Anime: Xenosaga The Animation

THE STUFF
- Animation is done by studio Toei, which has done hundreds of classic shows but usually has average production values and doresn’t allow any of them to shine.
- Directed by some nobody who never made anything else.
- Based on the RPG videogame by Namco.

SPECIFICS
Xenogears and Xenosaga are amongst my most favorable videogames for their guts to focus more on telling a very complicating story and less on having exciting gameplay. I was practically playing them to watch the cut scenes and less to max out the characters and own the bosses in a few rounds. When the anime came out, I wondered how well they would manage to transmit the feeling of the story. Believe it or not, they did a far better job than most adaptations out there.

The anime follows the normal story of the game, with rather small differences instead of going for random plotless adventures like most adaptations do. It still is that wonderful adventure of fending off the alien Gnosis with a super android, while a sinister plot takes place for the control of humankind. Looks like a typical alien invasion story but in reality it is far more than that.

And as for those changes, to the most part they were actually an improvement over the original, or in the least a very interesting retelling that was not damaging the overall feeling too much. For example, the VR training mission in the beginning initially presents KOS-MOS as a robot and not as a super sexy fembot, which helped the viewer to perceive from the start her as a weapon and not as some porn-related gimmick. He could even be shocked later on, when her true form appears. They also added a 100 series Realian to be part of the crew, which made the antithesis between her and her advanced version, MOMO, to strike all the more meaningful when later own she stays at the core of the reactor instead of KOS-MOS. Because to be honest, the 100 series was left at a complete background role in the game and the finale of the first game felt too convenient with all the stuff KOS-MOS did. Keeping the military soldier alive for most of the duration also helped to get to see more about himself, a thing that went almost unnoticed in the original. Having as a final boss Albido’s mecha was also keener to having that generic monstrosity in the game.

As far as the handling of the storyboard goes, I was very pleased. Unfortunately, it was the only thing they did right or even better, as all the rest were very disappointing. The terminology of the original was oversimplified a lot, which kind of made the series to feel like a typical sci-fi adventure, when the original had enough to fill a hundred pages of text WITHOUT any pictures. I supposed that was expected, as the series was only meant to cover the first part of the trilogy, and thus all innuendos or references to things that would happen later in the story had to be taken out. It would be very confusing to anyone who didn’t play the games and I doubt having huge walls of text in the end explaining all that would help either. So I excuse them for that, as the alternative would make things worse for the non-fans.

What couldn’t be forgiven is how they also watered down the crazy personalities of the characters. They took out the wacky mentality and replaced it with what can at best be described as anti-hero mentality. Which was quite the fun back in the 90’s but now it is plain boring and that makes the characters boring as well. I mean, seriously, Albido was one of the most twisted / psychotic / murderous characters I have even met on a game and the anime presented him as slightly crazy… who even helps little girl Realians when in the anime he… well… you know… Same thing can be said about the military soldier; he hated Realians with passion but in the anime he is just annoyed with them. Totally takes away the tripy feeling. Also, since the series only covers a third of the story, means that most of the cast is not fleshed out much and remains as generic crowd in the background. Which is quite sad how that makes them appear as average when they are all wonderfully developed later on.

Next up are the production values, which for a series of this caliber felt too low. The intro song is very good for me but the dialogues feel empty of passion and the visuals lack the wow-ing factor. Everything is made to look so average and the watering down of the psychedelic factor makes things even worse. I was almost annoyed by the way they drew the faces and the shoujo-ai element they threw in just… felt out of place.

Overall, it is a mediocre production that doesn’t really do just to the game other than making the plot more likable. Most fans like me were disappointed with the watering down and the non-fans just found it to be a mediocre space adventure. As a stand-alone adaptation, I can say with certainty that it has amongst the best transitions from game to series I have ever witnessed but that alone is not enough to make a good show. So I give this show a pass but only barely and only because I’m a fanboy of the games. Believe it or not, the story is quite close to that of Neon Genesis and overall far more complicating and mature. Too bad the series doesn’t let you realize that.

Now where is that Xenogears adaptation?

And now for some excused scorings.
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Xenosaga isn't so much bad as it is pointless. It's a loose adaption of the first game of the Xenosaga trilogy. This means that there's no resolution in the anime, and it's too different for you to try to pick up the story in the second game. If you've played the games I expect that the anime would be somewhat disappointing to watch, as well.

Animation:
The actual animation quality is fairly decent, but it's brought down by a number of factors. The main problem is the art style. The characters all look weird, particularly around the eyes. The other major problem is the Gnosis. The same, unimpressive, design keeps showing up, and it has a lame death animation.

Sound:
Passable, but nothing great.

Story:
The story seems interesting, but it's very difficult to keep up with. There are lots of terms that get flung around, and most of them never get explained. The story is pretty much constantly at full pace, which seems to have resulted in a minimum of exposition. I understand that the game included a encyclopedia of sorts, along with the standard NPC conversations. The anime doesn't seem to have worked any of that information into the story.

Character:
Like with the story, the characters seem interesting, but most information pertaining to them just isn't there. The series is usually far too busy with the story to include character background or development.

