Final Fantasy

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 ofstupidity); 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 themost 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.

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 youhad 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.

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