You KNOW he's the bad guy because Clairen is always crying! If she had Tiktok she could have gotten the world to side with her and take him down; No time travel needed! 🥴
I truly appreciate the Star Wars comparisons because it's exactly what came to mind when I was thinking of the story's short comings. I really do think Elliana has the overall best lore with the entire cast because of how they portray her journey and everyone around her. That's probably why she ended up my favorite character out of the current roster.
I really hope your bold way of saying that you didn't like the comic doesn't upset the team too much. Having someone who doesn't like your story nearby has proven to be useful to get a different perspective, or to maybe consider to give things a bit more thought, at least for me.
I will say, they managed to tell a good story in Elliana's trailer. It was a good underdog story with good humor and a nice twist. And! It did it in a short time while not actually ending the story. Real good job there. Would honestly watch/read/play something with Elliana as the protag fighting the Air Armada. Tho I think it was a good choice going for Clairen as well. I feel like she's a fan fav and debatably has a better setting she's in. Plus her design is great. I feel like her setup both story wise and with general stuff I've mentioned is good. Too bad you didn't like the comic. Maybe I will idk.
I think a more interesting plotline rather than a random vision is that clairen actually buys into the propoganda and believes loxodont is a good guy and her mother is in prison for committing what clairen believes was an actual crime. So now we have a young girl in the militia, who is resentful of her mother who maybe hurt her chances of getting into the militia in the first place. Clairen rises up the ranks and throughout her missions she finds her self struggling to justify the things that she's done because while she wants to believe loxodont, the illusion is falling apart. She ignores this and continues until she is a royal guard and then that's when she discovers that loxodont is not a good guy, but she's been loyal this long so why not ? Then she finally gets a chance to speak to her mother who's serving a life sentence. Her mother then convinces her that loxodont is actually the cause of renburn's death and forsburns banishment and clairen finally puts all the pieces together. Other guards, maybe higher ranked, then walk in on her realizig this while having a conversation with her mother which she maybe wasn't supposed to do under any circumstances. They throw clairen in prison and then the bunny offers her a way to change the past, maybe the bunny could be shown in the background of when clairen gets caught and clairen could have briefly introduced to her when she gets her plasma sword. Then everything else plays out as normal, they escape and clairen goes back in time.
I feel like the comics were structured like trailers. They skipped over a couple of important storytelling beats in order to deliver the most exciting parts. At each important turning point in the plot, the story opted to present the turning point as a development in and of itself, rather than presenting any buildup and/or consequences as development.
The run probably should've been 10 issues or something. I know money is a major concern, but everything went way too fast. It didn't matter that she betrayed her squad because we never got to know anything about them. It didn't matter that she gave up her family because we saw them for like four pages. Nothing had an impact because it was there and gone in a flash of lightning. I liked the comics well enough. What little they had involved some great art and strong character emotions. But my God did it go too fast.
@@ListlessWither well back when rivals came out everyone was saying its a furry game now i know a lot of people who are not furries and play rivals. And im one of them. Just saying that over time the game wasnt viewed as a 100% furry game.
Adam: Clairen starts on a quest to kill Loxodont and ends on a quest to kill Loxodont Also Adam: starts talking about the upmost respect for Ian Flynn and the Tales of Aether team and finishes the video by talking about the upmost respect for Ian Flynn and the Tales of Aether team
I've been working on a Rivals movie adaptation, and I was thinking of using the whole comic series for the second act, and making the third act Loxodont's last stand like Avengers: Endgame.
I'm actually super glad you went in on this and weren't afraid to mince words about your feelings on Tales of Aether. I think you handled this about as well as one could, given the precarious line you walk between Aether Studios and jsut being a UA-cam guy. I actually have someone I know that Tales of Aether is their introduction to RoA because they're a fan of Ian Flynn's work more than anything else, and were kinda surprised when I started talking about how this is a whole ass trans-media franchise with a Platform Fighter as it's core piece of media. I honestly kinda wanted to ask her about what she thought about Clarien and Loxodont given her lack of perspective on the rest of what Aether is, and that will be fascinating to go over Vs. your thoughts or my own.
Yeah I was thinking peeps might get this just for Ian Flynn. He's well known and honored in the Sonic community for his work with blue boys comics. Glad to see with this and the new Sonic game people keep trying to use him recently.
