Tales of the Abyss #13 — Royalty is Overrated

December 21st, 2008

 

Is anybody in Kimlasca who they claim to be?

Impressions:

Yawn. Lots of cuts this week, almost all for the better, though it did feel a little weird to watch the St Binah collapse scenes. In the game, St Binah just sort of sags for a moment and you’re sent off to go slog through some of the most tortuous and boring dungeons in the game to recruit Noelle and the Albiore II. So, after three hours of dungeons and wandering to new towns, the impending doom of St Binah is dulled a bit. After that, you’re dropped into the middle of the ‘battlefield’ (just the world map with soldier encounters instead of normal ones) and have to run around until you get to the respective HQs. In the anime, we just sort of teleport straight to various places, although they did split up the groups differently. They did do a much better job of showing the war actually in motion here than in the game, even if it was a little silly to have dozens of Tatarus-like ships all roaming around and spearing each other. Goooooo land yachts.

The big event of the episode is the second giant dump they take on Natalia through the story by revealing that she’s not the real princess. This is mitigated pretty much immediately by all the townspeople rallying behind her and supporting her over the king and pope, so… you know… it really just boils down to daddy issues after that. More meaningful looks from Largo at Natalia too. Gee, what ever could that mean? Thoughts of the eventual coming patricide aside, it was silly then and it’s silly now. Maybe if the townsfolk hadn’t immediately jumped up to her protection or there was some other heir to the throne, it’d have worked out. It might have also helped a little bit if it wasn’t directly proceded by "if you’re really loyal to us, you’ll drink this poison and die as martyrs." Then again, nothing really says royalty quite like murdering members of your family for political gain.

Unfortunately, that’s really about all that happened. Almost 8 minutes were spent airlifting people out of St Binah and the rest of it was just talking heads rambling about how evil adoption is. You tell ’em, pope.

Preview:

Guy’s gynephobia.

Posted in Tales of the Abyss | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • SageSoren says:
    December 21, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    I agree with the point you made–no one in this game seems to be who they say they are, whether it’s because they’re hiding it (Sync, Ion) or they just don’t know (Luke, Natalia). Crazy.

    The foreshadowing in the anime seems to slap us in the face regularly. I’m glad it’s not as vague as the game was, but it’s a little too blunt sometimes. :’D

  • Mauyn Eign says:
    December 21, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    I didn’t think the game was really that vague. :< That said, the anime does seem… rather heavy handed. Anvilicious? :D;;

    It’s funny really, everyone really does have that ‘hidden other side/self’ w/e. Almost to the point of being a theme or something. NO ONE IS WHO THEY SEEM.

    I, uh, love all the unneccessary, diagrams of easy to explain things that the anime puts in. WATER DOESN’T MAKE YOU WET. THERE’S THIS FUNKY LINE HOLDING UP THE LANDS. …can we get a diagram for the more complicated things?

  • SageSoren says:
    December 27, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    All the diagrams seem unnecessary to me, too, but maybe it’s because we played the game? :D

    Maybe it’s for the benefit of possible younger viewers or something.