The biggest tragedy of this OVA is that the first exposure to Estelle most people have is her being an idiot and getting kicked by Walter since it's become an internet meme.
Funny that you say that's a tragedy, because...i gave up on the first game, exactly because that was the impression i got from Estelle quite far past the beginning... Like..."why i'm playing with that idiot?"
Ironically the most popular video on the Trails In The Sky OVA is a Fire Emblem meme. It’s by Excellblem it’s called “POV: You Have Vantage” it’s the part where Walter kicks Estelle. This is not the only weird Fire Emblem and Trails connection. There is a Fire Emblem fan game called The Last Promise that uses Silver Will (in the GBA soundfont) for the final boss theme. It also has a voice line “This Divine Lightning Shall Pierce The Skies” this is why you may see this comment on Silver Will videos to this day.
Funny thing is, this is the BEST Trails animated series (unless I'm forgetting a media). Northern War flopped so hard sadly, so I don't recommend watching it. I heavily recommend avoiding it, but if you wanna watch it (to your own risks), do it at least after Cold Steel 3 (even if it happens before CS3).
@@weaponscichoosing between the gacha and anime is like choosing choosing between the plague or the cholera. The game is comically bad in every way, especially with all the translations errors, though I don't recommend taking a look since at least CS4 with all the spoilers it has; the anime in comparison is just boring, I think it has the opposite problem of the OVA: they dragged out the events for too long and had to rely on fanservice to keep the interest up, which kinda ruined things for the actual main characters in the show; ironically, THIS should've been the one to get an OVA instead of an anime.
Originally Zin was going to be involved in the final fight scene against Loewe at Axis pillar which you can see in the promotional video (ua-cam.com/video/EUYgjabz1I4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=omgfloofy) but the whole thing seemed scrapped. Zin truelly gets screwed over in every way possible, doesn't get a spotlight in the memory doors in 3rd, cut out of all three Evo OPs, barely present in the anime, like damn.
@@weaponsci There is also Grant (the red haired bracer in the second bracer team in Sky) who seems to get forgotten as well, they even had a joke about it in the Falcom Academy anime (episode 11 to be specific) 😭
Congratulations on reaching 5,000 subscribers! Whoa! Thanks for the shoutout man. I'm glad I was able to inspire you to do a review without a script. It turned out really good! This ova was a huge missed opportunity. It would have been so much better as a multi season anime covering the entire Trails series instead.
I think they should've just done FC instead since it's shorter, the plot is simpler, and it would be far less spoilerific for a newer fan who hadn't heard of trails before and happened across that anime.
I really like how the anime looks, but like you said, it's in that weird spot where it's just different enough from the real thing that if feels weird to fans, but it's also not good enough to entice people that don't known Trails to watch it. But again, at least I do like how it looks 😊. Helps to visualise some of the Sky areas.
Yeah, thanks, that's a better version of how I tried to put it. It doesn't appeal to established fans because it's so different and skips a lot of important stuff, but newcomers won't really dig it either since they won't understand what's going on or why most of the characters are acting as they do. It appeals to basically no one.
I finished FC and SC before I learned that the OVA existed. Immediately as the opening narration began and I saw how the anime designs for Estelle and Joshua looked I immediately knew that I should keep my expectations incredibly low.
I watched it expecting it to be terrible and I thought it was ok. My biggest problem is that it just ended. There are a few clips online of a few cut scenes and one of them takes place on the Liber Ark so its a shame they didn't finish it all
This OVA reminds me a lot of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky anime special they did to coincide with the game's release back in 2009. Where it kind of tells an abridged version of some of the game's events. (Though in this case they only had 20 minutes). And in that too, they basically show some pretty late game spoilers. it was basically an anime adaption of Chapter 19 of Explorers of Sky and the game's main story is only 20 chapters long). For both of these, I think its neat that they exist, but Its also like who is this made for? If its meant to promote the game why have it spoil some very late game plot events and if its for fans of the game, the game has more run time and as a result tells the story way better.
Honestly, a complete adaptation of the sky trilogy on this style wouldn't have been that bad. Sure, it's not the same plot of the game, but on the other hand it would have been a fun ride on its own. Just give the team enough episodes to do so (so about 7 double length ones, I'd say) Mind you, I prefer creative adaptations over faithful ones (assuming they are well done), because those at least give you something new.
yeah I kinda agree with you, the script and the story that cut is quite bit mess. but compare to Northern war the newest anime. maybe this Ova still worth to watch for trails fans, at least they finish sky fc and sky sc to not get spoiled.
