Name: Takes a flawed but good game and absolutely butchers it beyond recognition.
Item: Tales of Zestiria the X Season 2
Rating: 60
Author: Juliko25

Waifra

Takes a flawed but good game and absolutely butchers it beyond recognition. · Waifora

(This review covers both seasons, though I will count my pseudo-review for the first season here as well, which I won't post here for the sake of brevity.)

I was first introduced to the world of Tales of Zestiria through the anime, when I kept seeing commercials for it on Daisuki.net whenever I watched episodes of Mama Is a Fourth Grader. Since that anime series was testing my patience and getting more and more aggravating (I place the blame entirely on Izumi Shinohara for being such a terrible character), I decided to kick that show to the curb after ten episodes and watch Zestiria The X, hoping it'd be better. The first half of the series was definitely good. Although I didn't play the game at the time (As of this writing, I have), I was impressed with what I saw. The characters, while not the most developed, had really subtle aspects about them that really go against their archetypes and had more personality than just being the generic hero, the tsundere, the peppy girl, etc. The storyline was very interesting, and while I'm not a fan of politics in anything, the political tensions here were easy to understand. The storyline was pretty basic, but it was still very compelling and intense. The battles were epic, but they knew not to go too over the top. The animation was stellar, the character designs are great (Even if some of the characters' outfits are plain stupid. Alisha and Symmone, anyone?), the music is great, and from what I heard, the anime tried to go in a different direction from the game, since the game has a lot of flaws, and managed to improve on things that the game was criticized for, which I wrote about in my original review for it.

Oh, how I wish I could sing these praises for the rest of the anime. Unfortunately, the good parts were only in the first season. The second season...really didn't fare well. Derailing is a big word. However, now that I have more knowledge of the game, that's exactly what the anime does after the end of the first season.

I'm seriously not kidding. Few anime I've seen have ever gone from good to so utterly messed up in a short amount of time. Trust me, I want to like Zestiria's anime adaptation. I really do, because both season do have good qualities about them, though there are far less of them in the second season. However, aside from the animation, the music, and some occasional cute scenes, I honestly can't bring myself to say anything positive about the completely unbalanced and complicated mess that the show devolves into. The storyline is where the second season really suffers, because not only does it completely deviate from the game in ways that make absolutely no sense at all, it could have been written well if the execution hadn't been so ridiculously stupid. By ridiculously stupid, I mean that many of the game's rules, such as dragons being unable to be purified even by the Shepherd, are completely ignored for the sake of simplifying things. Because of this, while I generally try to avoid talking about spoilers in my reviews, I cannot avoid doing so here, as I simply must talk about them in order to convey just how badly the anime messed up in terms of adapting the game for the screen. They will be hidden, though.

Spoiler, click to view

The Pendrago arc in particular really suffered. In the game, the city of Pendrago has endless rain, which is caused by a woman named Cardinal Forton, who became a hellion after taking on too much responsibility after the Pope, Masedra, ran away due to his own being unable to handle being cast out by his family and friends due to ascending to Popehood. She wanted to ascend to Popehood and bring the people together, but she wound up going about it in the worst ways possible, and anyone who tried to approach her was turned to stone permanently. Sorey and friends are unable to purify her because she's too far gone, and doesn't want to be purified, so they have no choice but to kill her. Cardinal Forton is completely cut out of the anime, and what do the anime creators replace her with? A dead dragon! A dead dragon locked in a church overflowing with malevolence is responsible for the endless rain! First of all, this makes absolutely ZERO sense at all. How the heck did a dragon even get inside a church, and for that matter, how the heck did it not completely destroy the shrinechurch in the first place? Something that big could have easily caused serious property damage that everyone could have been able to notice. How did a dead dragon not only get inside there, but NOT cause any kind of property damage whatsoever? Said dragon corpse also has to be purified, which is a big no-no because in the games, fully grown dragons CANNOT be purified. Not even the Shepherd can save them because dragons, which are fully corrupted seraphs, are too corrupted by malevolence to return to their original forms! The anime completely ignores that and allows Sorey and Rose to purify it, along with another dragon, without consequence, which makes no sense!

Also, Cardinal Forton is cut out, but Pope Masedra appears in one scene in the anime and that's it. Honestly...why didn't the creators make Pope Masedra the source of the malevolence in Pendrago in this adaptation? It would have made much more sense than a dead dragon! In the game, Masedra only became the Pope because he was forced to be one, and he never wanted to work for the church. When working in the church caused his family and friends to turn against him, he couldn't take it anymore and ran away, then being taken in by citizens of a village, which he helped to revive, naming it Goddodin and then later became chief/mayor. But in order to help it thrive, he had to resort to making fake Elixirs and doing black market sales in order to generate revenue and prevent Goddodin from going through famine and poverty. Considering his circumstances, it would have made MUCH more sense had the creators made Pope Masedra the source of the malevolence if they were going to give Cardinal Forton the boot. Masedra could have succumbed to his despair and become a hellion, and he could have justified his actions by putting the blame on Pendrago and its citizens for forcing their expectations on him and then blaming him for when things went wrong. That would have been a much more compelling and more plausible alternate explanation for the malevolence in Pendrago. But instead, the creators just throw in a random dead dragon for the sake of convenience! Why? I don't get it!

