More Practice @ Unreasonable Hrs! Feat. My Fav Hellion

more practice @ unreasonable hrs! feat. my fav hellion

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Long time.

Tales of Zestiria the X

Prologue 00 - Age of Chaos

Tales of Zestiria (Vol. 1, Chapter 1, pg. 9)

Now, I haven’t read far into the manga adaption of Zestiria - partly due to the fact that only the first few volumes have come out in English so far - but from spoilers in Japanese and what I have read tells me that it seems to be doing a much better job characterising the weaker aspects of the original game - the villains. Lunarre in particular.

Deviating from the original game and anime adaption, the manga has Sorey and Mikleo encounter Lunarre in the Mt. Mabinogio Ruins rather than later in Elysia. Rather than finding an unconscious Alisha alone (I don’t believe it’s ever explained how she ended up there), here she is injured and at the mercy of Lunarre.

Infinite improvement, in my opinion. It makes perfect sense, seeing as the hellion was hot on the princess’s trail and he considered her his ‘main dish’ and sole target. In the games and anime, his obsession with hunting Alisha was undermined by the fact that Lunarre was easily distracted and happy to ‘snack’ on those who crossed his path. Only when he is faced with defeat does he conveniently remember his primary objective and continue his hunt.

(Of course, a more one-track mind wouldn’t have been able to save the fact that none of Lunarre’s efforts get explained or explored to a meaningful degree, but I have high hopes for the manga.)

In the games and anime Alisha was unconscious in the ruins for no reason - here she is unconscious/semi-conscious because she is being attacked. Lunarre has caught up with her, as he was sure to do (another thing that never quite added up in the original game! He’s stronger and faster than Alisha, a trained assassin, and a thief since he can remember, exactly how did he never catch up with her?). 

Spotting Sorey and Mikleo, Lunarre doesn’t immediately go into ‘gonna eat you for the luls’ mode, but dares them to interrupt his ‘meal’. He even waits for them to make their decision, so he’s not just saying so to be funny. If our heroes had shat themselves and run off, Lunarre wouldn’t have pursued them. His sole target is Alisha, and though he isn’t adverse to a fight, he would rather have no interruptions or trouble. He wants to finish his target off and be done, whereas Games and especially Anime Lunarre don’t seem to care or have a grasp on their priorities, always getting distracted for petty or unexplained reasons.

To to sum up: our heroes still get to save Alisha and get acquainted with her, AND encounter our new villain, in a more natural fashion which helps the plot along rather than slow it down or confuse things.

The more I think about how few and far between Lunarre and general villain appearances were, the more I think the Zestiria game could have benefited enormously from a few extra cutscenes showing them, not just what the main cast saw or experienced. Behind the scenes stuff. The anime tried to do this at first at least (e.g: with Bartlow in S1) but then fell down the same path and by S2 seemed to forget the villains even existed. This especially hurt things plot and character wise because they clearly wanted Lunarre to get his redemption and Symonne to be sympathetic in a similar way. Problem is we never got to really know them at all or see how they got from point A to point B, so caring about them beyond their aesthetic designs and entertaining personalities (Lunarre) was very difficult if not impossible. Part of me wonders if this was at least partly due to straying from the game in that Lunarre held a vendetta towards Rose, and switching focus to Alisha but never caring about Lunarre's side of things - to the point where his presence became increasing nonsensical. It all seemed very rushed and stitched together. That's my take on things anyway.