Tales of Zestiria the X – 05

Umm, excuse me, but who are you again?

I wish this review could have been longer, but I seem to have fallen into a completely different story. There was supposed to be seraphims and swords in stones, with a chosen one Shepherd? Why are we now in Resident Evil: Archaic Edition?

Well, let’s meet our other protagonist and friends

I mean, we went from humans, seraphim, and hellions, to demons, exorcists, and man-eating dragons. Did we miss a reel? We went from the ultra naive, happy-go-lucky boy scout Sorey, to the ultra grim, emo, escaped prisoner, Velvet?

Excuse me but writers, how the heck did we get here? We were in Hyland dealing with Alisha, Sorey, and the incoming Malevolence, and now we’re in the middle of the ocean in not!Alcatraz, with Princess Emo Grunge, and her Hot Topic associates endeavoring to reap her revenge on some guy named Artorius, who sacrificed a little boy in order to open the gates of Hell and take over the world?

Meet Velvet Crowe: Grunge Extraordinaire

How exactly is this in any way related to all 4+ episodes that came before it? Is this the far future and Sorey has let the power get to his head and become a megalomaniac ruler named Artorius? I mean, they have been laying the Arthur legend tones on pretty thick, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he took on that name! But if that’s true who exactly are we supposed to vote for here? Our young hero who we started with, or the young heroine who wants to avenge her brother and get payback for her false imprisonment?

And why the heck haven’t we gotten any freaking transitions?!!

Crawling out from the gutter for retribution

I can already hear a lot of you typing away in the comments and believe me I know all of what you are about to say. Yes, the characters we are seeing are from the Tales Series’ most recent addition: Tales of Berseria. Yes, I know that this is actually a prequel and not a sequel to Zestiria, taking place about a 1000 years prior to recent events, and the main character is an anti-heroine named Velvet Crowe. Yes, I do have enough information to be able to sorta, kinda, maybe understand the basic premise of what’s going on in this episode. The problem however, is that the only reason I know any of that–is from reading the comment section and getting the rundown from game players, news articles, or other supplementary sources. And for me, that is this episode’s ultimate sin.

I should NOT have to have played a single second of any of the games in order to follow and understand this story. I should be able to follow each episode without having to go to secondary and tertiary sources in order to understand what’s going on.

The new sidekicks

I have nothing against adding new characters and having a secondary storyline, and in fact, this kind of storyline would work in a novel where you can follow multiple characters and you can have one chapter be devoted to one character and their storyline, and the next, change to another different character and their storyline. However, even then, the reader is usually aware of some point, no matter how vague, of how the characters’ plotlines intersect. There’s a reason that the two plots are being told side by side.

And while this works for novels, it doesn’t work as well for a television series which has to be adapted differently for the change in medium. Especially with one whose two stories of so different in tone, characters, dialogue and with no transition at all, that the shift feels like whiplash.

But! Disregarding all that, how was the episode itself?

Actually–it was great.

In fact, I just what to ask, why the heck didn’t they just make the series about Berseria?! It’s already infinitely more interesting!

Why, do you ask? I mean, Velvet is pretty much the equivalent of Sorey, just that she’s on the other extreme end of the spectrum. She’s stoic, grim, experienced, and is consumed by her hatred, while Sorey is all naive, adventurous, friendly, and doesn’t really have a hateful bone in his body. Both of them have otherworldly magic companions in Mikleo and Seras. And both of their plotlines, they have action breaks that feel like animated battle video game sequences. Both protagonists carry supernatural weapons, with Sorey and his Excalibur, and Velvet and her demon eating arm. So, with all these similarities, why in one episode, was Berseria better than all the Zestiria episodes previous?

Fighting the odds and injustice

Plot.

It’s as simple as that. The plot is already way better. Rather than some vague journey for some chosen one kid to help two peoples vaguely reconnect and save the world from some vague evil presence caused by human strife, we get a more concise story of an evil megalomanic who took over the world by blood sacrificing a child for power, imprisoned the sister of said child for years, and now she’s out and looking for revenge, and perhaps will save the world from an evil tyrant along the way with the help of her many allies that decide to join up with her. I honestly wish we could have started here, and just followed Velvet along on her quest, in sort of like the more violent, swords-and-sorcery, female version of the Count of Monte Cristo (Countess?). While Sorey and his group are nice and all, I think that their plot line is only okay. It has it’s ups and down and great animation, but if we could have great animation and an even better story? Why not?

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All in all, it was a very good episode, but it commits a horrible sin in that it has zero setup and zero indications of how it connects to the overall narrative. It also requires you to know supplementary information from outside of the series itself, to even make sense of why it was added and what is going on. To me, that is a big no-no. Any adaptation needs to be able to stand on its own without any need for the audience to consult the source or other resources. If a person was to watch this on their own without knowing anything, they could very well end up lost. Why did they introduce the episode at this particular point in the story? If you want it to connect to the release of the new game, that’s great, but then set it up well enough in the story of why we are suddenly leaving one plot, and entering a completely different one without warning. I really hope that they in the coming episode do more to tie this to where we left off with Sorey and the twirly vortex of doom. Though honestly, if we were to just forget about Zestiria all together and just follow Velvet and friends, I wouldn’t be too broken up either. (It would be extremely horrible writing and staging, but hey, I’ve seen worse. 😉 )