Anime: Tales of the Abyss

Tales of the Abyss: A faithful adaptation, marred by limitations of medium.

Namco Bandai's Tales series of console role-playing games, although having never reached the lofty heights of Final Fantasy, is still a heavyweight in the RPG business and its games have been a staple of my life ever since I stumbled over a fan translation of the original Tales of Phantasia some eight or so years ago during my SNES emulation period (I have since bought the GBA version if some of Nintendo's lawyers are reading this... Honest!). The same can not be said for the anime adaptations made of the series, which have generally been low-quality works with enough content cut from the original to fill a Tolstoy novel and render their storylines as little more than disjointed scenes filled with characters lacking about half of the fleshing and character development needed to make them believable. Tales of the Abyss tried very hard to change that, using well-known studio Sunrise and a full 26-episode season, rather than 3 OVAs, to adapt a 40+ hour story to an anime.

It succeeded admirably at it too; the adaptation is near flawless. Problem is, is it any good as an epic 'swords 'n sorcery' fantasy anime when running up against the original and manga adaptation heavyweights in the category?

Animation and Visuals: 7/10 -- Good backgrounds, lots of runes and exploding and fair character design.

Tales of the Abyss looks good, for the most part. The animation studio have taken pains to make the character design and backgrounds as close to the original game as possible, likely using the game's animated intro as a point of reference. There are some visible differences, but the end result is a very high likeness -- the characters look more or less exactly as they should, as do the (at times fairly impressive) backgrounds and set pieces. It may not be entirely up to snuff with all of Sunrise's graphical feasts, but it works.

The combat, when it appears, is quick, fluid, dominated by quick swordplay and the usual mystical magical runes and explosions... And also, at times, very very confusing to watch as the camera jumps from action to action and seems unwilling to stay at any one place for too long... Except when Luke has locked sword with the current enemy, which he unfailingly will at least once per episode. Also, carbon-based lifeforms in Tales of the Abyss are apparently made of paper-mache: I neither want nor expect Berserk-style bloodbaths here, but my suspension of disbelief isn't particularly pleased with all non-boss enemies splitting at the seams without so much as a drop of it after a single sword-blow either (and that part certainly wasn't adapted from the game either... The 'mooks are dead on the spot after a single blow' part, that is.)

Sound: 7/10 -- Meet the new voice cast, same as the old cast.

Tales of the Abyss, like the previous OVAs, manages to recycle its entire voice cast for the anime: A good thing too as the original japanese cast for the game were very well-cast, even by the standards of the Tales series. The voice cast glide all-too easily into their old roles too; some of the lines seem like they've been cribbed directly from the game. Chihiro Suzuki, who voices both main character Luke fon Fabre and a 'I'm-not-going-to-spoil-this' other character still shows off his good range in voice pitch; the scenes when his two characters are interacting are still very impressive, and Takehito Koyasu is still as smarmy as ever as fan-favourite Jade Curtiss. The other main characters and the villains are also decent; no truly bad voice jobs are visible (although listening to Mieu for any amount of time may still make your ears bleed or give you a sudden desire to kill the little #¤&*...). The main shame is that the game's best lines from the non-story 'skits' are all gone.

The background music is fairly decent if a little unmemorable, and the sound effects sit as they should without overshooting each other too much. A most hilarious exception appears during the main villain's later appearances, when horribly over-the-top organ music tends to dominate the sound picture; in the last case most inappropriately as the villain is simply sitting quietly on a balcony; the scene manages to reach Death Note-like levels of inappropriate use of overly dramatic music there.

The OP deserves mention; in a primary showcase of wanting to show its faithfulness, the anime uses the same sound byte of Bump of Chicken's "Karma" as the original game's intro did, making the intro sequence a massive 2:28 long (the standard anime OP is 1:29). "Karma" is fairly nice to listen to, so I didn't mind -- although the ED is rather horrible and I don't blame any of you in the least for wanting to skip it.

Story: 6/10 -- Walking! Standing! Talking! More walking and talking! Hasty underwhelming fight sequence! More standing!

Tales of the Abyss is set in the world of Eldrant, a world where an ancient prophetess called Julia Yue managed to 'read' the planet's future, creating a set of prophecies known as the Score that can be used to predict virtually everything in the world. In this world we meet spoiled noble Luke fon Fabre, who has been prophesied to be some manner of Chosen One, has been under house arrest in his own mansion ever since a rival nation called Malkuth kidnapped him seven years ago and gave him total amnesia. One morning, while training with his teacher Van, an assassin out to kill said teacher accidentally teleports herself and Luke halfway across the planet in the process and stranding them both deep inside Malkuth. From there, an epic story about war, peace, destiny, what it means to be human, racism, and ends justifying the means unfolds.

