tie ins they have gone way out of there way to add them into it and there spoiling the whole story

Art/Sound 10/10
animation, character design, theme ... and background music is top tier

Characters 7/10
I love the characters but I feel like the anime has skipped over a lot mainly do to fitting 13 episodes which I think makes the character development kinda lacking.

Enjoyment 5/10
going into season 1 I was excited because like Ive said before I loved the game but after time went on it just kept getting less and less enjoyable to me. I guess its mainly because I had played the game and knew what would happen and excited to see it fully animated and when that didnt happen and it started to change and I didnt like a lot of what they changed but also liked a few things they added.

Overall 6/10
season 1 started good then it just went down from there.

The art surrounding the story is like a beautiful wedding dress surrounding a goat that was mauled to death by a bear last week.

This series gets the first 10 I've ever given for art, rounded up from 9,6 because the derpy faces of some characters could have looked better while the rest looks like it had the budget of an entire small nation. That's the only good thing about this insanely retarded mess worth praising.

Mr. Shepherd keeps clinging to his ideal that nobody should ever be killed and it gets ever more annoying as time passes. There are so many thousands of good examples of ... how refusal to do away with a souce of suffering and death results in absolute disaster that I won't even bother listing any. Yet this blockheaded colossal dork never even once has to make a tough choice because he is ALWAYS conveniently presented an option where he doesn't need to get his hands dirty, his disgusting aura of plot convenience even infects others.

As awful as the brain dead single track characters are the story is even more appalling, the first season was terrible but could have had some development that turned it into something mildly interesting if the second season had been the least bit clever. The main problem is that the stupid idea of "malevolence" is a core pillar and the story adamantly held onto it being a manifestation of crappy feelings and emo stuff from people and it can be "purified" by beating it up with magic, this is so childish I can't even find proper words to describe its idiocy. "Oh you're an evil person? Lemme just brutally slash you with my magic sword that does zero physical damage and you'll become a good person and totally won't become evil again only to ruin someone elses life, because your malevolence isn't part of you despite being part of you and stuff."

As if the above isn't bad enough the story also includes numerous plot holes of enough size to comfortably fit an apartment complex, three market stands and a community pool. No matter how low your expectations you will likely still be disappointed.

To clear things up, this is a review of Seasons 1 & 2, or better put "Tales of Zestiria the X" as a whole.
This review will not follow a typical format, I think everyone already knows that the art is great and that the sound is probably great too. As such I'll focus on everything wrong with the show.

So lets start by getting this out of the way:


Art: 9/10 , it's ufotable, I gave Fate/Zero a 10 and rated Garden of Sinners equally as high. Zestiria is still up to scratch, or though at times quality fluctuates slightly and just doesn't meet previous standards set ... by the studio.


Sound: 'Very good' 8/10, as a guitarist myself I could appreciate the slightly rockier OST parts and Flow is always great.

And now for where it goes wrong.

Story: 3/10. Honestly this didn't come as a surprise to me and nor I should think to anyone else familiar with the Tales Series, specifically Tales of Zestiria, that the story should be a convoluted mess. When I say convoluted, I don't mean that in the sense that there's so many intricacies that its impossible to follow the narrative, in fact the story is as boringly simple and cliché as you might expect from any run of the mill RPG, or a Tales game rated as low as Zestiria was. Instead the story is convoluted in a far worse sense, the characters are thrown around from place to place, meeting new and underdeveloped characters that are quickly thrown to the roadside for half the season only to return in just an episode or two and do nothing.
Minor Spoilers here, after coming to Lady Lake, Soray becomes the Shepherd in a rather underwhelming fashion (though the fight that ensues is fun to look at). After the fight he blacks out, and wakes up later in a palace bedroom. Some mild shipping then ensues with Alisha and then he buggers off to save the world and what have you.
That's basically the narrative, as from then on Soray migrates from place to place, picking up chicks who don't seem to like him like some crappy but extremely mild harem show. As he goes from place to place he also finds malevolence and predictably kills it, or rather purifies it because the Shepherd's above killing. I should mention there are plenty of subplots to break up the narrative here, which if handled right could've been a good and refreshing divergence from the narrative, but its not. After they head separate ways, the narrative will chop and change between Soray and his entourage and Alisha and her girl power posse, (which I will return to later). Like I said this could've been good for the show, however the way they do it, spending a few episodes here, cutting from the action to spend yet another few episodes developing unrelated characters you don't care about is infuriating. This really isn't helped by the fact that Alisha is the worst character in the show, something I'll reason out with you later.

