Final Fantasy

Aside from the references, this anime isn't directly connected to the Final Fantasy V game. It takes place many years after the game, and though it is said that Linaly, the main female character, is a descendant of Bartz, this Bartz could very well be some random legendary hero.

There are job classes, though without the particular outfits and there are four crystals as in practically every Final Fantasy. The plot features the quest to protect the wind crystal after the others are stolen by a new enemy, a strange alien with advanced technology whose base is located in the black moon, a natural satellite of ... planet Gaia.

The story has its fair share of humor and amusing characters especially Pritz and Rogue. The plot is easy to understand even if you haven't played the game, but the references would be lost.

Overall it seems this anime has received more criticism than praise, possibly because people expected a sequel with more connections to the game. But if you look at it as a strand alone Final Fantasy story, it's not bad.

The art and sound are not the best, but to be fair the anime is rather old and has decent art for its time. Despite it not being one of the best anime out there, it's still enjoyable and I recommend watching it with an open mind, being ready to judge it on its own instead of holding it against the game.

Before I begin, let me start with a quick disclaimer. I like the Final Fantasy games, for the most part. If I poke fun at the franchise a bit during the course of this review it's not because I just don't like the series, it's because the series has a lot of goofy aspects. I've looked at a few anime adaptations of video games in the past. I've looked at bad ones, Ninja Gaiden being the obvious example. Average ones, Nightstalkers and ones that were pretty good, Tales of Phantasia. This week I'm going to be looking at a selection from one of my favourite ... game companies, Square and our old friends at Madhouse. This is Final Fantasy, Legend of the Crystals.

Legend of the Crystals takes place several centuries after the events of Final Fantasy V. Linaly, a descendant of Bartz, is going to the temple of the wind to safeguard the crystal. She's followed by a young man named Prettz. The two find the crystal, which decides to hide itself in Linaly's body, which causes her bum to glow for some reason. The two find out that the other crystals have been stolen and find themselves targeted by mechanical beings who are trying to get the last one. They even build a Proctologist robot for that very purpose. Not really, but that would've been moderately less stupid than what actually happens. The actual story is pretty minimal and very cliche. The plot element of Linaly's firefly bottom mostly serves as an excuse for fan-service shots, on a character who looks to be all of twelve, classy. The final battle scene is quite anti-climactic and a lot of the events in the plot happen by virtue of plot contrivance instead of as a part of any kind of cohesive whole.

The characters in this are dreadful. You have Linaly, who spends most of her time either getting kidnapped or acting as a compass. She brings great shame on Bartz's name, and he's not even one of the good FF protagonists. He's okay though, which still makes him far too good of a character to be associated with this helpless twerp. Prettz is only slightly better, being an annoying moron. Then you have Rouge, a character who does absolutely nothing plot relevant. The other major characters are Mid, a ghost who basically serves as a guide for the majority of the OVA, Valkus, a muscle-head with all of one personality trait, and Ra Devil, the antagonist who makes Exdeath look like the best developed character ever by comparison.

The art in this is largely just lazy. With shading being used almost never. The facial expressions used for the characters tend to range from blank to dull surprise with very little variation. A lot of scenes are also repeated pretty much verbatim. To give an example, there's an action scene in which a large woman tries to slice our protagonists with a sword, only to have them duck. Then it happens two more times and it's pretty much the same every single time. The chocobos in this look terrible. They don't have their traditional yellow feathers, looking more like plucked ostriches, their beaks and eyes are also off. Then we have the fan-service. There are a lot of panty shots of our twelve year old heroine, because Madhouse decided to put their grossest people on this project. Linaly, put on some proper pants. Your shorts are far too short. Especially given your age. Rouge's outfit is just terrible. She looks like she's wearing bondage straps. Lady, most people can't pull bondage gear off as an outfit for action and you certainly aren't Sephiroth. Valkus just looks like a badly drawn 90s comic hero with a head that's too small for his overly muscled body.

Madhouse did get some really good voice actors for this. Particularly Ogata Kenichi, Yamazaki Wakana and Minaguchi Yoko. However, they don't give their best performances. In fact, their performances are kind of mediocre. The music is the best part of the OVA. It's the only aspect of the OVA that actually feels like a Final Fantasy game.