Also, Alisha is SOMEHOW able to armatize, just like Sorey. Uhhh...what? Okay, I know she's Sorey's Squire, but she never needed to armatize with any of the seraphs in order to hold her own in a fight. Both the game and anime go out of their way to show that she's a good, strong female character who can stand own her own even when she's at her most vulnerable and make the most out of her bad situation, even when the odds are against her. But not only does her being able to armatize make ZERO sense and comes right the heck out of nowhere, it completely invalidates and nullifies everything she's done in the anime as of that point. There's no explanation provided for it at all. I know I once said that Rose being able to armatize made no sense, but recent events and the prequel game Tales of Berseria have tried to offer explanations for that which make far more sense (I don't know how true this is, but Rose is said to be the descendant of the first Shepherd, a girl named Eleanor Hume, one of the main characters of Berseria, who was able to both see and armatize with seraphs/malaks).

And don't even get me STARTED on how they adapted the Camlann subplot. Sorey and Mikleo's role in the story is completely cut out, which makes their becoming Shepherd and Sub Lord almost feel completely cliche, stripping away the significance that the two have as main characters. It makes Sorey feel like just another cardboard cut-out chosen one who's destined to save the world from the evil lord of darkness, and the final battle where Sorey SOMEHOW manages to armatize with ALL OF THE SERAPHS AT ONCE, WHICH IS NOT POSSIBLE IN THE GAME, is especially poorly executed in that there's basically no significance to it at all. Also, outright spoiling Maotelus's true identity? Really? What good did that do?

In doing so, the characters are either pushed into the background, not able to do much of anything, or are wildly inconsistent. Rose can't seem to decide whether she wants to be an assassin or not even though she's lived among assassins her whole life. Alisha is given far too much spotlight. Now don't get me wrong, I like Alisha. I really do. She's a good character. However, I think the anime creators shot themselves in the foot with giving her so much spotlight. By giving Alisha so much screentime, they wound up giving the other characters the shaft and not allowing them to shine, especially Sorey, who's THE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER. Lunarre is just as pointless as ever, still having zero purpose other than to eat Mason and give the characters a hard time. And don't even get me started on how they completely butchered Symmone and Mayvin.

For the record though, I'd still watch Alisha over someone like Tagiru from Digimon Xros Wars 2 or Shinji/Paul from Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. At least Alisha is NICE and ISN'T a raging, abhorrent dickhole!

However, personally, I think Zestiria The X's biggest flaw is the fact that it tried to shoehorn in Berseria into it's plot. Because this is Zestiria, NOT Berseria. Yes, Berseria is the prequel, and that's fine. But the creators could have made more of an effort to integrate its lore into Zestiria's storyline more gracefully than it tried to do here. One of the common complaints against Zestiria's game is that it didn't do enough worldbuilding, and many of the game's lore was left unexplored, which Berseria expanded upon without feeling like you needed to play Zestiria in order to understand it. Both Zestiria and Berseria, even with their connections, were able to stand on their own as individual games, and didn't need to suck on each other's dicks in order to stand out. The anime tried to mash them together and wound up adding too many ingredients, therefore overcomplicating the dish. This is clearly a case of too many chefs spoil the soup. The fact that the series was restricted to two 11-13 episode seasons only amplifies these flaws even more in that there's so little balance that the pacing is completely shot, and the creators clearly threw in stuff just for the sake of throwing stuff into the anime, which doesn't work.

Tales of Zestiria the X is a prime example of how execution can either make or break a show. The reason people aren't too fond of Sailor Moon Crystal is that it stays TOO close to the source material, not letting itself breathe or try anything new. Zestiria The X has the opposite problem, where it completely deviates from the game and makes changes that make no sense. I get it, adaptations have to make changes, but those changes also have to make sense not only in the context of the story, but in the format it takes as well. Obviously video games are no stranger to adaptations, especially bad adaptations. But there are genuinely good adaptations of media out there: The live-action Sailor Moon series did its own thing while improving on the flaws of the original, even if it did have its own flaws, but the positives more than made up for it. The manga adaptation of Zestiria, from what I hear, tells the story MUCH better, and with it having come out, I intend to see for myself.

I really don't want to complain about Zestiria The X. I really don't. Honestly, if you tried to make me choose between this and something like Breadwinners or Kanokon, I'd gladly take Zesty The X any day. However, its many flaws cannot be ignored, and had it been given more episodes, more leeway, and had more competent staff behind it, the anime could have been genuinely good. It's a shame. I will say this though: It's still far better than every single ecchi anime that has plagued the anime industry over the past several decades, and I still watch it sometimes.