Imagine having a game series renowned for its deep and intricate story lines and then the anime cheaps out on the writing... Osborne has laid waste to whole nations for lesser insults!
@@trullikoi Yes it's really bad. The only "good" episode is the first and maybe second episode since you get to see North Ambria, but everything after that is just filler. Literally nothing happens through all 12 episodes, it overrelies on fans recognising references to the CS games while failing to develop the new cast.
@@trullikoi easily the worst part of it is how it ends. CS3 Rean seems to suffer from some sort of "ptsd" from his experience in the northern war, and the anime elaborates this by.... not having Rean suffer anything that would warrant that behavior???
I remember when the Northern War anime was announced and one of the first things people said was "it can't be worse than the Sky ova" and then it proceeded to be worse than the Sky ova.
As someone who did play the games before watching the anime, it was a trip and a half. P.S: When I saw the title, at first I thought you were going to dub the anime yourself with no script and poorly on purpose.
This animation is fun, but I really wish it was 'more'. Like, it doesn't look terrible, it is just paced like garbage and cuts basically 90% of the game. Shame I have heard nothing but crap about the CS anime, but at least we got a few legendary gifworthy moments out of this OVA.
@@weaponsci Definitely read the manga. The general consensus is that bad pacing ruins the anime. For example, one episode will equate to about 1-3 chapters which are each 20 pages. In the later seasons especially scenes are stretched out and one episode may not even cover a full chapter. Although manga is a lot less popular than anime, i think you'll find you'll save time and enjoy one piece more if you read it! And yes it's pretty good :]
Yeah. I remember when I watched this OVA and I was kinda like "wtf did I just watch ?". As you said there are some good points, but seeing how they butchered the story to make it remotely fit into this OVA kinda hurt me. It still does. Sadly Falcom suffers from terrible adaptation curse. HOWEVER. I recommend Minna Atsumare Falcom Gakuen. It's the Falcom Isekai Quartet and it's only small 3 minute long episodes and I think it was actually quite funny. It even managed to make me laugh out loud once even though it hardly ever happens to me. So it could be something you may enjoy watching.
Personally I didnt like this animation at all(though I do agree it looks nice for its time) but it got us THE GIF so it was all worth it. And I can always go back to pretending it doesnt exist. In general I am not a big fan of adapting video games like this. The other anime(Northen war) is bad too but at least they did something thats not in the game and in my book that made it more worthy than this. This one to me is doomed from the start, you have to change things for adaptation and you will never be able to capture why people love trails in the sky. There are some things about video game that cant be conveyed through the movie.
Yeah I don't really think anime adaptations work too well with trails. At least not without making it obnoxiously long and almost as daunting as the games themselves. And I don't think they'd commit to that long term. Even if they did one season per game (so 3 seasons of Sky, 2 of Crossbell, 5 seasons for Cold Steel/Reverie, etc.) that's still a lot, and we're still talking bare minimum here.
Yeah, uh, I didn't watch this. And I will not do it anyway. I am too busy playing the games. Currently on my Azure replay. Watched TKNs video about the Cold Steel anime and am glad he watched it for me. Why does Trails just get these bad anime? Like, not terrible, but they do not really contribute anything to the overall story. I am cooking food right now. I hope my laptop arrives tomorrow. I want to watch Summer game fest with my new all boys club. It does feel funny to be the only girl around in these parts. But I do like the old 2D battle animations. The story fights were goated. Julia vs Cassius, I believe, was lit as heck. I really enjoyed those old graphics. They just have a certain charm to them. Like the old 3D Zelda games. Darunia without his pixel polygons just looks wrong to me somehow.
