天下制覇

Sorry, Gloomietta, you’re nowhere near as tough to deal with as in the game.

Impressions:

The first episode with a ton of cuts, which makes me more hopeful for the future because there is an absolutely suffocating amount of terrible expositional technobabble that it looks like they’re completely bypassing next episode. For this one though, they completely passed over Luke’s speech about how he’s grown up and is ready to kill people now, all of useless St Binah and skipped the nonsensical encounter with Arietta at Fubras where she’s stopped by a fortunate earthquake and miasma… along with the previous earthquake where Luke humps Ion out of fear. They also shuffled around events at Choral a little bit, but that’s for the best anyway, since they make you go up to the roof, only to let Luke be kidnapped so you can save him and then backtrack back to the roof anyway. Unfortunately, they also skipped Luke waking up Guy in the middle of the night so the two could ‘Sonic Thrust’ each other. A pity.

As for this episode, the highlight was definitely Dist’s weirdly animated… almost even CG arms. It was a bit amusing that they spent more time and effort animating the fight against random monsters at Fubras than they did the big showdown between the party and Gloomietta. They also did a much better job of showing Guy’s immediate trauma to Anise jumping on him than the game. Originally, it was more of a delayed reaction before he tossed Anise into a wall. Here, he immediately goes into flashback mode and violently convulses. Props for that at the very least. If you’re curious what it’s all about and don’t mind spoilers: [spoiler]Guy’s an orphaned noble from the Hod War. His mother, sisters, and servants all protected him with their bodies and he ended up trapped under a pile of female corpses.[/spoiler]

I was a little disappointed that they cut out the brief little sparring match between the two though. Here, Guy just knocked the disc and mask off in one blow. I doubt we’ll get Anise’s "It’s a maiden’s secret" explaination for her puppeteerness either. Ah well. I do think they’re doing a much better job with Arietta than the game just because she’s a lot more animated all around. The voice acting probably helps too since the English VA wasn’t the best around. I may actually feel a little pity for her this time around. Oh, and the group pose at the end was the cheesiest thing ever.

The real tragedy though, is that they seem to be skipping the Sword Dancer. You fools! How are you supposed to get that great sword if you skip the optional bosses? Fools.

I accidentally deleted my text file. *sigh* Guess I’ll summarize from memory then. Bleh. Sorry if I make any mistakes on that front.

Tear wakes up in St Binah to Luke and Ion watching over her. The rest of the party comes in and Tear heals her arm. Luke tries to stammer out an apology, but she cuts him off and apologizes to him instead. He gets all blushy and embarassed and Mieu stirs things up by trying to share his true feelings.

In less man-tsun news, Jade’s got a letter for Ion from Anise.

She writes about how it was sooooooooo tough and she was soooooooo scared and such. She also ‘blurts’ out her feelings of true love for Luke, prompting Guy and Jade to mock him a little bit for being a sexy piece of man meat. They then discuss what to do next. With the bridge out, Guy suggests they cross at Fubras River. Jade’s a little suspicious of Guy’s knowledge of Malkuth given that he’s from Kimlasca, but Guy just shakes it off.

At Fubras, the party slaughters lots of little monsters. Jade saves Luke’s tail from a small swarm, prompting some more Luke yelling and Mieu punishment.

 At the Kaitzur border, the guards won’t let Anise through, so she grumbles horrible things at them… right in front of the party. Jade snidely informs her of their presence and she glomps Luke. Guy’s amazed that -this- is Anise. Van walks through the border gate. Luke starts to run to him, but Tear knocks him aside and prepares to fight. He talks her down and says that they should go inside and talk this out.

Inside, Van tells them that the God-Generals are not acting under his command. They’re his forces, but he has no idea what they or Mohs are up to. The conversation eventually turns to Tear’s mission. Van thinks that she’s looking for the Great Seventh Fonstone, which Luke of course has never heard of. After some mocking, the rest of the party explains.

Yulia wrote the Score, a prophecy of the world, and put it on the Great Fonstones. They fell to the earth, blah blah, biggest and most important piece is the Great Seventh.

Elsewhere, the God-Generals prepare. Dist is all about his experiments, but Arietta’s worried because they didn’t get a direct order. Asche basically tells her to shut up and mind her place before storming off. Sync lurks outside.

The party, plus Van, heads to Kaitzur Naval Port with little incident and not even any random encounters.

They get there in the middle of an attack. The ferry they were going to use is completely wrecked. Arietta’s got the head engineer and demands that Ion and Luke come to Choral Castle if they want to see him alive again. Van yells at her that he gave no order like this, but she apologizes and flies off.

Van tells the party to wait it out, he’ll take care of Arietta and whatnot. They don’t need to get involved. After he leaves, Ion wants to go to Choral to talk with Arietta and possibly save the guy. Luke refuses to go because Van said he didn’t need to. Two men run in and beg them to save their chief. The Score said that he’d receive great fortune this year after all. Tear relents and says that the Score must be upheld, so she’ll go.

The rest of the party chimes in, saying they’ll go too, and Guy convinces Luke to go because it’s Duke Fabre’s vacation home… and the place they found Luke 7 years ago after he was kidnapped.

It’s become… a bit run down since then. Anise glomps onto Luke, saying it’ll be their vacation home once happily married. He can’t remember anything. As they venture inside,Anise sees a rat and feigns distress. She tries to leap onto Luke, but grabs Guy instead, who violently throws her aside.

Jade and the rest are a bit stunned by his reaction. He explains that he doesn’t know why he reacts like that either. Guy lost his memory, but not like Luke… just one moment, when his family was killed.

Arietta spoils the moment by having her bird grab Luke and fly off. She blocks their pursuit. Anise grows Tokunaga and tries to attack, but is thrown back by a monster.

Ion tries to reason with Arietta, but she tells him that they’re all bad people who killed her mother. Ion explains to the others that Arietta was raised by monsters and can communicate with them. That’s why she’s in the Oracle Knights. Tear puts one and one together and realizes that the Liger they killed was Arietta’s ‘mommy.’ Arietta orders her monsters to attack.

Luke comes too in a green glow while Dist and Sync work the controls on a strange machine. Lots and lots of technobabble.

As the party cuts down Arietta’s monsters, she looks stunned. Guy charges right at her and Anise knocks Arietta and her monster aside to let him past. Jade stands over Arietta and prepares to finish her, but Ion makes him stop.

Dist collects all the data on a disc and hands it to Sync. Guy suddenly runs in and knocks the disc and Sync’s mask away. He’s stunned by Sync’s face. The rest of the party runs in, and Sync retreats. Luke comes to, but doesn’t really know what happened to him. He’s unharmed though.

Jade recognizes the machine, but tells Guy that he’s not certain when pressed. Guy gives him the disc with the data Dist gathered.

Back in Kaitzur, Arietta and her liger are carted off. Van chastises the party for not listening to him before they all POSE!

Preview:

Dist the Runny, Darth Van, and the return to Baticul. Sorry Chesedonia, we’re skipping you.