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| THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE. ---------------------------------------- Great animation, as expected of Ufotable. We get decent action as well from the beginning and introduction of the main characters. Alisha shows her skills as a fighter and I'm not surprised. Feels like quite a bit developed this episode though. The existence mankind and the seraphim makes an interesting plot element in the show. Tragedy already strikes. Story feels rather strange right but the animation and music were pretty decent.  |
KinetaJul 3, 2016 1:37 PM
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| Man, that was 10x better than I had hoped and I actually had reasonably high expectations for this. I really enjoyed the 44 minute OVA they released a few years ago so I was really looking forward to this. Haven't played the game but this episode may have just convinced me to buy it since Steam has it on sale for $20 right now. For anyone confused about stuff: I REALLY recommend watching the 44 minute OVA. Even though this was just the prologue episode, watching the OVA really helped the world seem less overwhelming. For all we know they may fully adapt the OVA into the series anyway similar to how the TV series for Sinbad did so (especially considering it's 44 minutes so that would fit perfectly into 2 episodes), but I still recommend it nonetheless. Ufotable quality never disappoints, that's for sure. Hopefully they can keep up this level of animation the entire season. It's easy to see they're more passionate about (and have larger budget for) this than God Eater. Bandai Namco is going all out with the budget it seems, wanting this to really help spike sales for the upcoming Tales of Berseria. |
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Megumin said: I literally told you in a PM.Why tf was my original post/ discussion deleted? Anyways, this is visually the best thing I've ever seen. |
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| Reposting: A very good first episode. I feel like God Eater helped lower my expectations a lot, so this episode was fairly impressive to me overall. Visuals-wise, aside from the usual ufo goodness, i felt that the animation was really choppy at some points, but it's forgivable, being a TV series with limited budget and all. Also, the CG. For the love of god make it render at 24 fps, not 12. You rendered the collapsing mountain and the dragon at the correct fps, so why not the people at the town too? That scene looked jarring as hell. Sound-wise, it seems alright. Nothing great, but nothing ear-grating, either. Direction and presentation, i'm not familiar with the game myself, but i felt the direction was good enough for what this episode was set to accomplish, introduce the world, some characters and the big bad threat. Overall, nothing groundbreaking, but still better than expected. 7.5/10 |
| For starters let's get technical aspects out of the way. The directing is bland. It can't be emphasized enough how bland it is. The budget and the visual quality is good but nothing is done creatively with it. We are treated to some VERY high quality back ground art and visuals, yet tey are spent on static boring scenes of characters moving or as backgrounds to talking mouths. It really shows that the director chosen for this had literally nothing of significance in his resume. Awkward pacing, awkward transitions, forgettable ost placement, absolutely no set up in terms of tension or atmosphere. Things just happen. Musically this had nothing too interesting going for it too. Most of OST was basically typical Gothic chorus. I guess it is serviceable for the scenes presented but I hope this has more than just typical "singing of doom". Let's not even talk about CGI because hooboy, did Berserk leak out into this? The storm had some dodgy moments but the creature was fake as hell. Story wise...hoo boy. Zestiria from the start, even as source material, is an awful tales game in terms of story. It is viewed by fanbase as one of THE worst "Tales of" games ever made and it's only redeeming feature is gameplay. So what happens when Ufotable tampers with already bad story? It gets worse. The first episode pulls every single possible emotionally manipulative edgy trick in the book possible. Pointless typical tragic deaths that make you feel nothing, pointless typical character motivations, a hollywood blockbuster-esque running away from a cataclysm scene(which went on WAY TOO LONG). But none of that really lands well in execution due to poor directing. Just as prescreeners were saying, the child death scene takes the cake as cringiest and most predictable moment of the season - were we supposed to feel sorry for the child? to be surprised? to feel sorry for the protagonist's angst? Because sorry, that scene is the kind of thing you would expect in a meta parody. If someone told me I was watching a God Eater character backstory episode, the only thing that would give off something wrong with that statement would be art style. In a lot of ways this episode felt like a short recap in between seasons. Except that this is supposedly the first episode of the story.... Overall, Zestiria is this season's Kabaneri(Except that Kabaneri had better art style) - dumb, dull, pretty looking popcorn schlock. Hopefully Ufo does not keep boring the viewers with pointless cliche tropes and instead spends budget on what matters in the work like this - action sequences. Because that is pretty much the only reason to watch something like this. If the action is bearable and takes up most of episode space, then this most likely will be my popcorn watch of this season - a kind of work you turn off your brain to and just watch for pretty explosions. 