Congrats on reaching 5k, you're moving up in the world . though of all the things for you to talk about, I certainly wasn't expecting the Sky OVA. Where to start on this........ Oh yeah, adapting a video game into an anime, especially a JRPG, is already a tremendous task because you need to fit an 60-100 hours game into 13-26 episodes; so for Trails, who heavily relies on world-building to set itself apart from the others, to be adapted not into an anime, but into an OVA of 1h20........it was doomed to fail from the start, that's exactly the series where you SHOULDN'T do that, that leads to them cutting A LOT of stuffs, be it entire events or scenes making us care about the characters. - First off, I don't think I need to explain why adapting SC first is really dumb, that's like adapting the two towers before the fellowship of the ring (and that's not adding the ending of FC that will help things up); but the OVA is not even covering ALL of SC, just the end of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, 4, and the second part of 6; there's a whole half of the game missing, including both the beginning and the ending, so the characters aren't even introduced at all, and some are even missing entirely; Kevin for exemple, but that's because all the moments where he shines the most in the game were cut out of the OVA; Zin is reduced to a cameo in chapter 2 where he doesn't even play a part in the events when Walter is literally related to him; and while I know he wasn't present a lot in the first half, Weissman is still really important in the story, he's the main antagonist ffs, so for him to not appear anywhere, even on the Glorious where even Campanella made an appearance is just LOL. - So yeah, the whole thing is rushed and doesn't work at all, that said the other choices of adaptation aren't bad ones.....let me explain which ones first ok ?😅 In an adaptation, there's obviously going to be a moment where they have to cut some stuffs, because that's what an adaptation is: they're ADAPTING to a new media, so stuff needs to change a bit; what's important is WHAT they are changing and what is cut to gain time, and here they kinda butchered the story by removing half the game but I'll talk about the minor changes, like the ones they use to raise stakes; for exemple the Centaur robot of Chapter 1; like you said, in the game, Bleublanc released it under the old schoolhouse, here, they moved the fight in front of it, which help creating better fight scenes (which are kinda good ngl); since they're not adapting Chapter 3, they crammed Renne into Chapter 2 and turned the whole earthquake investigation into a whole Guild operation (and they made Estelle witness Walter herself instead of learning about him via hearsay) which was kinda cool, though there's not enough for Renne's betrayal to have any impact since we barely knew her, and while the whole fight with Walter was really cool (though instead of Joshua coming to rescue the party, Zin should've been the one to do so), it was really long compared to the rest of the OVA, seriously, the whole Zeiss sequence takes 25 minutes by himself, while the other chapters (except the climax) combined have 15 minutes at best, I don't know why they decided to focus on this chapter in particular, especially since ot's not even the most interesting one; in Chapter 4, they raised the stakes by making everyone in the town unconscious due to the mist instead of a few people, good change, and making Schera confront Luciola while the rest have their dream sequences, compared to the game where it seemed like she was trying to wake them up until Estelle did and Luciola make her appearance; They reused the fake Joshua letter sent by Renne in Chapter 3 in order to lure Estelle to the Esmelas tower and the fake Joshia doll and terrifying dream of Chapter 6, and since they're not adapting the first half of Chapter 6 with the whole base inflitration, since they decided to destroy it after Joshua raided it with the Sky Bandit.....oups, I forgot that part, yeah that happened, and it's kinda worse than in the game since they showed the Glorious early on, which diminish the scene after where Estelle discover it alongide us....because we already saw it; But yeah, since they didn't adapt the secret base iniltration OR Weissman, how are they going to justify kidnapping Estelle and taking her on the Glorious ? Well, because Renne felt like it and did that on her own, and while that's in character for her, I feel like the game did it better by making it intentional in order to counter Joshua's attempt at destroying the Glorious; and the whole Glorious segment was....ok, they adapted it in order for it to feel more like a climax with the duel Joshua vs Loewe, while cramming a bit of Renne's characterization that would be normally reserved for her boss fights in Chaprer 7 and the finale, while keeping events that happened in the game like the conversation with Renne upon waking up and the one with Loewe regarding Hamel (which was great honestly), though we don't see the scene with all the enforcers since, once again, Weissman isn't in the OVA, and they flat out admited to her that they don't want her to join; and the climax just feel bland........well yes stupid, the glorious scene it wasn't made to be a climax, the issues aren't even resolved and the goal isn't even mentionned (I din't think they even mentionned the Aureole ONCE in all the OVA). So the plot of the OVA was basically: an organization are doing experiments all over liberl and the heroes must stop them......that's it, and even that isn't even resolved because they escape and it ends without them able to destroy it, even for a vanilla ice cream plot they weren't able to solve it. - I think I talked enough about this: the main problem of this OVA is obvious: by cutting so much of the story, they shot themselves in the foot with the plot and characters and are struggling to make sense of everything, which they can't; that's why there's no way you can recommend watching this to someone discovering the Trails series, it would do a great disservice to it; for people like us however, who are quite familiar with the source material, this OVA is a curiosity that can be enjoyed for the reason I listed above: to see the things they cutted (and hallucinate over that), the changes they made(which as I said, some are good for an anime adaptation, like actually showing firsthand the Hamel Massacre), and the animations and fight scenes that are probably the biggest pros of this OVA (Joshua v Walter and Joshua v Loewe are great). The worst is that if they didn't made the choice of making it a OVA, and instead a 13 episodes anime like they did for Northern war, it probably wouldn't have been good either, but they would have been able to enter all the events of Sky SC into it (or do a 26 episodes one encompassing both FC and SC) instead of doing whatever that was.