Real Talk the whole comic felt like 'oh this and that was kinda true', y'know, just expanding a little issue by issue, not really telling a story if anything because it misses the point by skipping over important details that make sense(explained well enough in this video, so mass kudos because damn, re-reading it definitely hits like the story mode of RoA). The only positive i have is probably just putting two and two with some concepts (Ayala being the one to make Loxodont the endless emperor, Elliana succeeding in the Air Armada's destruction perhaps making Loxo catch eye of Ayala's engineering, Mollo being much more knowledgable of the old Fire Empire, etc.) but besides that the story is pretty neutral, if not very muted to fit the character trailer which... that's not how it works but i haven't done enough comics to say that with certainty LOL It's like a 5/10. Well worth for the lore if you've dug deep into it, but if you're reading casually... good luck. Not boring but undercooked.
Along with all these issues, I also just think it's really weird and poorly thought-out in a couple ways. First of all, Clairen becomes best friends with her squad. Remember that this is an organization working for the man she hates and is trying to kill, the evil organization she's infiltrating and joining under false pretenses to complete her mission of assassinating Loxodont. Why is she best friends with the people who joined completely legitimately just to be evil future cops? These are the sort of people who would've carried out the bombing of her home in the first issue under Loxodont's orders. It makes no sense for her to be besties with them, and we lose a lot of potential for drama and some tension that isn't just plain action for it. Imagine how much more interesting her story would be if she was terrified of these people because she knew the moment they learned of her true intentions, they'd turn her in, that the people who she works with day and night who may even see her as a friend are huge threats to her life and her mission and she has to deal with that knowledge while working her way up the ranks. Secondly, Ayala. The comic did her no favors. From what we've seen of her in other media, she's an upstanding but practical person who does her best to make things right with what she has and generally doesn't put up with people who are irrational or cruel. In Tales of Aether, she's clearly meant to have the same mindset with how she helps Clairen escape to the past, but she's literally the one keeping Loxodont alive. She says herself that he needs her maintaining him, and we're never given any reason for her not to just stop doing that. Even if there were a reason, she then breaks Clairen out and sends her to the past, which is absurdly risky and dangerous in comparison to just sabotaging Loxodont's systems to kill him herself. It almost doesn't even work! The story isn't well-thought out at all, and when you apply some thought to how the characters act, it makes Clairen look like a bootlicker and Ayala look like a reckless idiot.
Yeah, so, I know this is two years old, going on three, but as someone who used to be a fan of Ian Flynn's work and is now… not, I have a bit of a story to tell. I already knew about Rivals of Aether and was interested in some of its world and music, had already played through Lovers of Aether, and I bought each individual issue of the Tales of Aether comic with my own money. Before all this, I figured, "Hey, they talk about all these mandates preventing Ian from making good Sonic stories, so maybe I should check out something non-Sonic that he did! Who knows? Maybe it'll be better!" And then I read it, and realized… this comic has, word-for-word, the exact same issues that Flynn's work on Sonic has: telling over showing, characters being vehicles for the plot, no real narrative themes being established, and empty calories overall. The so-called mandates are nowhere near as oppressive as people would have you believe. I think this very comic is actually the spark that led to me shifting from a Flynn shill to a Flynn skeptic, just ahead of Frontiers coming out and fans increasingly beginning to realize he's not the perfect writer they said he was. There are so many things I could say about how hollow Tales of Aether is, but my main complaint is its telling-over-showing habit: we're never at all shown who Clairen is as an individual with agency, nor is her dynamic with other characters fully established. I don't feel sad for her when her mother dies; I just know that it's what pushes her into the plot and gives her a bare-minimum excuse to want to kill Loxodont. And yet, despite how we're meant to believe that her love for her family is what pushes her to do what she does, she doesn't consider the possibility of Marty McFly-ing herself and everyone she cares about out of existence through time-traveling. Hell, we aren't even shown how bad Loxodont's rule is for Aether aside from just "people live on reservations and pay taxes now", and Clairen being unable to defeat him in combat alone can't warrant the need to use time-travel to defeat him. While you used Star Wars as a good comparison, I think I'll go with something else- the History of Tunks special for Dragon Ball Z. You see all the previous heroes you came to know and love fail to defeat the Androids and die. You see the Androids themselves kill everyone for shits and giggles with no restraint or remorse. You see the desolate, despairing hellscape the world is in. You see Trunks interact with Bulma and Gohan. You see Trunks become close to Gohan as his mentor. You see Gohan's last stand against the Androids. You see how Trunks responds to the death of his mentor with anguish and turmoil. You see Trunks try again to fight the Androids on his own, and utterly fail. You don't need to be told the lore of the world or the nature of fire or anything. You just know for a fact that the world before used to be better until a tragedy hit, that the world right now is one where all good things shrivel and rot, and that things are so bad, chaotic and hopeless for everyone that the only way to save the world is to prevent it from existing at all. Clairen is way better off than Trunks was, and that's what annoys me the most.