2/5 Summer of Disappointment continues. On the upside the op sounds great. Possibly best FLOW song in long while. EdHaku said: I don't get it. Why is the directing bland? I do see your point, but I can't see why these things you mentioned are that bad. The most obvious choice would be the child scene. The show takes the easy way. The known tropes. Checks the checkboxes at them and is done with it. How to put the final dot in protagonist's tragic backstory? How to emphasize the brutality and destruction and loss of life? Instead of tackling that in more smart way, the show just throws in that child scene as is. Another good example is scenes of characters talking. There's a lot of very creative and different ways to portray conversations. Have them move around, walk, do stuff, change camera angles. Have hem change facial expressions - you know acting like actual human beings. As an example: Monogatari franchise. Here, the show instead goes the easy way - a frame of character standing with moving mouth. Character stops , looks forward into the camera or to the side. Delivers the lines. Scene change. Characters walking? We can look no further than last(and this) season's Kuromukuro in how you can animate character movement that is not dull and makes them feel human. In case of this show, it yet again takes the easy path - static camera shot of landscape and characters moving from one side of the screen to other or from top to bottom/bottom to top. Another example? The transitions from scene to scene. The MC looks through a telescope. The scene changes to clouds. The scene changes to mc stepping away from telescope. Why not do it more creatively of showing MC's sight from first person as she does that? There are thousands of ways to handle scene like that and the show takes the most easy and least talented way to do it. And it is true for all transitions - we go from a good shot of the cityscape(albeit with horribly bad CGI) to suddenly character faces talking. Wanna emphasize that characters are in the building? camera slide sup the building, changes scene to the characters talking. the transitions are jarring and with the budget ufo has could have been made a lot more cinematic and connected(ex: why not have the camera enter through the window, as a way to transition into character discusion). Even overall, the episode is devoid from interesting or creative camera angles and uses the exact same kind of framing for most of the scenes in the episode. Most of the scenes in the episode are either: - Character moving through static background form one side to to other - Face close up of talking or walking |
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| That was just a prologue? Damn, considering that this was nothing short of brilliant, and not just because of that magnificent animation (particularly that dragon, fucking hell). Oh, and that OP song is extremely catchy as well. Absolutely cannot wait for more. EDIT: Also, find it funny that @Fai is complaining about directing here when he was constantly lauding Utawarerumono's sequel for supposedly having good directing, despite said directing being the main cause of that series being way worse than the original and just really bad in general. |
AtavisticJul 3, 2016 2:44 PM
| I don't want to get my expectations too high just in case this ends up being disappointing later on, but wow Ufotable, this is a first episode done right. If the rest of the anime is like this episode, then this can easily become one of the highlights of the season. I really hope this show can be more than just gorgeous visuals. And that OP (that they used as the ED in this episode) was great. Overall, this was good, and was better than what I expected from it, 7/10. |
| People on MAL refuse to actually enjoy watching anime. Your taste in anime isn't a personality trait. |
| Pretty enjoyable prologue with God tier animation from Ufotable. A bit disappointed they didn't keep the game opening which was amazing. Excited to see the changes from the game which will hopefully make it better. Also Fai hates it so that means it is a series worth watching. |
| Hadn't realised it was ufotable behind this until the ambush scene. Once that fight started and I saw how fluid the animation was it became an immediate giveaway that ufotable was the studio. Looked stunning the whole way through. A rather explosive first episode, one that has certainly grabbed my attention. I guess I had better go check out the OVA that was apparently released before. Might give me a little more insight into what's actually going on. |
 It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether! It's an entirely different kind of flying. |
| Animation was amazing, as expected of ufotable. This might be one of my most anticipated anime now. |
 "If I don't have to do it, I won't. If I have to do it, I'll make it quick."- Oreki Houtarou |
| As an anime only that just got into the franchise today, this episode was really enjoyable. As expected from ufotable, that art and animation was something else, absolutly astonishing! As for the story and characters, well, there's not much to it yet, but it was pretty good for a prologue, nontheless. Let's see how this develops |
| Originally I wrote "A lot of scene swapping at the beggining, a lot of action with no explanation at the end. The animation is great but if the next episodes are as meaningless as this one I'm dropping it" but seeing as it turns out that this actually counts as something like an OVA I'll forgive it. Looking forward to the actual series |
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| eeee.... i am too lazy to write it again ._. it was simply good :D |