Yeah this was a mess, and you encapsulated pretty much everything I said in the video and responding to comments quite well. The fight scenes were good and fun to watch. Some scenes like Hamel, or Estelle's dream were made better due to the format. They cut way too much, especially for Trails, a series that relies on smaller details culminating into bigger things later down the line. It pleases no one, since it's too deviant from the source material for fans who already played the game, yet it doesn't stop and explain things for newcomers either.
The biggest tragedy of this OVA is that the first exposure to Estelle most people have is her being an idiot and getting kicked by Walter since it's become an internet meme.
Yeah, but that scene is the best thing to come out of the ova
I laugh so hard at that clip every single time. It's so funny
Funny that you say that's a tragedy, because...i gave up on the first game, exactly because that was the impression i got from Estelle quite far past the beginning... Like..."why i'm playing with that idiot?"
@@serphence8566 Estelle is much more than that, even straight up at the beginning.
on the orbment stuff while not shown in the game when you read Carnelia "Toby" has a pretty good explaination about how its used
Ironically the most popular video on the Trails In The Sky OVA is a Fire Emblem meme. It’s by Excellblem it’s called “POV: You Have Vantage” it’s the part where Walter kicks Estelle. This is not the only weird Fire Emblem and Trails connection. There is a Fire Emblem fan game called The Last Promise that uses Silver Will (in the GBA soundfont) for the final boss theme. It also has a voice line “This Divine Lightning Shall Pierce The Skies” this is why you may see this comment on Silver Will videos to this day.
You can really tell this was released and dubbed before XSeed's localisation. "Legion No. VIII of Organisation: Walter the Mangy Wolf" indeed.
Funny thing is, this is the BEST Trails animated series (unless I'm forgetting a media). Northern War flopped so hard sadly, so I don't recommend watching it. I heavily recommend avoiding it, but if you wanna watch it (to your own risks), do it at least after Cold Steel 3 (even if it happens before CS3).
Between that and the mobile game, anything related to northern war just seems like a guaranteed L
@@weaponscichoosing between the gacha and anime is like choosing choosing between the plague or the cholera. The game is comically bad in every way, especially with all the translations errors, though I don't recommend taking a look since at least CS4 with all the spoilers it has; the anime in comparison is just boring, I think it has the opposite problem of the OVA: they dragged out the events for too long and had to rely on fanservice to keep the interest up, which kinda ruined things for the actual main characters in the show; ironically, THIS should've been the one to get an OVA instead of an anime.
Originally Zin was going to be involved in the final fight scene against Loewe at Axis pillar which you can see in the promotional video (ua-cam.com/video/EUYgjabz1I4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=omgfloofy) but the whole thing seemed scrapped.
Zin truelly gets screwed over in every way possible, doesn't get a spotlight in the memory doors in 3rd, cut out of all three Evo OPs, barely present in the anime, like damn.
You know "absent Kevin" kinda became a meme amongst trails fans, but it really seems like Zin got it way worse when you put it that way lol.
@@weaponsci There is also Grant (the red haired bracer in the second bracer team in Sky) who seems to get forgotten as well, they even had a joke about it in the Falcom Academy anime (episode 11 to be specific) 😭
Congratulations on reaching 5,000 subscribers!
Whoa! Thanks for the shoutout man. I'm glad I was able to inspire you to do a review without a script. It turned out really good!
This ova was a huge missed opportunity. It would have been so much better as a multi season anime covering the entire Trails series instead.
I think they should've just done FC instead since it's shorter, the plot is simpler, and it would be far less spoilerific for a newer fan who hadn't heard of trails before and happened across that anime.
I really like how the anime looks, but like you said, it's in that weird spot where it's just different enough from the real thing that if feels weird to fans, but it's also not good enough to entice people that don't known Trails to watch it. But again, at least I do like how it looks 😊. Helps to visualise some of the Sky areas.