3:59 Worst fuckin' part? This moment, The sole possible villainous act by Loxodont? Might not have even been him. We see later that Ronno, That moth arsonist that was part of the workshop pack, Sometimes blows up the camps, So the only possible evil thing Loxodont might have done? Might not have even been him.
Some characters’ story arc is external and not internal. Not giving in to the pressure to change because one is on the right path IS a heroic path which is a good story. Aside from the questionable commentary on men, Captain Marvel was criticized for this but I don’t think it is a good criticism. Sometimes the story just is choosing not to change your values or your course.
Now that we’re getting a true story mode in rivals 2, I’m hoping the team took the constructive criticism from this video It would be nice to have them really consider high quality story telling since it’ll be their casual market ace if they do it well
Feels like it may be better if it's a story about someone that doesn't know when to quit then basically loses everything because they are too stoneheaded, unusual and not normal story telling but there could be something done with such characters.
Loxodon is the bad guy because of how he governs. His command and rule negatively affects the life of others. Didn't you think that he may have destroyed the Aetherian Forest, along with its inhabitants in his goal to expand? And Clairen had no reason to learn a lesson, cause there was none. She despaired because after all she's done, she has failed. But now she has a second chance. By the way, trying to compare the story with something isn't a good thing. With the movie Eragon, it took many things of the Star Wars movie... and it got canceled because of that so there was no trilogy. That's no matter what you say, the story is fine this way. Otherwise it may get cancelled like the Eragon movie.
I like Stephan too. But something happened in his Twitter account, there was some racism accusations, and thus the cancel culture acted. RoA said they wont count with him anymore. I guess that Adam wants to support Stephan, they are friends after all, but he has not too much to do.
im straight up a year late so this is prob unnecessary, but he was exposed to be a MASSIVE white supremacist who was getting equal rights protestors arrested and signal boosting multiple extreme hate groups. he was just like straight up doing despicable shit, if youre still looking for more info i could prob dig up the receipts
"This review will have lots of spoilers so please buy the comic then watch this video"
Hah! That warning won't stop me I can't read!
not like that matters with all the pages without dialogue
You KNOW he's the bad guy because Clairen is always crying!
If she had Tiktok she could have gotten the world to side with her and take him down; No time travel needed! 🥴
I truly appreciate the Star Wars comparisons because it's exactly what came to mind when I was thinking of the story's short comings.
I really do think Elliana has the overall best lore with the entire cast because of how they portray her journey and everyone around her. That's probably why she ended up my favorite character out of the current roster.
Hope you've been good Adam it's been a minute
What's that icon you got?
I really hope your bold way of saying that you didn't like the comic doesn't upset the team too much.
Having someone who doesn't like your story nearby has proven to be useful to get a different perspective, or to maybe consider to give things a bit more thought, at least for me.
We have to give the creators the credit for not calling it "Tails of the Aether"
We can't give furries too much bait (ironic statement but...)
I will say, they managed to tell a good story in Elliana's trailer. It was a good underdog story with good humor and a nice twist. And! It did it in a short time while not actually ending the story. Real good job there.
Would honestly watch/read/play something with Elliana as the protag fighting the Air Armada.
Tho I think it was a good choice going for Clairen as well. I feel like she's a fan fav and debatably has a better setting she's in. Plus her design is great. I feel like her setup both story wise and with general stuff I've mentioned is good. Too bad you didn't like the comic. Maybe I will idk.
