天下制覇

Wait… what?

How about that Air Force/Michigan game? Ouch. Chew on that, Wolverines. And now Miami’s up too? Too sweet.

Impressions:

Good god, was the music at the start of this episode irritating as all hell. I GET IT. IT’S VAN. Now shut off the blaring organ. Please. He’s not even playing one this time. I especially liked how Jade followed up a piddly little Energy Blast with Indignation. Honestly… Energy Blast? Against Van? Would that even do damage? I guess it was a decent fight, but last week’s was more impressive… so… *shrug* Tear hacking Lorelei was just as cheesy here as it was in the game, but at least in the game, you still got to keep fighting instead of Van collapsing.

The rest progressed pretty much as anybody would have expected, with Luke sacrificing himself and a little epilogue before he shows up again. I was rather disappointed that the final scene was pretty much frame for frame identical to the game’s already anime cutscene, but Sunrise has been lazy as hell with this production for quite some time now so it’s not really that surprising. Would it killed them to have a kiss? Or even just a hug? Well, whatever. Disappointment has become par for the course here.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final ED

Final Thoughts:

Well, it started well, and did a pretty good job of cutting about 50% of the terrible overwrought nonsense that infested the game. Unfortunately, as the technobabble nonsense continued, adding angst and depression on top of it, they started making cuts to the action so as to fit in more exposition and technobabble. Around the eighteenth time we saw that diagram of the planet’s Sephiroths, I was ready to throw a brick through the screen.

The biggest problem is that the story is really nonsensical to begin with and continually contradicts itself. Beyond that, the central cast remained as weak as they were in the game. Tear has no personality, and both Luke and Asch are so self-absorbed from the very start, and while their tunes may change from spoiled to a martyr complex, it’s really hard to care about either. Thankfully, the side characters remained their strong selves, especially Jade and Guy, but they’re just the sideshow to the Luke/Asch inferiority complex hour.

When you minimize the action and rely on the relatively horrible story and mediocre central cast, it shouldn’t be surprising that the plot overall turns out pretty badly. I’m sure having played through the game a couple times colors my views on this quite a bit, but I’m not really sure if that helped or hurt it. While I appreciated skipping all the backtracking and Sephiroth visiting, sitting through the boring dialogue for about the fourth time really wore me down pretty fast. There have certainly been worse adaptations, but this has been a pretty soulless and by the books affair all around, especially when we had UFOTable’s excellent Symphonia adaptation just before (and apparently, after as well, now that they’re finishing up Rakkyo.)

All in all, I don’t think it’s strong enough to satisfy people that aren’t fans of the game already, but at the same time, it doesn’t really show off the best parts of the game either. I’ll stick with ‘disappointing’ as my final one word thought.