The other bad thing the show does with the story is the random 2 episode (or maybe three, I struggle to remember) section covering the beginning events of Tales of Berseria. Now, I know what you're thinking, 'you stupid ruddy twat, Tales of Berseria is way better than Zestiria! How can it detract from the narrative? Well, quite simply. It's totally pointless. The events of the prequel to Zestiria (that's Berseria), especially the very beginning of Berseria, don't relate at all to what happens in Zestiria, not in a way that needs to give background to all the characters from Berseria. Mild Spoilers here, the end events of Berseria are the cause of the current issues going on in Zestiria, something that's all explained in about 10 seconds of exposition from the King of Rolance (Roland? I dunno) half way through season two. Ultimately this 40-60 minute escapade feels either like a cheap excuse not to adapt the infinitely better Tales of Berseria, or just the studio realising that the story sucked and that maybe if they stuck part of a better story half way through, the show would be improved. Well, it isn't. Given that for the story of Berseria to matter at all, you need to develop it waaaaay past the character introductions (of whom the only ones that matter are Mavin (Mayvin?) and Velvet anyway).

Without going into too much Season 2's plot in particular was rushed, a bit weird at times and diverted from the original plot slightly, sadly not for the better.

Enough of the story, lets move on to the greatest disappointment;

The Characters: A solid 2/10.

Now if I hadn't mentioned this earlier, most of you are probably thinking this will now turn into a multi-page bitching session about Soray and his cliché and predictable behaviour, lack of personality and plot armour. Well, you'd have been wrong.
However lets start with Soray anyway.

Soray: So, he's our protagonist, the Shepherd come to rid the world of evil yadah yadah. Honestly given the premise I already kind of knew exactly what he'd be like, and once the show confirmed that for me, I in turn knew his every decision and action that he'd take throughout the whole god damn story. Soray is a goody two shoes through and through, always taking the righteous and perceptibly good path. Now, characters that do this aren't always flat, boring and one dimensional characters, however for me to buy into them being like that I have to be given a viable reason for them being like that. To give you an example, Nino Kuni's Oliver. Now he is not by any means the most complex and well fleshed out character ever, far from it. However his situation is very similar to Sorays. Put into a new world (I use this term loosely, as for Soray going out of the Seraphim's village is essentially like entering a new world) and called the 'Pure-hearted one', or as Drippy says, the 'Puuuuuuueeeer-hearted one', Oliver is in a very similar situation to Soray. He is the savior who can mend broken hearts (basically like purifying) and rid the world of this unnatural suffering (basically malevolence). However Oli boy doesn't do this just because he's good like that. Mild Spoiler Warning- He went to this alternate world to save his mother, who he feels responsible for killing, having lied to her in order to escape her watchful eye and have some somewhat dangerous fun. This is a character drive that makes me believe that someone in Oli's position would do as he has done, and the fact that as he develops as a character in the new world, he gains other motivations to fulfilling his duty as the savior only adds to my ability to believe in the narrative. Soray has none of this kind of backstory or motivation. He grew up sheltered in a social paradise, and became the Shepherd because he's just that nice. It makes events like when he tries to stop people from killing clearly evil people in revenge for their crimes really freaking annoying. He just seems like an entitled brat that for what ever reason people do what he says and things just go his way.



The Seraphs: I'm treating these guys all as one character because otherwise there isn't enough to talk about. To be honest, the Seraphs aren't really characters, they're just ways in which the narrative can explain where Soray's powers come from, as well as acting as exposition dumping machines (especially Lailah). They're invisible to all except Soray and a few others and quite frankly could just be voices in Soray's head for all the difference they make to the narrative. The only exception might've been Edna with her somewhat more interesting subplot with her brother which may seem to indicate that seraphim are becoming dragons. Only issue is that she never says anything and that subplot goes nowhere, so in the end she's just as much as a sockpuppet as the rest of them are.

Rose: Rose was at times a more enjoyable character than the rest of the cast. She was developed, had reasons for what she did, and goals she was aiming for. At first I thought she was just meant to be another Alisha-esque token badass female lead to beat up a couple of grunts here and there. But as she was developed she was given viable reasons for her basically super-human skills when compared to others in universe.
I was happy with her character, until the end of her character arc when she basically became Soray's bitch and was totally uninteresting for the rest of the show, assuming similar ideals to Soray, forsaking her old ones and just basically being an emotional potato for the rest of the show.
I feel I should mention, malevolence is a basically a plot tool justifying Soray's ideals that all killing is bad no matter what as all it does is spread malice, lines that he shot off to Rose during her infinitely more interesting character arc that eventually collapsed it down to the aforementioned disappointing end we were left with.