I think a more interesting plotline rather than a random vision is that clairen actually buys into the propoganda and believes loxodont is a good guy and her mother is in prison for committing what clairen believes was an actual crime. So now we have a young girl in the militia, who is resentful of her mother who maybe hurt her chances of getting into the militia in the first place. Clairen rises up the ranks and throughout her missions she finds her self struggling to justify the things that she's done because while she wants to believe loxodont, the illusion is falling apart. She ignores this and continues until she is a royal guard and then that's when she discovers that loxodont is not a good guy, but she's been loyal this long so why not ? Then she finally gets a chance to speak to her mother who's serving a life sentence. Her mother then convinces her that loxodont is actually the cause of renburn's death and forsburns banishment and clairen finally puts all the pieces together. Other guards, maybe higher ranked, then walk in on her realizig this while having a conversation with her mother which she maybe wasn't supposed to do under any circumstances. They throw clairen in prison and then the bunny offers her a way to change the past, maybe the bunny could be shown in the background of when clairen gets caught and clairen could have briefly introduced to her when she gets her plasma sword. Then everything else plays out as normal, they escape and clairen goes back in time.
I feel like the comics were structured like trailers. They skipped over a couple of important storytelling beats in order to deliver the most exciting parts. At each important turning point in the plot, the story opted to present the turning point as a development in and of itself, rather than presenting any buildup and/or consequences as development.
That episode with Mr. Data is one of my favorites.
The run probably should've been 10 issues or something. I know money is a major concern, but everything went way too fast. It didn't matter that she betrayed her squad because we never got to know anything about them. It didn't matter that she gave up her family because we saw them for like four pages. Nothing had an impact because it was there and gone in a flash of lightning.
I liked the comics well enough. What little they had involved some great art and strong character emotions. But my God did it go too fast.
"Rivals Fans" call them what they are Adam; Furries.
You still live in stone age bruh
@@franilovic4139 well I'm a rivals fan and a furry but idk what your point is
@@ListlessWither well back when rivals came out everyone was saying its a furry game now i know a lot of people who are not furries and play rivals. And im one of them. Just saying that over time the game wasnt viewed as a 100% furry game.
@@franilovic4139 I know lol, I was making a joke.
Adam: Clairen starts on a quest to kill Loxodont and ends on a quest to kill Loxodont
Also Adam: starts talking about the upmost respect for Ian Flynn and the Tales of Aether team and finishes the video by talking about the upmost respect for Ian Flynn and the Tales of Aether team
Adam is back to talk about comics again and I couldn't be happier
I've been working on a Rivals movie adaptation, and I was thinking of using the whole comic series for the second act, and making the third act Loxodont's last stand like Avengers: Endgame.
Nice to see you’re back Adam!
"Babe wake up, new Adam carra video dropped"
Man, your videos are always so well made. Nice work as always Adam!
I'm actually super glad you went in on this and weren't afraid to mince words about your feelings on Tales of Aether. I think you handled this about as well as one could, given the precarious line you walk between Aether Studios and jsut being a UA-cam guy.
I actually have someone I know that Tales of Aether is their introduction to RoA because they're a fan of Ian Flynn's work more than anything else, and were kinda surprised when I started talking about how this is a whole ass trans-media franchise with a Platform Fighter as it's core piece of media. I honestly kinda wanted to ask her about what she thought about Clarien and Loxodont given her lack of perspective on the rest of what Aether is, and that will be fascinating to go over Vs. your thoughts or my own.
Yeah I was thinking peeps might get this just for Ian Flynn. He's well known and honored in the Sonic community for his work with blue boys comics. Glad to see with this and the new Sonic game people keep trying to use him recently.
The art is fantastic but she crying every page with just flat out rivers from her eyes
Where you been dawg
I'm gonna watch it at some point but I'm leaving a comment to support while I go read the comics. :)
the return of the king
Wait, Mollo's in it? He's canon? What?
Yes he is canon. He’s also going to be put in the official game sometime in February along side Hodan, Pomme, and Olympia.
Real Talk the whole comic felt like 'oh this and that was kinda true', y'know, just expanding a little issue by issue, not really telling a story if anything because it misses the point by skipping over important details that make sense(explained well enough in this video, so mass kudos because damn, re-reading it definitely hits like the story mode of RoA).