The yuri factor is a 1/10. The female characters barely even interact.

that was Legend of the Crystals, and it is bad. To be fair, the story is only the fifth worst I've seen in conjunction with the Final Fantasy title, but that isn't saying a whole lot. The franchise may have some great stories and characters, but it also has some really bad ones. It's not the worst video game adaptation I've reviewed either, but it's down there. My final rating is a 2.4/10.

For someone like me that has never played the games before, a lot of this anime's references will be utterly lost, however that doesn't stop it from being a fun and enjoyable anime in its own right.
The story is midly confusing (probably attributable to the short lenght and its links to the games) and moves quite quickly in places which certainly doesn't help those with no game knowledge, but that doesn't really detract from the overall experience.
This OVA is pretty much carried by its characters, which were interesting, varied and utterly insane: from a block-headed protagonist (who nevertheless remains endearing, despite his occasional displays of ... stupidity); S and M pirates (terrifyingly hilarious); the nose hair guy (also terriyingly hilarious, especially when the romance starts).
If you've played the games or know much about Final Fantasy in general, you will probably watch it with different eyes, but for a novice like me, I found this a thoroughly rib-tickling (for those who've seen it, pun intended) little series.

The reputation for this OVA has always been all over the place. Fans of the game series appear to dislike it because it's not as well-rounded as they would hope and maybe too brief and rushed of a fantasy romp. It's loosely based on Final Fantasy 5, but there's not much to this connection other than a few references to the four crystals, the heroes, the curious fact of every spell the female main uses involves the comic relief beast of burden/horse-like (more like an ostrich or big bird, but they ride them, so...) creature known as the chocobo, and the villain with the ... most badass name ever—ExDeath (I'm kidding). The FF games, as far as I know, took their time to really flesh the world and story out, but... it's not like their longwinded stories were anything special, yet I guess fleshed-out mediocrity is better than a mediocrity formed by being seemingly thrown together because of budget or time constraints...

It's an okay little OVA. One of the better hard fantasy series of its type from the '90s OVA boom. The story is just a rough bastardization and revamping of the SNES games—essentially, it's like "Oh, no! Oh, wow! Someone has taken the four crystals and thrown the world out of balance for their own diabolical plans! Too bad we didn't bother to add security details... oops..." that actually might be the biggest of all fantasy cliches when it comes to the conception of the world. An old-fashioned notion about the way elements correspond to nature and how the heroes keep this balance and the villains throw it out of whack. Not very compelling. They don't get too heavy in rehashing the rehash, but I did space out during a few expository moments. At least it's really brief.

The coloring is as vivid as 1992's similarly themed Ellcia. The character design is... eh, a mixed bag: I think it's quirky and stands out, but the dominatrix pirate group is very stupid looking, and Valkus is maybe a bit funky with the proportion of his tiny head and bulbous body. The visual design is pretty solid, and the more wide-open driving scenes remind me slightly of obscure OVAs with a great sense of movement like Birth, and Yoshinori Kanada had a hand in animating the both of them (most of his FF segments are noticeable in the fourth episode, especially with the dog fights and explosions), though Birth remains far more notable in terms of animation. Other reference points might be another obscure OVA, Dragon's Heaven—a kind of Moebius-inspired sci-fi/fantasy mech piece with lots of stippling and texturing, though FF is decidedly much lighter on the shading. Other notable animators include Mitsuo Iso, who provided exceptional character animation and one of the motorcycle chase scenes. Being that this is a Rintaro directed anime, the story boarding is also very good, and it especially shows in the perspective and detail-packed ending sequence among the green ruins.

Where the series is a little less convincing is with the characters. They're often serviceable to lead the plot along. Some of the hijinks are humorous—other moments not as much. The characters have enough swagger to the point that you might not notice what little depth they have if you get caught up in the action and character acting.

Prettz has a big sword to represent how horny he is, and we get to watch him do nothing but hero things and simp the whole time. Linaly is... *flashes panties.* Oh, right. The most notable aspect about her character is that she eats one of the crystals, and it causes her bottom to light up like a firefly, and she can easily function as a lighthouse, as we see in one of the classiest scenes of all time. Rouge is a gold-digging dominatrix whose philosophy is like "I love money. I hate death." Valkus is an interesting case: you don't know what he'll be like as a character until he sees Rouge, and "falls in love" with her and will do anything for her. Ugh, well, he's partially redeemed by his line of dialogue when he's trying to avoid fighting: "W-wait! I'm not in the habit of fighting fat women." Pretty based, but then he ends up as an emasculated slave by the end in one of the worst send-offs for a character I've ever seen. I personally have a soft spot for ghost characters like Mid; he works well as a wise man archetype and guide, though his backstory is really ridiculous. Talk about a big-brained grandfather—it's like the size of a house!