Yeah, thanks, that's a better version of how I tried to put it. It doesn't appeal to established fans because it's so different and skips a lot of important stuff, but newcomers won't really dig it either since they won't understand what's going on or why most of the characters are acting as they do. It appeals to basically no one.
I finished FC and SC before I learned that the OVA existed.
Immediately as the opening narration began and I saw how the anime designs for Estelle and Joshua looked I immediately knew that I should keep my expectations incredibly low.
I watched it expecting it to be terrible and I thought it was ok. My biggest problem is that it just ended. There are a few clips online of a few cut scenes and one of them takes place on the Liber Ark so its a shame they didn't finish it all
I can't wait for you review the cold steel musical!!!!
Congrats on the 5k! I watched this anime around the time I was playing FC and SC (hadn't finished it yet at that point)
Thanks. Yeah it's not AS horrible if you're watching it as its own thing on the side
Congratulations!!
Thanks!
This OVA reminds me a lot of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky anime special they did to coincide with the game's release back in 2009. Where it kind of tells an abridged version of some of the game's events. (Though in this case they only had 20 minutes). And in that too, they basically show some pretty late game spoilers. it was basically an anime adaption of Chapter 19 of Explorers of Sky and the game's main story is only 20 chapters long).
For both of these, I think its neat that they exist, but Its also like who is this made for? If its meant to promote the game why have it spoil some very late game plot events and if its for fans of the game, the game has more run time and as a result tells the story way better.
Honestly, a complete adaptation of the sky trilogy on this style wouldn't have been that bad. Sure, it's not the same plot of the game, but on the other hand it would have been a fun ride on its own. Just give the team enough episodes to do so (so about 7 double length ones, I'd say)
Mind you, I prefer creative adaptations over faithful ones (assuming they are well done), because those at least give you something new.
You doing Aidios's work! Congratulations with 5K
Thanks!
yeah I kinda agree with you, the script and the story that cut is quite bit mess. but compare to Northern war the newest anime. maybe this Ova still worth to watch for trails fans, at least they finish sky fc and sky sc to not get spoiled.
Imagine having a game series renowned for its deep and intricate story lines and then the anime cheaps out on the writing... Osborne has laid waste to whole nations for lesser insults!
At least the ova is better than the northern war anime
so the Northern War anime is really as bad as I heard? I was gonna watch it for curiosity sake.
@@trullikoi Yes it's really bad. The only "good" episode is the first and maybe second episode since you get to see North Ambria, but everything after that is just filler. Literally nothing happens through all 12 episodes, it overrelies on fans recognising references to the CS games while failing to develop the new cast.
@@trullikoi easily the worst part of it is how it ends. CS3 Rean seems to suffer from some sort of "ptsd" from his experience in the northern war, and the anime elaborates this by.... not having Rean suffer anything that would warrant that behavior???
It's that bad? damn
I remember when the Northern War anime was announced and one of the first things people said was "it can't be worse than the Sky ova" and then it proceeded to be worse than the Sky ova.
why is the video quality so low? I believe dvds had at least 480p resolution
I watched it on UA-cam and screencapped it.
Whoever uploaded it only had up to 360p iirc.
@@weaponsci still this ova seems much better than the abomination called Northern War. Hope you'll check it out sometime)
As someone who did play the games before watching the anime, it was a trip and a half.
P.S: When I saw the title, at first I thought you were going to dub the anime yourself with no script and poorly on purpose.
OMG that's hilarious and probably what I should've done lol. Maybe if they do remake Sky I'll do something like that.
This animation is fun, but I really wish it was 'more'. Like, it doesn't look terrible, it is just paced like garbage and cuts basically 90% of the game. Shame I have heard nothing but crap about the CS anime, but at least we got a few legendary gifworthy moments out of this OVA.
I've heard so much shit about the OVA that I decided to stay clear of it. 😅
I watched it for shits and giggles so maybe that's why my opinion on it was a bit less harsh
Hey just for a head's up try read Red Moon Rose you're it's kinda nice to have it for Cold Steel 3
I'll keep a mental note
Lil bruh, you really need that script
Still better than the Northern War anime
Have you ever read one piece? I think your videos format would work really well with reviewing each arc kinda like arcs in a trails game
I've never actually sat down and watched/read it but you're like the eighth person that's recommended it to me so maybe I'll consider it.