No other characters really matter, even the villains (especially the villains), so as I saved the worst for last:

Alisha:
I really don't know whether to keep this short and sweet or just to furiously type words of hate until I get bored. I'll settle for something in between.
Alisha is one of the worst characters I've seen, ever, and whats worse, I really struggle to tell you why. Maybe there's just so much wrong that I gave up trying to decipher it all half way through, who knows.
If I were to sum up and list them though, I'd say;

-All of Soray's problems, namely goody two shoes, lack of personal motivation and plot armour.
-All of Rose's problems, without Rose's backstory, namely being an irritating token badass girl for the sake of being a female power statement (I'll explain myself later, I have no issue with strong/badass females in any media, my issue is with the way in which these characters are implemented as such and why I think they did his in the first place).
-Her own crappy backstory, if you can call it that.
-And the worst of all, is not actually an issue with Alisha herself, more with how everyone treats her, and how that affects her character development.

So, in order, and I'll try to be brief here: She shares all of the problems Soray had, self righteous attitude to everything, with no explanation as to why she is as she is. She also inherently has plot armour, so you know nothing life threatening is going to happen to her, at least until the very end (maybe). This includes being attacked by a tornado, then a dragon, then assassins (who by all rights should be far stronger than she is), as well as being stabbed through the stomach, apparently. All of these (and more occurrences later on) honest to God don't mean shit to her. She survives everything completely fine, and is up and about a few hours later, as if somebody's rusty iron blade hadn't just permeated her stomach lining a few hours earlier. Its irritating to say the least, but hey I'm used to plot armour by now that alone wouldn't kill it for me, so lets move on.


I'll skip what I said about Rose for now as that fits in better later on, so on to her crappy back story.
Well, to be blunt, she doesn't really have any, she's a princess, I guess. She was trained by some Brazilian-looking chick who has a massive rack, I guess. Oh oh, and she's not actually noble-blooded. Her mum was a commoner, and hence the court has mistreated her sob-sob fuck off. That's about it honestly. This alone is annoying enough, however the way we were first told about it somehow makes it worse. It was just casually thrown in there as a "by the way" kind of statement. Seems like the writers thought she might not be relatable enough, so they just threw that in because you know, from the bottom to the top stories are really relatable and endearing especially if the whole process of going from the bottom to the top was before you were born. This adds nothing to her character and only served to piss me off a little more. The way in which this was added kind of reminds of the way GATE (Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri) added to their protagonist, by listing his bullshit achievements in a totally casual way with absolutely no way of showing how he got them. At least in that show, cliché and PR filled as it may have been, the other characters had the suitable reaction of being pissed off at the bs themselves.