The main problem in adapting any RPG to an anime will always be the story. RPGs are usually intended to provide over 30 hours of gameplay; something that most animes with their limited time (approximately 6 and a half hour of material for a 26-episode show or about 60-120 minutes for an OVA) simply cannot match. As a result, most of the 'gameplay' (like the puzzles, dungeons and random encounters) tends to get axed, turning the show mostly into the story set pieces and boss fights in rapid succession, giving the shows a rather awkward pace. Usually, many of the story elements will have to go too, not helping matters in the least.

However excellently Tales of the Abyss adapts its source material -- with the exception of a few padding quests here and there, all of it's in -- it cannot dodge the bullet on the pacing issue. Most of the screentime is used purely to advance the plot through dialogue and making sure the viewer understands just what the flipping heck is going on, and it doesn't exactly make for very great viewing. Although impressively animated, most of the battles, even the climax boss fights, aren't very impressively choreographed or involving either. The fact that it's originally a video game and not an original work or a manga is very apparent; the pacing is nothing like any of the latter and the proceedings, very much intended for an interactive medium, does not translate ideally.

The main saving grace of Tales of the Abyss is that its source story is actually pretty interesting. Ok, it's got plenty of cliched and less interesting elements in it, but its core constituents are often more subversive than cliched (for instance, the 'Chosen One' trope, like in previous Tales game Tales of Symphonia, is given a bit of a savaging). Pity it's so marred by the pacing problem, though, and the lack of supplementary materials found in the game means that some of the plot points are not as well explained as they probably should have been.

Character: 7/10 -- Interesting characterization and decent development. Let down by excessive number of boring, less-than-important side characters.

Tales of the Abyss' character gallery is mainly centered around the main character Luke, with him and his compatriots and in-game controllable party members making up the core cast, surrounded by several dozens of various villains and supporting characters. The main cast is pretty well characterized and are often the only thing that carries the story during its less-than-stellar moments, and like in most Tales series games they all turn out to have hidden depths, childhood traumas and copious backstory a-plenty to help build their characters; some more successfully than others.

Ok, they don't always act like rational human beings, are a bit archetypical, and some moments can get rather cringeworthy. Luke himself can be especially hard to connect with, especially for those who haven't played the game. His beginning personality is, shall we say, less than sympathetic. Fortunately, the overall balance goes positive thanks to character development from several of the cast, several interesting reveals and some characters that are just cool, period, like the abovementioned Jade. Again, though, the lack of skits take out quite a lot of gems about the main cast. I'd hoped they'd put some of those into some of the 'walking' scenes. No such luck.

One of the problems with Tales of the Abyss' character cast is again due to its roots as an adaptation: The vast number of side characters that merely exist for the purpose to expand the story. In-game, they provide the excuse for you to walk to a new town, see new scenery and fight new and exciting random encounters: In an anime, they serve as little more than set pieces that talk back and have absolutely nothing going for them as characters. Not all of the side characters are like that, of course, but quite a distressing number do pop up. If I hadn't played the game I would likely neither have known the purpose of these characters, or cared a whit either. In addition, the villains are... Lacking, somehow. While their scenes are preserved from the game, there's just something lost in adaption, possibly due to the fact that you don't actually fight them yourself, and the main villain himself is conspicuously absent for most of the time, and sometimes you have to ask what he's doing while the heroes are running about screwing up his plans.

Value: 6/10 -- The first competent Tales adaptation. Not, by far, the first competent epic fantasy anime.

As an independent work of fantasy, Tales of the Abyss is well-crafted and fairly complex, but nothing extraordinary or historic. As mentioned above, the anime medium already has quite a few examples of epic fantasy, and when compared to these the anime falters. I will say, however, that it is one of the best video game-to-anime adaptations I have ever seen, and hopefully it can inspire later works that can get the execution working a little better. The anime will likely be primarily enjoyed by people who liked the game; people who haven't played it may feel a little lost. Anyway, I may subject it to a re watch at some point in the future -- unlike the Tales of Phantasia and Symphonia OVAs, this one actually has re watch potential.

I'd probably like to replay the game again more, though.

Enjoyment: 6/10 -- Decent.

Speaking as someone already a fan of the game and its belonging series, Tales of the Abyss was enjoyable enough to watch. My interest waned a bit about 3/4 through, during the most heavy of the 'walk to point A, find new exposition, walk to point B, get more exposition' parts, but I was able to keep my interest enough to finish it. Tales of the Abyss was never my most anticipated anime in any given week, however, and I can easily see how someone not already loaded up on goodwill from the game could easily abandon it for greener pastures.

Total: 6.5/10 -- REPLICAAAAA!!!!

Tales of the Abyss is a successful replication of the original source material, being all but identical to its original on most points.Like the replicas found in the story of Tales of the Abyss, however, the limitations that this new world (of TV anime) impose on it means it doesn't adapt all that well, and it also has both the original game's interactivity and a lot of fellow fantasy animes to be measured up to, against which it ultimately doesn't fare so well. Ultimately somewhere between above average and actually good, though it shows promise in its ability to pave the way for other high-production value TV series adaptations of other Tales work or RPGs (like the up-and-coming Valkyria Chronicles). Hopefully some of those may translate better.