The only positive i have is probably just putting two and two with some concepts (Ayala being the one to make Loxodont the endless emperor, Elliana succeeding in the Air Armada's destruction perhaps making Loxo catch eye of Ayala's engineering, Mollo being much more knowledgable of the old Fire Empire, etc.) but besides that the story is pretty neutral, if not very muted to fit the character trailer which... that's not how it works but i haven't done enough comics to say that with certainty LOL
It's like a 5/10. Well worth for the lore if you've dug deep into it, but if you're reading casually... good luck. Not boring but undercooked.
Along with all these issues, I also just think it's really weird and poorly thought-out in a couple ways.
First of all, Clairen becomes best friends with her squad. Remember that this is an organization working for the man she hates and is trying to kill, the evil organization she's infiltrating and joining under false pretenses to complete her mission of assassinating Loxodont. Why is she best friends with the people who joined completely legitimately just to be evil future cops? These are the sort of people who would've carried out the bombing of her home in the first issue under Loxodont's orders. It makes no sense for her to be besties with them, and we lose a lot of potential for drama and some tension that isn't just plain action for it. Imagine how much more interesting her story would be if she was terrified of these people because she knew the moment they learned of her true intentions, they'd turn her in, that the people who she works with day and night who may even see her as a friend are huge threats to her life and her mission and she has to deal with that knowledge while working her way up the ranks.
Secondly, Ayala. The comic did her no favors. From what we've seen of her in other media, she's an upstanding but practical person who does her best to make things right with what she has and generally doesn't put up with people who are irrational or cruel. In Tales of Aether, she's clearly meant to have the same mindset with how she helps Clairen escape to the past, but she's literally the one keeping Loxodont alive. She says herself that he needs her maintaining him, and we're never given any reason for her not to just stop doing that. Even if there were a reason, she then breaks Clairen out and sends her to the past, which is absurdly risky and dangerous in comparison to just sabotaging Loxodont's systems to kill him herself. It almost doesn't even work!
The story isn't well-thought out at all, and when you apply some thought to how the characters act, it makes Clairen look like a bootlicker and Ayala look like a reckless idiot.
I imagine that, if they do end up making more comics, they'll have an arc with Clairen's team coming to the past to stop her
The way they were set up, I'm thinking just Burnette.
I've been meaning to buy the comic and I still will. Nice video!
Orcane's eyes are throwing me off, that can't just be me right?
Yeah, so, I know this is two years old, going on three, but as someone who used to be a fan of Ian Flynn's work and is now… not, I have a bit of a story to tell. I already knew about Rivals of Aether and was interested in some of its world and music, had already played through Lovers of Aether, and I bought each individual issue of the Tales of Aether comic with my own money. Before all this, I figured, "Hey, they talk about all these mandates preventing Ian from making good Sonic stories, so maybe I should check out something non-Sonic that he did! Who knows? Maybe it'll be better!"
And then I read it, and realized… this comic has, word-for-word, the exact same issues that Flynn's work on Sonic has: telling over showing, characters being vehicles for the plot, no real narrative themes being established, and empty calories overall. The so-called mandates are nowhere near as oppressive as people would have you believe. I think this very comic is actually the spark that led to me shifting from a Flynn shill to a Flynn skeptic, just ahead of Frontiers coming out and fans increasingly beginning to realize he's not the perfect writer they said he was.
There are so many things I could say about how hollow Tales of Aether is, but my main complaint is its telling-over-showing habit: we're never at all shown who Clairen is as an individual with agency, nor is her dynamic with other characters fully established. I don't feel sad for her when her mother dies; I just know that it's what pushes her into the plot and gives her a bare-minimum excuse to want to kill Loxodont. And yet, despite how we're meant to believe that her love for her family is what pushes her to do what she does, she doesn't consider the possibility of Marty McFly-ing herself and everyone she cares about out of existence through time-traveling. Hell, we aren't even shown how bad Loxodont's rule is for Aether aside from just "people live on reservations and pay taxes now", and Clairen being unable to defeat him in combat alone can't warrant the need to use time-travel to defeat him.
While you used Star Wars as a good comparison, I think I'll go with something else- the History of Tunks special for Dragon Ball Z. You see all the previous heroes you came to know and love fail to defeat the Androids and die. You see the Androids themselves kill everyone for shits and giggles with no restraint or remorse. You see the desolate, despairing hellscape the world is in. You see Trunks interact with Bulma and Gohan. You see Trunks become close to Gohan as his mentor. You see Gohan's last stand against the Androids. You see how Trunks responds to the death of his mentor with anguish and turmoil. You see Trunks try again to fight the Androids on his own, and utterly fail.