-And now the worst one. The way the other characters interact with her, the way everybody just goes along with it. You know what made Louise such an annoying character in Familiar of Zero? It wasn't her god awful attitude and bitchy nature, bad as they were. It was the fact that she got away with everything, everything always went her way.
The same is true for Alisha, though it isn't really her personality that I hate, as she doesn't have one. Its her ideals clashing with others, and everyone just going well fuck! She's totally right! On top of this the way the show portrayed anyone and anything with a less than perfect, or in-universe, less-than-Alisha way of looking at things is supposed to be totally corrupt and evil.
Case and point- Bartlow. Note that there will be spoilers here. For those who don't know, Bartlow is basically Alisha's antagonist, a somewhat minor villain who is the cause of most of Alisha's issues throughout the show. Now, true enough Bartlow's motives are clearly revealed to be a struggle for power towards the end of the first season and all through S2, as he is clearly after the throne. However at the very beginning when you are first introduced to him. He and Alisha are at odds. He wants to send soldiers to Rolance's(?) border as he is expecting war. Alisha says No! as clearly defending your border only breeds war. The subplot is as follows, Bartlow meets with the Scattered Bones, a group of assassins that only kill evil people and convinces them to off Alisha as she would sacrifice her own people for her ideals. They agree. Now the show presents this as the Bones being used to kill Alisha by the evil Bartlow, but quite frankly I absolutely agree with his motives. As far as I know, Bartlow is a man in position of power charged with defending his country from another powerful country that contains hostile factions. His actions make perfect logical sense, even having Alisha eliminated, as she really does threaten the nation's safety with her naivety. Alisha of course survived because of plot armour and dependence of Soray, and story moves on with Bartlow clearly meant to be the bad guy. Let me back up my point. For those that have watched the first season, think about the fight between Hyland and Rolance at the end of the season. Hyland's troops, as they approached their border were drawn into battle with Rolance, and then ambushed from behind their own border by another division of Rolance troops. Rolance clearly had planned to attack Hyland regardless of Alisha's or Bartlow's decision. Now, four things happen here that serve to make me hate Alisha even more. 1. Despite Rolance's actions she still goes to the commander in charge to stop the fighting. As a bonus she does deservedly get stabbed, but then 2. Plot armour! She's totally fine despite quite literally being gutted. 3. She is ultimately totally useless and needs Soray to save her country and her sorry ass. If you are confused what I mean by this, I'll explain. Rolance had successfully ambushed Hyland's forces, and Rolance's Generals were clearly very confident of victory. Taking that into account we can assume that Hyland would've lost and then next thing Alisha would know is that Rolance is knocking on Lady Lake's holier-than thou doors.
And 4. Despite all of that, she learns nothing, at all. Because she was saved by Soray she doesn't seem to think for even a second that maybe she was in fact wrong and should compromise with Bartlow. Nope, to her this is proof from the Gods above (or Seraphim or whatever) that she is truly righteous.

Now, I said I'd explain myself, and I will. Lets sweep the floor clean first. I am not sexist. Couldn't care less if a powerful character is male of female. However Alisha and her posse of overpowered peaches is exactly how you do female empowerment wrong. Add Soray to lord over them all and you've got a winning formula invalidating everything your character is and does, as well as pissing off half the audience.
To set it out, this is my issue with Alisha and her posse and why I find them so irritating. Other than them all thinking Alisha is God's own gift (I get that she's their princess, so I can forgive them that) they all share this certain dynamic in Alisha's command structure. All of her second in commands, as well as her 'master', are chicks who are inexplicably, insanely adept at killing things, as well as being physically stronger than any other trained knight on the battlefield. It doesn't make sense and the sheer abundance of it seen in this show is annoying. All of her men are just tools to look stupid and die pointlessly, temporarily making her feel bad until she thinks what would Soray do and then spouts some cheesy one liner. In fact its instances like the ones when a bunch of her men die after she tells them not to kill any of her characters that makes what Bartlow said to the Scattered Bones at the start so true, and the fact that there is never any come-upance or reckoning for Alisha is too hard to swallow.
Back to topic, its a difficult thing to explain, but the majority of women in this series don't feel like powerful characters in their own right (or even characters in their own right), instead it seems like they are tokens, stuck in there for the sole purpose of putting some strong females in the script, except that they're not because Soray is the only one who can get shit done apparently. It's annoying, pointless and poorly thought out. Rose is a character done well in this manner, if not done well overall. Alisha and her posse are there to satisfy the modern political correctness in anime that girls have to be powerful, except when they're not.
In the end its an accumulation of fairly minor details like this that just multiply the effect and make Alisha such a poor character, in her own right and through the interactions with those she surrounds herself with.


Well, I'm done. Seems like this review turned into more of a messy dump than I thought it would, but I hope by this point you got the gist.

Overall this series gets a 5/10, mediocre. The only reason for this being the sound and art. I personally care a lot about animation and sound design in anime, if I didn't I'd read manga or light novels, however as it stands I do care, and that is the only reason this show rates as high as it does for me.

Now, this was my first review, so critique is welcome.
Cheers.

(UH-OH, FIRST EVER REVIEW INCOMING)
The first season of Tales of Zestria the X was something that I had enjoyed as much as I thought I would. The visuals were as expected from ufotable, the sound was appropriate, the characters were defined well enough and, most of all, the threats and challenges presented to the characters (specifically the lord of calamity, dragons, and the strain that purifications put on Sorey) were shown to be something that the new, inexperienced heroes couldn't even TRY challenging. The show's world, logic, and power differentials between characters were all well established and I was decently excited to watch this ... new series. What even happened between then and now? Keep in mind that I will constantly be mentioning the last season, and will not explain anything that that season did, so watch that before this, m'kay? Mm'kay.