What can I say? I would have liked to have liked this series, but it's really just unbelievably bad. Serving as a prequel to the cult classic Xenogears, the one CRPG which kicks most anime's ass in terms of story and character development, Xenosaga has some ogre-sized shoes to fill. But while the games Xenosaga I and II partly live up to the legacy, the Xenosaga anime is a huge failure, whether you compare it to the original or evaluate it on its own.

Animation: abysmal. The only places I've seen worse animation are in kids shows. I would say this looks like something out of the 80's, but that would be a complete understatement. Even Rose of Versailles, produced in 1979, has much more fluid, natural-looking animation and much better, more human character designs. Xenosaga's character designs remind me of bad American cartoons. And then there's the mecha action, in comparison to which the original Macross looks like something out of the 22nd century. You'd think if the studio were going to spend lots of time on battles, they'd try to make them look good at least, but no. Expect enemies to dissolve into sparkles of light like a blood-censored video game when they're defeated, and expect to see A LOT of horribly cheesy light and explosion effects. This is as bad as it gets. And it's even worse when viewed against the beautiful CG of the games.

Sound: Here I might be a bit biased, comparing the music with the original work done by Mitsuda-sama. However, I found the soundtrack to the Xenosaga anime really unremarkable. The only sound really worth listening to was the ending theme, and even it was only so-so. It managed to convey the feelings and themes of Xenosaga/Xenogears much better than any of the poor story and character development in the anime could, so it's worth something. The voice acting was decent, but nothing remarkable. Unfortunately I've only played the English-dubbed US release of the game, so I don't know how the original compares, but the anime characters' lines and voices in Japanese often sounded stuffy, overly formal, and impersonal.

Story: Taking an intricate epic story and condensing it into 13 episodes rarely works. Try making it halfway into a kids' series and well.... you're doomed. If you've played the game, try to imagine what would happen if you whitewashed or removed most of the darker themes and brushed over all the lore about the Zohar, Nephilim, URTVs and Realians, the Miltian Conflict, etc. I could criticize the story on the basis of unfaithfulness to the original CRPG story, but fortunately I don't have to. When you strip away all the depth, all the relationships between the organizations and characters, and the whole idea that something much bigger than the sum of the parts is taking place, you're left with a mediocre story full of cliches and triteness. It's not just bad by being different from the original; it's bad by virtue of having no substance whatsoever.

Unfortunately, they didn't stop with just butchering the complex sci-fi, philosophical, and epic parts of the story. They also butchered the fanservice parts!! Any single one of KOS-MOS' cut scenes from the game is more exciting and awe-inspiring than all of her action in the anime put together. And it's not just the bad animation that plays it down either; it's really a matter of how the story is told. The scenes that are supposed to be a big deal just... aren't.

Character: The characters were really the only enjoyable part of this series for me: getting to see the Xenosaga characters I love again in a retelling of the story. Still, the character development here was really, really bad. If I didn't already know the characters and their relationships from the games, they all would have been completely shallow and lifeless. And with this retelling being so rushed, the characters hardly had time to get to know one another or develop any relationships. The major scenes from the game which would have served to aid character development were all cut in favor of lengthened battle scenes, so you could see a few more gnosis vaporize into cheesy sparkle effects instead.

Value: Don't bother buying this if it's licensed. You can probably buy a PlayStation2 and the game for about the same price, and you'll get a much better telling of the same story, with much better animation. The only reason I watched this after seeing how bad the first few episodes were was so that I could write a review -- being very familiar with Xenogears and the Xenosaga series I felt compelled to evaluate the anime, for better or worse.

Enjoyment: The only enjoyable part was seeing the characters again. Otherwise watching this was just painful. Do yourself a favor and play Xenogears, and then Xenosaga I and II if you feel the need to know more. Skip the anime. It really has nothing to offer.

This series was very unfulfilling, though it had its good points.

The animation at times was very good. The art is very realistic and aside from a few oversized eyeballs, all of the characters art is well done. There are a few scenes here and there that are computer generated backgrounds but not many.

The sound was not exactly memorable yet dramatic and well themed. Most of the sounds are style spinoffs of the opening song which gets monotonous after a while. I gave it high marks because it fit in well with the sci-fi space type series and it didn't annoy me i guess.

As far as the story goes, there were many faults that could have been done better or at least didn't translate well to english. Many of the names of characters were very long and difficult to remember, as well as names of ships, regions of space, groups of people, etc. They are thrown at you very fast and repeated only a few times sporadically throughout the series so it was difficult to remember who this or that person/group was. I almost made my own flowchart of people and groups and abbreviatons, but it was only 12 episodes. Not to mention it ended quite abruptly and without a great climax so I decided not to watch it again to re-understand its complex intricate parts.

Charactes were uninteresting for the most part. It seemed like they were going to really focus the series on this KOS-MOS character (which they should have done cause she was hot and uber powerful) because of all the detail surrounding her development and secret powers, but in the end I was left irritated because ya, she saved everyone, but damn was it uninteresting and anticlimatic. The last half of the series was more about some kid named jr. and his long lost psycho friend who of course wanted to destroy the universe to get revenge on him.

Value is a 7. I wouldn't buy the series, but that's just me. If they come out with a xenosaga 2, it had better focus on KOS-MOS, because that's a character I could get into. (h o t)

Enjoyment 4. Thank goodness it was only 12 eps. Any more and I probably would not have watched anyways. How can you really save the universe from a psycho in only 12 episodes? I mean.. come on.