@@weaponsci Definitely read the manga. The general consensus is that bad pacing ruins the anime. For example, one episode will equate to about 1-3 chapters which are each 20 pages. In the later seasons especially scenes are stretched out and one episode may not even cover a full chapter. Although manga is a lot less popular than anime, i think you'll find you'll save time and enjoy one piece more if you read it! And yes it's pretty good :]
Yeah. I remember when I watched this OVA and I was kinda like "wtf did I just watch ?". As you said there are some good points, but seeing how they butchered the story to make it remotely fit into this OVA kinda hurt me. It still does.
Sadly Falcom suffers from terrible adaptation curse.
HOWEVER.
I recommend Minna Atsumare Falcom Gakuen. It's the Falcom Isekai Quartet and it's only small 3 minute long episodes and I think it was actually quite funny. It even managed to make me laugh out loud once even though it hardly ever happens to me. So it could be something you may enjoy watching.
That's the same thing with the ys characters mixed in right?
@@weaponsci Yup !
Personally I didnt like this animation at all(though I do agree it looks nice for its time) but it got us THE GIF so it was all worth it. And I can always go back to pretending it doesnt exist. In general I am not a big fan of adapting video games like this. The other anime(Northen war) is bad too but at least they did something thats not in the game and in my book that made it more worthy than this. This one to me is doomed from the start, you have to change things for adaptation and you will never be able to capture why people love trails in the sky. There are some things about video game that cant be conveyed through the movie.
Yeah I don't really think anime adaptations work too well with trails. At least not without making it obnoxiously long and almost as daunting as the games themselves. And I don't think they'd commit to that long term. Even if they did one season per game (so 3 seasons of Sky, 2 of Crossbell, 5 seasons for Cold Steel/Reverie, etc.) that's still a lot, and we're still talking bare minimum here.
Yeah, uh, I didn't watch this. And I will not do it anyway. I am too busy playing the games. Currently on my Azure replay. Watched TKNs video about the Cold Steel anime and am glad he watched it for me. Why does Trails just get these bad anime? Like, not terrible, but they do not really contribute anything to the overall story. I am cooking food right now. I hope my laptop arrives tomorrow. I want to watch Summer game fest with my new all boys club. It does feel funny to be the only girl around in these parts. But I do like the old 2D battle animations. The story fights were goated. Julia vs Cassius, I believe, was lit as heck. I really enjoyed those old graphics. They just have a certain charm to them. Like the old 3D Zelda games. Darunia without his pixel polygons just looks wrong to me somehow.
They butchered sky sc's amazing story so bad
If you can't fit sky sc do sky fc dammit
I would think FC story would work better as a series then a ova though with the way these games are I do't it could truly work at all
Lol yeah I just said the same thing before scrolling a bit farther and finding your comment.
Congrats on reaching 5k, you're moving up in the world .
though of all the things for you to talk about, I certainly wasn't expecting the Sky OVA.
Where to start on this........ Oh yeah, adapting a video game into an anime, especially a JRPG, is already a tremendous task because you need to fit an 60-100 hours game into 13-26 episodes; so for Trails, who heavily relies on world-building to set itself apart from the others, to be adapted not into an anime, but into an OVA of 1h20........it was doomed to fail from the start, that's exactly the series where you SHOULDN'T do that, that leads to them cutting A LOT of stuffs, be it entire events or scenes making us care about the characters.
- First off, I don't think I need to explain why adapting SC first is really dumb, that's like adapting the two towers before the fellowship of the ring (and that's not adding the ending of FC that will help things up); but the OVA is not even covering ALL of SC, just the end of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, 4, and the second part of 6; there's a whole half of the game missing, including both the beginning and the ending, so the characters aren't even introduced at all, and some are even missing entirely; Kevin for exemple, but that's because all the moments where he shines the most in the game were cut out of the OVA; Zin is reduced to a cameo in chapter 2 where he doesn't even play a part in the events when Walter is literally related to him; and while I know he wasn't present a lot in the first half, Weissman is still really important in the story, he's the main antagonist ffs, so for him to not appear anywhere, even on the Glorious where even Campanella made an appearance is just LOL.
