Final Fantasy

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.

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.