The villain has absolutely 0 depth. I guess he wanted to rule the universe or something, and he has the equally cool name of Ra Devil (kidding again). His visual design is kind of cool and reminiscent of a more tech-infused body horror like you'd find in Akira, but that's about it. The action has some kind of weight and tension to it throughout most of the first three episodes, but it feels really thrown together and random by the end. Like the heroes have unimaginable plot armor, and the sense of world building for the final area is really non-existent. The final fight actually does feel oddly like a drawn-out turn-based JRPG game with how ridiculous it is. The ending is also unsatisfying and flat.

I feel like this was a fun... possible 6/10 for most of the series, but it loses direction to such an extent by the last episode that I settled for a 5/10. The whole thing about finding the dragon is a little tedious, and there are plenty of little things that bog it down, as well as some pacing issues due to the predictability of the script. There are a LOT of shoddy OVAs during that period, but this one is reasonably well-made and worth checking out. It just needed a better script, and the VGM tie-in probably didn't help, but I will say that as far as that kind of thing goes, this held up remarkably well, flawed as it may be.

There's not a lot to really say about this anime. It is a 4 part OVA that really very quickly tells a cute little tale. The characters are ok, very stereotypical, but because this is a short OVA they're not really developed very well. This story relies on you knowing the story of Final Fantasy V to have any kind of real insight or background into the world. This is set in the distant future of Final Fantasy V and isn't directly connected, but it is a fun little story.

The main character is the typical loud mouthed "I have a crush the heroine" type of ... character, but he is somewhat heroic. It's his determination and persistence that gets him involved in the story at all. His crush on the heroine of the tale is the driving factor and it has some cool little events.

All in all it's an average anime but not necessarily something you should skip.

As most others have said, if you haven't played (or watched) "Final Fantasy V" the game, you will not get a lot out of this. I would not recommend it whatsoever for anyone who has not done that beforehand. It's not arrogance; it just loses any appeal if you don't have that background.

Even if you have played/watched the game, there is not much to recommend this set of OVAs, beyond adding to how much of the "Final Fantasy" series you have under your belt. If that is all you want to do, pick this up. It's pretty short and it's not hard to find. There ... are a couple flashbacks that might be showing anime versions of the FFV cast in heavy shadow and it does vaguely reference FFV as a legend from the past, but that's about it for connection to the game.

The story formula follows the average formula for the early FF games - crystals are being stolen and a band of disparate heroes comes together to deal with the problem. Someone absorbs a crystal and they all end up fighting the villain in a place full of evil. My main issue is that this story is even worse than most of the games in regards to sexism and objectification of women. For example, I suppose that in an attempt to be cute and have some of that usual 'aw shucks' FF humor, someone thought it would be a GREAT idea to have a plot point that involved the primary female protagonist's butt glowing, with an excuse for the primary male protagonist to stare at it whenever it did so. Hey, it's not perverted or fanservice if it's part of the plot, right? - probably something a crewmember said while writing this.

The characters are pathetic, at best. This story had the potential to be so cool and it just fails. There's an all-female pirate crew who seem to be pretty badass at first and don't fit your average female video game character model. Until you notice that they're all wearing stripper reject outfits, apparently have the intelligence of vegetables and are terrified of smiling smoke bombs. The primary protagonist in this story is also a woman (contrary to the advertising and other reviews), which is awesome, making her the first primary female protagonist in the FF world (other games focused on groups or a male protag - a solo woman didn't start the party builds until FFVI). She's also smart, creative, brave and strong. She's a great protagonist... until she gets damseled. Apparently three OVAs with a primary female protag was all the writers could take. Even then, we could have seen her attempting to break out of her prison. Nope. The story switches to the male protag, who is funny but also obnoxious, doesn't understand the word 'no' (consent, it's SO funny) and somewhat sexist, like most of the male characters in this story (I just love me some sexist remarks all over my anime mmhmm). For the overall cast make-up, it's interesting that in a world where pirates can be all female, a woman can rule a nation and women can carry on the teachings of mystics (like the female protag) but there are apparently no female soldiers or other officials.