- So yeah, the whole thing is rushed and doesn't work at all, that said the other choices of adaptation aren't bad ones.....let me explain which ones first ok ?😅 In an adaptation, there's obviously going to be a moment where they have to cut some stuffs, because that's what an adaptation is: they're ADAPTING to a new media, so stuff needs to change a bit; what's important is WHAT they are changing and what is cut to gain time, and here they kinda butchered the story by removing half the game but I'll talk about the minor changes, like the ones they use to raise stakes; for exemple the Centaur robot of Chapter 1; like you said, in the game, Bleublanc released it under the old schoolhouse, here, they moved the fight in front of it, which help creating better fight scenes (which are kinda good ngl); since they're not adapting Chapter 3, they crammed Renne into Chapter 2 and turned the whole earthquake investigation into a whole Guild operation (and they made Estelle witness Walter herself instead of learning about him via hearsay) which was kinda cool, though there's not enough for Renne's betrayal to have any impact since we barely knew her, and while the whole fight with Walter was really cool (though instead of Joshua coming to rescue the party, Zin should've been the one to do so), it was really long compared to the rest of the OVA, seriously, the whole Zeiss sequence takes 25 minutes by himself, while the other chapters (except the climax) combined have 15 minutes at best, I don't know why they decided to focus on this chapter in particular, especially since ot's not even the most interesting one; in Chapter 4, they raised the stakes by making everyone in the town unconscious due to the mist instead of a few people, good change, and making Schera confront Luciola while the rest have their dream sequences, compared to the game where it seemed like she was trying to wake them up until Estelle did and Luciola make her appearance; They reused the fake Joshua letter sent by Renne in Chapter 3 in order to lure Estelle to the Esmelas tower and the fake Joshia doll and terrifying dream of Chapter 6, and since they're not adapting the first half of Chapter 6 with the whole base inflitration, since they decided to destroy it after Joshua raided it with the Sky Bandit.....oups, I forgot that part, yeah that happened, and it's kinda worse than in the game since they showed the Glorious early on, which diminish the scene after where Estelle discover it alongide us....because we already saw it; But yeah, since they didn't adapt the secret base iniltration OR Weissman, how are they going to justify kidnapping Estelle and taking her on the Glorious ? Well, because Renne felt like it and did that on her own, and while that's in character for her, I feel like the game did it better by making it intentional in order to counter Joshua's attempt at destroying the Glorious; and the whole Glorious segment was....ok, they adapted it in order for it to feel more like a climax with the duel Joshua vs Loewe, while cramming a bit of Renne's characterization that would be normally reserved for her boss fights in Chaprer 7 and the finale, while keeping events that happened in the game like the conversation with Renne upon waking up and the one with Loewe regarding Hamel (which was great honestly), though we don't see the scene with all the enforcers since, once again, Weissman isn't in the OVA, and they flat out admited to her that they don't want her to join; and the climax just feel bland........well yes stupid, the glorious scene it wasn't made to be a climax, the issues aren't even resolved and the goal isn't even mentionned (I din't think they even mentionned the Aureole ONCE in all the OVA). So the plot of the OVA was basically: an organization are doing experiments all over liberl and the heroes must stop them......that's it, and even that isn't even resolved because they escape and it ends without them able to destroy it, even for a vanilla ice cream plot they weren't able to solve it.
- I think I talked enough about this: the main problem of this OVA is obvious: by cutting so much of the story, they shot themselves in the foot with the plot and characters and are struggling to make sense of everything, which they can't; that's why there's no way you can recommend watching this to someone discovering the Trails series, it would do a great disservice to it; for people like us however, who are quite familiar with the source material, this OVA is a curiosity that can be enjoyed for the reason I listed above: to see the things they cutted (and hallucinate over that), the changes they made(which as I said, some are good for an anime adaptation, like actually showing firsthand the Hamel Massacre), and the animations and fight scenes that are probably the biggest pros of this OVA (Joshua v Walter and Joshua v Loewe are great). The worst is that if they didn't made the choice of making it a OVA, and instead a 13 episodes anime like they did for Northern war, it probably wouldn't have been good either, but they would have been able to enter all the events of Sky SC into it (or do a 26 episodes one encompassing both FC and SC) instead of doing whatever that was.
Yeah this was a mess, and you encapsulated pretty much everything I said in the video and responding to comments quite well.
The fight scenes were good and fun to watch. Some scenes like Hamel, or Estelle's dream were made better due to the format.
They cut way too much, especially for Trails, a series that relies on smaller details culminating into bigger things later down the line.
It pleases no one, since it's too deviant from the source material for fans who already played the game, yet it doesn't stop and explain things for newcomers either.