| The visuals were really good, great stuff Im interested in those two characters at the end too |
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| Well, as expected by everyone, ufotable made great work in the graphics again. So, if it's a prologue, it's just the episode 00, right? Anyway, the show seems nice for a fantasy anime. The theme song performance by FLOW was good as well. |
| This caught my attention after watching this episode. I'm not interested in the games at all btw. Ufotable did a pretty good job with the visuals. Looking forward to this one. |
| Well this was depressing. looks beautiful tho |
| Shirayuki= Most Perfect Female MC ever |
| I didn't even know there was a prologue beforehand, but this pretty much added some sufficient details to what was actually going to happen (and much to what I was stressing over while playing the game). The FLOW OP is great; it's surprising that even Velvet is added into it. With this I might just expect more out of the anime. |
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| Really great prologue. Lets us see a bit of the world and sets the stage for whats to come. Enjoyed the action scene in the middle and the chase scene at the end was fantastic. Enjoyed my self as usual with recent Ufotable works. |
| Big Order (TV):great anime or greatest anime? |
| Wow that was awsome. Great animation - ufotable are gods. :D I have a question: Do I miss some context in this anime? It's my first of this series and I just wonder if I can understand what is going on. |
| "The future is always blank. Only your willpower can leave footsteps there." "Ruling over death means ruling over life. Death is the climax of life. To have the best death, you must honor life." |
| God Bless Ufotable. |
| The show was beautifully animated as expected but kinda confusing. It looked tragic to see the destruction and deaths.  |
| Hi there |
FrozenRaider said: You will. Don't worry. The anime is going original from what I hear (Which is good 'cause the Story in the game was all over the place). Just continue to watch and it should be explained later on.Wow that was awsome. Great animation - ufotable are gods. :D I have a question: Do I miss some context in this anime? It's my first of this series and I just wonder if I can understand what is going on. |
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| Decent prologue to hook people for the show. They budgeted a lot to get a decent action scene in and some crazy stuff with the dragon. It was super pretty and sounded nice and introduced the idea of some grand cataclysmic battle on the way. It also introduced a couple of the "villains" who are crazy enough to draw interest even with nothing else known about them and one of the main protags, Alisha. It also set up the story with some kind of political infighting and Alisha as the "care about my peoples!" princess heroine that just got dumpster fired and suffered a tragedy so we know what point her character is starting from. Fai said: Overall, Zestiria is this season's Kabaneri(Except that Kabaneri had better art style) - dumb, dull, pretty looking popcorn schlock. Hopefully Ufo does not keep boring the viewers with pointless cliche tropes and instead spends budget on what matters in the work like this - action sequences. Because that is pretty much the only reason to watch something like this. I cannot tell if I'm seeing Poe's law in action, or if you legitimately are this much of a vapid contrarian... Do you understand what the purpose of a Prologue is? It's to setup the stakes, introduce some interesting characters and give you a base to build them off of, and most importantly give you a hook to interest you. Alisha suffered tragedy in clichéd fashion, yes. You aren't meant to deeply empathise, you are simply being shown where her character development starts, which apparently is kind of a rock bottom moment. Yes, standard tropes apply here because that is why they exist. Also, they included a wicked fight scene as part of the hook. If you are, in fact, trolling.... well, fuck, you got me. Bravo. |
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| Visuals are amazing as expected from ufotable. And the world-building seems pretty nice so far. A great start so far. And that OP is great!! 4/5 |
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Tyrel said: FrozenRaider said: You will. Don't worry. The anime is going original from what I hear (Which is good 'cause the Story in the game was all over the place). Just continue to watch and it should be explained later on.Wow that was awsome. Great animation - ufotable are gods. :D I have a question: Do I miss some context in this anime? It's my first of this series and I just wonder if I can understand what is going on. Thanks for fast reply. I hope this show is going to be better and better. ;) |
| "The future is always blank. Only your willpower can leave footsteps there." "Ruling over death means ruling over life. Death is the climax of life. To have the best death, you must honor life." |
| Solid start, stunning animation. The first ep seemed to jump from scene to scene pretty quick, not sure whats going on but I defiantly want to find out. Does any know if there will be any romance in this? |
| That's some sexy ass animation right there Other than that, nothing special 5/10 |
 Nico- said: Conversations with people pinging/quoting me to argue about some old post I wrote years ago will not be entertained@Comic_Sans oh no y arnt ppl dieing i need more ppl dieing rly gud plot avansement jus liek tokyo ghoul if erbudy dies amirite |
Crashmatt said: Solid start, stunning animation. The first ep seemed to jump from scene to scene pretty quick, not sure whats going on but I defiantly want to find out. Does any know if there will be any romance in this? By the games |