Oddly enough, the only real saving grace this series had was in the dub. If you've watched the "Tenchi Muyo" dubs, you'll notice that a number of those voice actors show up here. I found that very amusing, especially since the characters they play are similar but also drastically different. So it's like the "Tenchi Muyo" cast is on drugs or something for this series.

This is 90s anime animation and it's nothing fantastic. The overall look reminds me a bit of "Dragon Ball Z". Even though the soundtracks from the games are beautiful, these OVAs had nothing remarkable.

I did not enjoy this and would not recommend it.

Based on the universe of Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals is a 4 OVA anime episode that basically forms a 4 chapter movie (and I do think is the best way to experience it). It is set 200 years after the events that unfolded in the game with a new story and characters to maybe fall in love.

Starting with the good, character design, art direction and animation are amazing, it has a lot of charm and uniqueness of the 90s anime era with an original touch, many artistic choices made these OVAs stand out from other animations in that regard and ... it’s easy to see some kind of inspiration from Nausicaa. The animation has plenty of dynamic shots that also make great use of negative space and geography that give a good sense of scale, like making places massive or more condensed. It has a Sci-fi aesthetic of that era that hasn’t been replicated since then, so watching these OVAs gave me nostalgic feelings that I wasn’t aware that I needed, so overall at least visually it has a lot to praise and love.

In regards to the story while is based on FFV its ties are quite light, almost non-existent, it doesn’t feel like a sequel but more like a spin-off which allegedly it’s what they were looking for while making these OVAs, still, I like how it is connected but I can see how for someone else it would be a turn-off, and that is difficult to argue upon. The tone’s also messy, it is not that the Final Fantasy series doesn’t have comedy and lighthearted subplots but Legend of the Crystals takes this whimsicalness to the point of being distracting. For instance, there’s a lot of female sexualization, I don’t mind it that much but in some instances it went to the point of being too much, like panty shots and panty jokes left and right through all the chapters, again it goes with the whimsical line they went to but if even I noticed it’s because it can be too forced sometimes, FFV has some degree of sexualization so I guess this should not be a complete surprise.

It has a colorful cast that makes things more fun, in the vein of the more modern Final Fantasy XIII the party it’s composed of an unlikely bunch of characters that don't get along that well between them but they have a great dynamic nevertheless. Although our main character Prettz can be quite annoying sometimes and be as one-dimensional as they come, on the other hand, we have Linary which feels like a Ghibli character and she is easily the most interesting character but sadly, even when she’s a key character she is ever sent to the background, the other characters are quite solid and fun, if only the main antagonist has the same charm as them.

Although these OVAs never go the heights the game went before and it has issues that can’t be overlooked and it isn’t that interesting, it has a great rhythm and never a dull moment. Its sense of art serves as a patch that hides some of its problems but still, it’s hard to see for whom these episodes were aimed, for fans of the game? or for newcomers that don't know the lore of the game and just want to watch something cool? It certainly missed the mark for a good shot between the two of them. I think that it serves as a new side story of FFV but sadly it isn’t an obligated view for anybody, still, if you’re fixed to watch them you’ll likely have a good enough time.

Before Square-Enix decided to doom your expectations with Spirits Within in 2001, there was an Anime made loosely based on one of the main entries of the series called Legend of the Crystals, which was a 4-part OAV serving as a sequel to Final Fantasy V. Released in Japan in 1994, then in the US in 1998, few got to glimpse and have their hopes shattered at how weird it really was. For one, it was decided that instead of a game, an Anime would be chosen to become the sequel to a game which not many were aware of at the time. Unless you ... had played a ROM of the game, you would had never imagined what Legend of the Crystals was based on, being that the first port of it for PlayStation was released in 1999, a whole year after the OAV was around. The Internet and word of mouth from gaming magazines would had been the only places where you could had known what it was a sequel to overall, and the Internet was quite young at that time as well.


To make matters worse, the events of said animated sequel take far into the future of the game's events, over 200 years to be exact, with not many of the cast from said game being present other than by name. The fact that some characters are descendants of the main videogame heroes doesn't make up much to make anything relevant about said game unless you had played Final Fantasy V one way or another and know about it which at that time was pretty darn hard to do. Fans would welcome it as a bizarre first entry to the gaming series when they had no idea just who everyone was here besides some themes from the franchise such as the Crystals for example.


