ChChidori_Sagara
December 16, 2017
Mixed Feelings
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 setby 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.