Story: well, i gave it a 4
The last season's story set up a large, epic adventure that could easily span several seasons beyond this, though it was quite cliched. However, that shouldn't have mattered, as the one thing the Tales series is known for above all else is their strong main cast of characters that get better as they get time to develop. Despite this, this series starts off at a slow, boring pace that somehow manages to brush past the setup of last season and ends up with the entire thing being way too rushed and arriving at a conclusion way before it actually earns it. The dragons, malevolence, and Lord of Calamity were all impossibly powerful in comparison to our new Shepard, but in the span of less than a month, he can somehow (DO SOMETHING THAT IS CONSIDERED SPOILER TERRITORY) without any meaningful effort. I'll get into Sorey when that section comes. For now, I'll just say that I was at least able to force myself through the show, and I have a pretty low tolerance for bull, so do with that as you will.

Art: 8. Yeah, ufotable was slacking
I was not impressed by the art at all (btw, I consider the visual part of the OP to be art, as well as other things that have to do with directing, as there isn't really a section for that on MAL's review guidelines). Of course, it did look good, but it was much more boring bland, and stiff that what I've come to expect from ufotable. The fights and such were usually spectacular, with the CGI integration being a bit inconsistent, with it sometimes being good, and other times looking not very good. The other scenes (you know, 70% of the show), had no visual style or flair and made me want to skip them. There were no longer any beautiful backgrounds or interesting indoor sets to look at while the characters just sat around, it was excruciating. The OP was significantly worse that the last seasons's, in my opinion. I just didn't have anything interesting to look at. I skipped it almost every time. The ED, however, I never skipped. It looked very good when it was moving and the still shots made me feel like they were trying to convey something about what they were showing. It also reflected the darker tone of this season compared to the last one, as the entirely chill and heartwarming ED of last season was replaced with shots of the characters struggling to fight against their foes and showing their unwillingness to back down. Speaking of the last ED, there are several shots and scenes in the show that mirror it and have the same sort of tone, which I really like. I also love how they integrate those random conversations from the games into their next episode previews. As a fan of the series (albeit a minor one), I was ecstatic that they included those.The score for art still is high because of the brief but constant scenes of fantastic looking action, which is the least that I expect from ufotable.

Sound: oh god. (2)
It's so bad. I personally didn't like the OP song at all. The ED managed to keep me occupied enough, as it is FLOW, who rarely disappoint me. The reason this is so low, though, is due to how the music was used in scenes. These "epic" scenes of the Shepard and his comrades fighting off there great evils are undermined by music that just doesn't do anything but act as background noise. It;s absolutely ATROCIOUS in some places. The sound effects weren't even good, this being in the same season as Youjo Senki, which had no problems at all in this department, with every attack feeling powerful and significant. The voice acting was good out of the main cast, with nobody from the main eight having poor of slacking VAs, but they didn't really try to stand out or do especially amazing. They put the requisite amount of work in. The other VAs were not as solid. there were some moments that they simply didn't do a good job, along with one or two slip ups from the main cast as were. I'll let you decide when, where, and who.

Character: what a disappointment. 6/10
The one reason that this section was doomed from the start is how rushed the story moves along. The only two characters with any meaningful growth were Rose and Dezel. My favorite character, Edna, only got two lines regarding advancements in her subplot. Sorey had some well done development In the first season with him changing from a naive kid to a naive kid with a thorough understanding of the hardships that he is destined to deal with, and that he cannot deal with the Age of Calamities by himself. It was made VERY clear that Sorey and his comrades were not very strong in the grand scale of things. He was ready to grow drastically into a very good character, or act as an anchor to the other character's development, but no. The other characters get NOTHING. The closest to development that the other's get is Lailah with her backstory that only references her in name. With this it's obvious that the story changed from the game. A tales game would never let their characters stay as they are,

Enjoyment: 4. I have to wait until Apr 29 until I can finally say i'm done with this series? Ugh.

Overall: 5
5 is not bad. 7 is not average, 5 is. a 5/10 is simply not worth watching. A 7/10 is what is expected from a series that people are expected to watch. The only reason this number doesn't round down is due to the action's visuals and how much I enjoy the banter between the characters from the last season. Anyway, thanks for reading, even if you just skipped until here. If there is anything you happen to want to point out or discuss, go ahead and message me, assuming this site has that feature. I don't actually know. Also message me if you thing I can improve my reviews, i appreciate your time.

Watching this as someone who had played both of the games it is based on, I can safely say that this anime is better sequel to Tales of Berseria than the eponymous game.

