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Monday, April 11, 2016

Wagamama High Spec is A-Okay:

For a short, Wagamama High Spec is about all we can ask for.  The girls are pretty and the skits are funny.  I'm sure the visual novel proper would be a lot better, but I'm also sure there are infinite other more deserving visual novels that should be translated before we ever worry about this one, so this is pretty much all we're going to get.

That leaves just Big Order for the spring anime's final debut.

Meanwhile, I edited my anime wishlist a bit to include a bunch of Tales of 'x' games I'd like to see animated more than the previous shows I had listed.  Now my anime wishlist, which asks for 100 anime adaptions of various types (remakes, sequels, entirely new releases, etc), is sparing 10 slots of that 100 just for Tales adaptions.  That's how good Tales is whenever it's turned into an anime, that there's just no excuse for any of these games to be left out of the silver screen:

Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Eternia, Tales of Graces, Tales of Xillia, Tales of Hearts, Tales of Destiny, Tales of Rebirth, Tales of Innocence, Tales of Symphonia: Knight of Ratatosk and Tales of Legendia should all have been fully adapted into anime, just like the original Symphonia or Abyss was.

I'm only forgiving the lack of a Zestiria anime because they are, after all, making a Zestiria anime, as dubious as it might be.  Also Zestiria wasn't that impressive that it needs to be animated, and it's also easily available in game form so an anime is overkill.  Most of these other Tales works have never been translated into English, were really bad in terms of gameplay and thus would perform better as simple animes, or such good games that they deserve an anime adaption regardless of the fact that they're readily available and fun to play already.

Why is a single game franchise taking up 1/10 of my whole wishlist?  Tales of Hearts and Tales of Innocence are on the PS Vita, a system barely anyone owns.  Destiny and Rebirth don't even have an English version.  Eternia and Legendia have outdated gameplay.  Knight of Ratatosk features Marta, ie, Rie Kugimiya, so of course it has to be animated.  Besides, Symphonia is so classic that there's no reason not to fully adapt its sequel as well.  Vesperia is Tale's most beloved entry.  Graces is my favorite entry.  Xillia is almost as good as Graces.

What makes this all the more frustrating is there has never been a Tales anime that didn't sell well.  They've all been brilliant successes.  Therefore there's zero reason why they don't regularly produce more Tales series just like they would more One Piece.  And yet they normally give prequels, filler spinoffs, or other junk instead, and leave the vast majority of every game totally unadapted.  It's like they're toying with us.  Why is everyone in Japan so incapable of making these obvious money making sure profit decisions?  It's like how the FF7 Remake had to wait 20 years before Square Enix would listen to us.  There are so many easy, obvious decisions these companies should be making, that they don't, no matter how often they're asked to, or how much money is waved in front of their faces.

Eventually, I'll have to give up on my desire for Tales series in order to ask for other shows.  But for now I just want to lodge my strong vote of protest over how the Tales anime franchise has been handled.  Tales has been treated so poorly.  It has so much quality, and so few people know about it, just because the adapters don't know what the hell they're doing.

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