You don't need to be told the lore of the world or the nature of fire or anything. You just know for a fact that the world before used to be better until a tragedy hit, that the world right now is one where all good things shrivel and rot, and that things are so bad, chaotic and hopeless for everyone that the only way to save the world is to prevent it from existing at all. Clairen is way better off than Trunks was, and that's what annoys me the most.
Yo kinda messed up you spoil star wars like that without warning
The movie came out in 1977
@@AdamCarra Yeah I know I was making a dumbass joke
The instant I heard “Ian Flynn” I nearly died of shock
I haven’t read the comics yet but that doesn’t mean I’m not watching the video
How’s Dinock doing
Dinock is almost done sorta
:o
I can’t find people to play against online on the switch
you would be so popular if your channel was about something else, not that I'm complaining cuz I love your rivals content
3:59 Worst fuckin' part? This moment, The sole possible villainous act by Loxodont? Might not have even been him.
We see later that Ronno, That moth arsonist that was part of the workshop pack, Sometimes blows up the camps, So the only possible evil thing Loxodont might have done? Might not have even been him.
new vid thank u adam
Hope you can eventually watch the workshop 2prints
Some characters’ story arc is external and not internal. Not giving in to the pressure to change because one is on the right path IS a heroic path which is a good story. Aside from the questionable commentary on men, Captain Marvel was criticized for this but I don’t think it is a good criticism. Sometimes the story just is choosing not to change your values or your course.
Just want loxodon dlc
you should read ian Flynn megaman runs its cazy good.. and sad and deep
you tell me to go read the comic and buy stuff before watching the video, but you dont put where on the description
Sorry, here's the link for you lmgtfy.app/?q=Tales+of+Aether
@@AdamCarra pin it
@@Espurna01 you should click on that link first
@@AdamCarra bruh :\
@@AdamCarra that's cool
Now that we’re getting a true story mode in rivals 2, I’m hoping the team took the constructive criticism from this video
It would be nice to have them really consider high quality story telling since it’ll be their casual market ace if they do it well
I finally read the comic and yeah, ia pretty shallow. Like, just the review trailer plot and some extra of before that
Feels like it may be better if it's a story about someone that doesn't know when to quit then basically loses everything because they are too stoneheaded, unusual and not normal story telling but there could be something done with such characters.
I really love the world of Aether.
Yeah I didn't read it but I know you're really passionate about comics so this was cool to watch regardless.
Loxodon is the bad guy because of how he governs. His command and rule negatively affects the life of others. Didn't you think that he may have destroyed the Aetherian Forest, along with its inhabitants in his goal to expand? And Clairen had no reason to learn a lesson, cause there was none. She despaired because after all she's done, she has failed. But now she has a second chance. By the way, trying to compare the story with something isn't a good thing. With the movie Eragon, it took many things of the Star Wars movie... and it got canceled because of that so there was no trilogy. That's no matter what you say, the story is fine this way. Otherwise it may get cancelled like the Eragon movie.
You should review The Batman, take down Warner Studios
Tales of Aether was a greatest comic, I can't wait to do a comic dub
Awesome! I'd love to see that if you upload it!
Really? cool cant wait either XD
Did... Are you still doing it or
Adam we miss you show your face
I mean, the Story Mode is the worst part of Aether.
Even though I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.
I'll call it a guilty pleasure and call it a day.
Surprised you didn’t have stefan join you like in the rivals story mode video.
I like Stephan too. But something happened in his Twitter account, there was some racism accusations, and thus the cancel culture acted. RoA said they wont count with him anymore. I guess that Adam wants to support Stephan, they are friends after all, but he has not too much to do.
hes a nazi
@@misterfevillord1588 i know I'm two months late, but what happened?
im straight up a year late so this is prob unnecessary, but he was exposed to be a MASSIVE white supremacist who was getting equal rights protestors arrested and signal boosting multiple extreme hate groups. he was just like straight up doing despicable shit, if youre still looking for more info i could prob dig up the receipts
Sick time to pirat- I mean buy this comic...ya...ya
Cool
Meh
Meh