Besides that, Legend of the Crystals does a good job in giving shoutouts to various themes from the game itself, such as the world they live in dubbed Planet R in the Anime, showing a map of the entire place as shown in the game as well as apparitions from the main heroes and characters like Mid who were in said game overall, along with familiar locales like the Wind Shrine and Tycoon Castle. The rest is simply added as an afterthought, featuring flying machines, robots and advanced technology found in otherwise otherworldly locations such as the Black Moon which was added for the Anime only and has no play within the original game's story. I was able to experience it on VHS during my days as a Blockbuster employee, with the only upside being that I didn't had to pay the rental fee.


The story centers around two young kids named Prettz and Linally, who the latter is a descendant of Bartz, one of the main characters from Final Fantasy V and an amateur summoner, whose ability is mostly calling forth ugly Chocobos. Very ugly Chocobos. Both embark on a journey to prevent a new evil being called Ra Devil (how original,) who attempts to gather all Elemental Crystals and use them for his own malign desires. On their attempt to protect the remaining crystal, it dives inside Linaly's body, leaving her with a glowing ass. No joke.


They also meet with a ghost named Mid, grandson of the legendary Cid (who never gets mentioned by name,) which helped the heroes back in the events of the game, Valyos, captain of Tycoon Castle's Iron Wings, and Rogue, leader of a sky pirate group who seemingly has nothing to do with the characters before the events of Anime. Mid goes explaining that an evil being called Deathgyunos has been gathering up the Crystals for his own nefarious motives and decided to hide last remaining one in Linaly's body to prevent being stolen. He also explains that he is a ghost who lived 200 years prior and came back to help protect the crystals.


Things get a bit sketchy after Mid's explanation of the main bad guy here. He goes on stating Ra Devil (who would become Deathgyunos) was the one responsible for stealing his grandfather's brain from the graveyard (what?) killing him in the process. They all assume that his base would be located on the Black Moon which orbits their planet without much insight of just who Deathgyunos came from in the first place. Guess a back-story for the main villain was just not needed nor cared for other for his pendant for brains. From then on Ra Devil would become Deathgyunos which has been known by the time the Anime's story was brought.


They come to the conclusion the Black Moon must be his base of operations since his grandfather's voice continued calling out to him from said place for hundred of years. That's pretty depressing to be honest. On their way to awake a flying dragon that would take them to the Black Moon, Linaly gets captured by Ra Devil explaining he would now go on to become Deathgyonus, even though he was already being called by that name to begin with. Prettz and the rest board ships anchored by the flying dragon that then flies into space to reach the Black Moon. Upon arriving the dragon gets struck down by lightning and all fall into the surface, which for some strange reason looks like a destroyed modern day city from Earth, complete with demolished buildings and highways. At this point I just stopped making sense of what was going on anymore.


The big final battle ensues and Deathgyunos gets defeated with a single slice of Prettz' oversized sword. Everyone gets reunited with whoever was around and the world is saved. A parting shot of the heroes from Final Fantasy V is shown in the sky before the ending is played. And that was Legend of the Crystals, an animated sequel to Final Fantasy V which was not that known during that time but it was distributed overseas taking up that risk.


Legend of the Crystals is quite an oddity. If you get past its weirdness and amusing concepts, Legend of the Crystals serves its purpose well to a point, honoring the gaming series in a way. The fan service shown is pretty absurd as well, not sure why the crystal would glow inside Lilyana's posterior of all places for example. There's also some inconsistencies within the Anime, one being that in the game, the crystals pretty much were destroyed and thus no longer part of the world by the end of the game's events, in here however they all appear even if they are smaller in size, and some of the locales like Tycoon Castle resemble the Taj Mahal, with the world having this weird oriental look to it in comparison to the medieval style that was in the game. The OAV really doesn't explain why there are crystals during this time but I guess this is just a trivial issue to ponder upon at most. All in all Legend of the Crystals is a bizarre concept, and it would be up to fans of the gaming series if this would be accepted into the overall Final Fantasy medium given it is canonically tied with such in the first place. Otherwise is just plain weird, very short, and not much else.