| Once again: That production quality is heavenly.I still think that this story doesn't deserve it and there are betters stories that could use good anime ... cough cough... Berserk... cough cough... . While it's true that the anime will have it's own storyline in the end it will be the adaptation of the game, same setting same characters and same MC please God no. And in all though as someone who finished the game I couldn't wait to see this world in the animated form and I sure will hell of enjoy the ride. My expectations aren't high as I know how good of the story can this anime have but maybe because I don't have much expectations I am enjoying the show much more. If anything, one can watch this show only for that ufotable greatness. The one thing I want to complain about though is OP. The game has a great OP, 100xtimes better than this, both in music and visuals. Here however... MEH... and it's a huge MEH for me as I was expecting at least that music coming in here :(. |
| Visuals look good, but I was confused the entire episode, no idea what was going on. |
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| Ufotable tho....just all the yes. I'm interested to see where this goes. |
| Don't believe the hype. |
| Re-posting and adding a few things: Best first episode of the season so far. The animation is gorgeous, the soundtrack is amazing, and the episode had content that was not in the game, and I absolutely loved it. It seems they'll try and make Alisha a more interesting character. The only scene I didn't liked was the child at the end. There was no reason for that other than shocking the viewer. Just showing the town was already enough for you to know what happened to the child. Still, I can't wait for more. Good job, ufotable. |
| I had no idea about the game or this anime in particular. I added it to my PTW list due to the tags. Got to say wow, I have been waiting for something like this for a while. That fight scenes was worth the wait. I know UFOtable is known for great animation but I didn't realize it was that good. I'll be patiently looking forward this show, rewrite ReZero oh and my ecchi fav Masou_Gakuen_HxH every week. |
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| The visuals looked nice, but everything else seemed pretty average. The OP song at the end was decent though. |
| MAL: A community that thinks every anime is bad, but rates everything a 7/10. |
| That Animation, I've expected it but it has exceeded what was on my mind, there's so many combination of 3d Animation and 2d animation, so far has the best ART of this season, or probably this Year. The soundtrack is good enough, but it's still average compared to KnK The story was quite confusing and quite rushed, but decent enough as a prologue. The characters are not interesting, but I like the Fox so far. But this anime lacks hype, well in no time this will become popular 4/5 |
VanAlexJul 3, 2016 2:59 PM
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| This was really fun to watch! I like how the OP for this one doesn't blatantly spoil certain plot points like the one for the game did. And seeing Velvet in the OP makes me a little curious. Also, seeing what Zagi Lunarre looked like before he was a Hellion was interesting. |
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| So much better than expected, especially the visual. Not really fan of Alisha's suffering but they handle a lot of things nicely. Now the only problem can they keep at least this quality for whole season, or go down with God Eater path. |
| THIS IS AN ANIME ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS THE MANGA BEYOND THIS EPISODE. ---------------------------------------- Incredible episode, interesting story, but it seems like a dream Btw very good animation |
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| It seems Ufotable has taken a lot of creative freedoms in the Tales anime, the game's plot progression seems to be out of the window and the whole first episode was pure new scenes. I don't think this anime will follow the plot of the game very closely, though the main elements seem to be there in the form of Malevolence and the Shepherd. Which is good, because the game's plot was quite appalling and wouldn't have fit an anime format anyways Ufotable's animation is great as expected. WHY THE FUCK IS VELVET IN THE ANIME THOUGH? Opening was Tales quality |
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| damn that animation/ voice acting was awesome even though i have no background information on any of the Tale of Zestiria games and anything about the world 7/10 going to follow the series for the eye candy |
| The fighting scene was well done. Can't really say I care too much about the premise tbh. Heard it's one of the weaker Tales of ... |
| As a prologue, I absolutely loved it. Solid animation, pleasant visuals and great music (nice OP as well). I honestly can't expect less when it comes to ufotable's production quality. I can only hope the TV show will be just as good as well. |
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| What the fuck just happened? Who are all these people? What's a shepherd? What? |
| Is a person's destiny like a cloud moving with an inescapable flow, or can a person choose the flow he wishes?... I still don't know the answer to this. Either way, the destination may be the same in the end. However, by choosing to live like the latter, a person can live and strive towards a goal. I have finally understood those who have that are truly strong. I have but one goal; I want to become stronger... Enough not to lose to anyone. - Neji Hyuuga |