That said there are a few very jarring inconsistencies between the story here and the story of ToB. I will not describe them here to avoid spoilers but let's just say that, among other things, Zaveid would not be happy to discover that dragons can in fact be purified.

The story is also quite different from the Tales of Zestiria game, especially in this season, where pretty much the only common point is ... Sorey defeating the bad guy. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I would have loved to see some of the other locations and plotlines from the game, though that would require a longer run that the 25 episodes.

As for the characters, I think that they were majorly improved compared to the game. I know that a lot of reviewers consider them to be pretty weak, but as someone who spent the 50+ hours necessary to complete the game I was overjoyed to find that Mikleo and Dezel were actually given personalities. The only one who was downgraded was Edna, who spent the entire game snarking at everyone and there is seriously not enough of that in the anime.

The art and sound are both amazing and the pace picks up a bit compared to the first season. I honestly can't judge the anime from the position of someone unfamiliar with the lore, so I can't say whether they would like it, but if you played ToB and want to know what happened with the world afterward, give it a watch. It's shorter than the game at least.

Tales of Zestiria the X 2nd Season was nothing special for me just like the 1st season


When i 1st heard about the anime I thought it would be good and full of action and stuff like that
but I was really disappointed the story was boring,character were a bit interesting but nothing special,the animation was fine,although the whole anime is about purification and stuff like that you can predict what's gonna happend in the next episode or in the next scene...

I wouldn't recommend this anime to anyone,but people like stuff like this,well it's up to you to chose whether you gonna watch it or not ... :D

The second season started off really well, and made me like Rose as much as I did Alicia in the first season. Following the Sparrowfeathers/Shattered Bones made for some intriguing moments and Rose was really fleshed out well as a character. But, once things shifted to the final battle with the Lord of Calamity, the anime was just far too rushed and killed what could've been a great anime. Major events were just happening in a blink of an eye, and it kind of baffled common sense. For example: (Spoiler) Rose was having a horrible time Armatizing with her own close ... Seraph Dezel, but later on, Armatizes with Mikleo in one go, just out of nowhere. No discussion, nothing. She's suddenly just there with Mikleo in her. Makes no sense.

Because of the rushed speed, some characters were making major decisions and sacrifices with hardly any thought, or forewarning, and then they just went and did it and it was over. Way too rushed and it hurt the story. Also, aside from Rose, there was no further character development whatsoever. This left characters like Zavied and Edna very flat and one-dimensional, even Lailah became just someone there to do explanation of the plot. They also hurt Alicia, because in the first season, she was a boss, but in this season, she was just a (mostly useless) sidekick. And they never even explained what was the deal with the random Hellion following Alicia around.

The story just really didn't come through in the second season.

The animation was still beautiful, though, and the soundtrack was good, especially the ending song. But, at the end of the day, this turned out to just be another mediocre fantasy anime. Not terrible, but something I'll forget I ever even saw in about a year.

Story: 6
Art: 10
Sound: 10
Character: 6
Enjoyment: 7
Overall: 6

P.S. I'm not very good at reviews, nor am I very technical when I am reviewing. This is based entirely on my own personal opinion.

[BASIC SPOILER FREE REVIEW]

Story: 6/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 6.6/10
...
[IN-DEPTH REVIEW WITH SPOILERS]

Story: 6/10

The story of this season takes a hit in its score in comparison to its first season. The general series of events is a little confusing, and the timeline jumps around quite a bit. The pacing is just as odd as the first season, but the complexity of this season's events makes comprehending the story in spite of its pacing issues more difficult. Additionally, the ending seemed a little rushed.

Art: 6/10

The art is just as good as last season. The only reason I've docked a point from my review of the first season is that there is more action in this season, meaning more CGI. The CGI doesn't blend well in some places and for me personally, the movement of it is nauseating (so warning to those of us susceptible to motion sickness from video games and the like).

Sound: 7/10

Sound is just as good as last season. Doesn't get the extra booster points the first season did because the opening isn't as good.

Characters: 7/10

Characters continue their development into this season. Sorey has some development issues, as he doesn't really progress or regress. Other characters get good time slots to develop, including backstory explanations. Rose's character arc is the most interesting, as is her relationship with Dezel.

Enjoyment: 7/10

Season 2 was just as enjoyable as season 1.

Overall: 6.6/10

Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2 was a good way to continue where we left off in season 1. The ending was rushed, but its minor issues didn't impact its enjoyability too much.