Blog Archive

Friday, January 21, 2022

Tales of Luminaria:

This is some of the best anime-style cg I've ever seen.  People look natural whether standing still or moving.  You can forget it's cg entirely and just enjoy the high speed fights.  I wasn't sure this would be a great addition to the already great Tales anime franchise, but after watching I determined it was.  As good or better than what's come before.  Sadly, it's only a 2 episode ova, but with such great graphics we're talking a movie the equivalent of FF 15's.  That's not to be dismissed as unimportant so easily.

Celia in her short skirt with her prominent magic eye is beautiful and memorable.  It was only two episodes and I already feel attached to her.  She's loyal to her friends, skilled and determined.  I think if I played the full game and got to know her better she'd be in my fictional character hall of fame.  Sadly it's a mobile phone game so there's no way that will happen.

The soundtrack is also great, but yet again this comes with a caveat -- there's no way to acquire it.  The YouTube videos have weird breaks that ruin the tunes, maybe to avoid takedown notices.  Nyaa.si doesn't have a torrent of the soundtrack.  Amazon doesn't sell the soundtrack.  downloads.khinsider.com, the go to place to find video game music, doesn't host the Luminaria soundtrack, despite having virtually every other Tales game.  I'm completely flummoxed.  

Oh well, I'm currently perfecting my 5-star music hall of fame so I don't really have time for new music anyway.  After the beat rush of 19 vocalist anime songs replacing 19 instrumental game songs yesterday, I'm pretty certain that a) there are no remaining good anime song candidates for promotion and b) there are no remaining weak instrumental candidates for demotion.  Flipping a song rating requires both of these elements to happen.  Someone worth promoting and someone worth demoting.  After yesterday's bloodbath all such candidacies have already played out.

The 5-star music hall of fame was already ridiculously good, but now that the bottom 10% has been replaced with true champions it's insane.  The songs are so evocative, so uniquely beautiful, it's hard to concentrate on anything else.  They rob your attention and your heart if you're anywhere in the room, like some sort of melodic incubus.  There's no break where you can catch your breath, because they're all 5-star!  It's just out of the fire, into the frying pan, on repeat!

I finished Shirone's route in Trinoline Genesis and have moved on to Yuuri's.  With five routes there's plenty of content despite 'only' being a fandisc.  Minori is the company behind this title, the same people who did ef, so you know it's going to be high quality.  But I'm in no rush to play it all through instantly.  The NFL Playoffs resume tomorrow, and lots of anime comes out on the weekends, etc.

Ideally Trinoline Genesis will last me all the way to the Olympics.  Then there wouldn't be a single break in the fun.

In 15 days Shenmue joins the winter anime lineup.  I doubt the anime will be as good as the games were, but I'm still looking forward to it.  It's a lot easier to watch an anime of the events than to re-win those video games.  >.< Those games were tough.

No comments: