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Alternative TitlesEnglish: Legend of the Crystals: Final Fantasy InformationType:OVA Status: Finished Airing Producers:Square Enix Studios:Madhouse Genres:Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older StatisticsRanked: #7474 22 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Members: 12,461 | Ranked #7474Popularity #3833Members 12,461 Add to List * Your list is public by default.SynopsisA continuation of the events from Final Fantasy V. 200 years after Bartz and his friends saved two worlds from the threat of ExDeath, a threat arises and seeks to take the Crystals for itself. Linaly, a descendant of Bartz, and her friend/protector Prettz journey to the Temple Of Wind to seek the source of this new danger.
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Staff| Ookubo, Tomihiko Director, Key Animation |
| Iso, Mitsuo Special Effects, Key Animation |
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More reviewsReviews 4 of 4 episodes seen MikariStar(All reviews)
24 people found this review helpful |
| Overall | 8 | | Story | 7 | | Animation | 7 | | Sound | 6 | | Character | 8 | | Enjoyment | 8 |
Aside from the references, this anime isn't directly connected to the Final Fantasy V game. It takes place many years after the game, and though it is said that Linaly, the main female character, is a descendant of Bartz, this Bartz could very well be some random legendary hero. There are job classes, though without the particular outfits and there are four crystals as in practically every Final Fantasy. The plot features the quest to protect the wind crystal after the others are stolen by a new enemy, a strange alien with advanced technology whose base is located in the black moon, a natural satellite of planet Gaia.
The story has its fair share of humor and amusing characters especially Pritz and Rogue. The plot is easy to understand even if you haven't played the game, but the references would be lost.
Overall it seems this anime has received more criticism than praise, possibly because people expected a sequel with more connections to the game. But if you look at it as a strand alone Final Fantasy story, it's not bad.
The art and sound are not the best, but to be fair the anime is rather old and has decent art for its time. Despite it not being one of the best anime out there, it's still enjoyable and I recommend watching it with an open mind, being ready to judge it on its own instead of holding it against the game. 4 of 4 episodes seen FullmetalCowboy(All reviews)
12 people found this review helpful |
| Overall | 2 | | Story | 3 | | Animation | 4 | | Sound | 2 | | Character | 3 | | Enjoyment | 2 |
Critic’s Log - Earthdate: November 30, 2013. Review #71: Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals I have played Final Fantasy V before and I didn’t really enjoy that game as much even though many fans of the series thought the fifth installment was a bit underappreciated. What I didn’t like about Final Fantasy V was its story, it just seemed a little disappointing which makes me wonder why there was a continuation of the story in anime form. Which brings me to Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals. 200 years after Bartz and his friends saved two worlds from the threat of Exdeath, a threat arises and seeks to take the Crystals for itself. Linaly, a descendant of Bartz, and her friend/protector Pretz journey to the Temple Of Wind to seek the source of this new imminent threat.
To be technical, this is a Studio Madhouse production which means this OVA has high production values, right? Fuck no! The animation looks lackluster and disappointing. But to give the OVA some credit, some of the designs are actually okay. except for the Chocobo design. It looks nothing from the game and the Chocobo in this OVA is pink…FUCKING PINK!!! To be fair, there were colored chocobos in some games, but the only one in this OVA was a fucking pink Chocobo. A normal Chocobo is yellow and THEY COULDN’T STAY TRUE TO THAT. did Rintaro and the staff of this OVA ever do THEIR RESEARCH! The animation looks bad at times and some of the backgrounds make this OVA look uninspired. At least some of the visuals are decent. But the animation is mostly a mess. And this OVA even has a few panty shots which I swear wasn’t needed at all. This is one of the few failures by Madhouse but their resume still holds strong today.The music by Masahiko Sato may not be all that great, but at least there were a few cues to some themes from Final Fantasy V which was originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But this soundtrack really isn’t all that noteworthy and it is pretty generic. and this is unfortunate because Masahiko Sato is best known for the music in the anime film Grave of the Fireflies which complimented that movie well. Masahiko Sato has not done much music compositions in his career but I really don’t know why he was picked to do the music in this OVA, it’s not listenable outside the show but at least the music’s not done by some amatuer. When voice acting is concerned, the Subtitled Version is not superbly casted. Rica Matsumoto was a decent choice for Prettz, but it will take a little getting used to if you’re watching this Subbed because the voice is a bit annoying. Yuko Minaguchi is a fitting voice for Linaly but the performance is only decent. The same goes to Shigeru Chiba as Valkus and Fumi Hirano as Rouge. The casting is pretty much decent. Now there does exist an English Dub but since it’s one of those “Old Dubs”, I had to prepare for really bad dubbing… So I gave the dub a try and… the dub is terrible. Matt Miller was way too old to play Prettz since he looks like a 13 year old. Sherry Lynn sounds off as Linaly. John Demita is cheesy as Valkus and Kate T. Vogt is not all that great as Rouge. Jack Fletcher has done the ADR direction for some of Miyazaki’s movies such as Kiki’s Delivery Service (until it was re-dubbed) and even Princess Mononoke. This is one of the worst ADR directions that he has made in his career and he’s not really a well-regarded ADR director. Stick with the Subtitled Version on this one even though both versions don’t really stand out.The characters in this OVA fortunately show emotion in this OVA but none of the characters are developed anyway. Prettz is a very energetic character but he is reckless and he does not develop as much beyond that. Linaly fortunately isn’t reduced to fanservice even though there’s some panty shots from her, but she is not well developed except she develops a little bit near the end, but that’s too little too late. Valkus is okay, but he actually is developed a bit more than the others. As for the scantily-clothed Rouge, she’s pretty much in this OVA for fanservice and she develops a little but not too much. The characters are pretty bland in this OVA. Oh, but if that wasn’t enough. The main antagonist, Ra Devil… is a fucking joke. His goal is to gain the power of the void (explained in Final Fantasy V) for his own goals and ambitions and become Deathgyunos and what the fuck kind of name is Deathgyunos. And what makes this whole villain a complete joke is that how he ends up getting defeated, That whole moment was bullshit. The biggest problem is the story, if you’re one of those Final Fantasy fans that didn’t like the story in Final Fantasy V, that plot’s successor is much MUCH WORSE. The writing is bad and I don’t even care about the plot to this OVA or its characters. There could’ve been some character development but the characters are not relatable because of the sloppy writing, what makes it worse is that the plot does advance decently, but the characters are sometimes boring and don’t develop much. But with the way the story was wrapping up, I just could not distance my disbelief on this one. Final Fantasy V may have been underappreciated and I sure as hell know that the story did not need a follow up and it somehow did and it is technically the first sequel to a Final Fantasy game, and what a piece of shit it is.
Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals was available by Urban Vision Entertainment. and it was only released on VHS since its release in America. It is Out of Print and there hasn’t been a DVD release since.
With all that said, Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals has sloppy writing, underdeveloped characters, a generic soundtrack with some cues of the themes from Final Fantasy V, and lackluster animation. This OVA is a mess of a follow up to a game that may have not been big but at least it was okay. Go play Final Fantasy V if it interests you, but after you complete that game, avoid this OVA follow-up if you want to know how downhill the story got according to this OVA.
I give Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals a 2.9 out of 10, it is BAD!
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4 of 4 episodes seen ktulu007(All reviews)
8 people found this review helpful |
| Overall | 2 | | Story | 3 | | Animation | 3 | | Sound | 6 | | Character | 1 | | Enjoyment | 2 |
Before I begin, let me start with a quick disclaimer. I like the Final Fantasy games, for the most part. If I poke fun at the franchise a bit during the course of this review it's not because I just don't like the series, it's because the series has a lot of goofy aspects. I've looked at a few anime adaptations of video games in the past. I've looked at bad ones, Ninja Gaiden being the obvious example. Average ones, Nightstalkers and ones that were pretty good, Tales of Phantasia. This week I'm going to be looking at a selection from one of my favourite game companies, Square and our old friends at Madhouse. This is Final Fantasy, Legend of the Crystals.
Legend of the Crystals takes place several centuries after the events of Final Fantasy V. Linaly, a descendant of Bartz, is going to the temple of the wind to safeguard the crystal. She's followed by a young man named Prettz. The two find the crystal, which decides to hide itself in Linaly's body, which causes her bum to glow for some reason. The two find out that the other crystals have been stolen and find themselves targeted by mechanical beings who are trying to get the last one. They even build a Proctologist robot for that very purpose. Not really, but that would've been moderately less stupid than what actually happens. The actual story is pretty minimal and very cliche. The plot element of Linaly's firefly bottom mostly serves as an excuse for fan-service shots, on a character who looks to be all of twelve, classy. The final battle scene is quite anti-climactic and a lot of the events in the plot happen by virtue of plot contrivance instead of as a part of any kind of cohesive whole.
The characters in this are dreadful. You have Linaly, who spends most of her time either getting kidnapped or acting as a compass. She brings great shame on Bartz's name, and he's not even one of the good FF protagonists. He's okay though, which still makes him far too good of a character to be associated with this helpless twerp. Prettz is only slightly better, being an annoying moron. Then you have Rouge, a character who does absolutely nothing plot relevant. The other major characters are Mid, a ghost who basically serves as a guide for the majority of the OVA, Valkus, a muscle-head with all of one personality trait, and Ra Devil, the antagonist who makes Exdeath look like the best developed character ever by comparison.
The art in this is largely just lazy. With shading being used almost never. The facial expressions used for the characters tend to range from blank to dull surprise with very little variation. A lot of scenes are also repeated pretty much verbatim. To give an example, there's an action scene in which a large woman tries to slice our protagonists with a sword, only to have them duck. Then it happens two more times and it's pretty much the same every single time. The chocobos in this look terrible. They don't have their traditional yellow feathers, looking more like plucked ostriches, their beaks and eyes are also off. Then we have the fan-service. There are a lot of panty shots of our twelve year old heroine, because Madhouse decided to put their grossest people on this project. Linaly, put on some proper pants. Your shorts are far too short. Especially given your age. Rouge's outfit is just terrible. She looks like she's wearing bondage straps. Lady, most people can't pull bondage gear off as an outfit for action and you certainly aren't Sephiroth. Valkus just looks like a badly drawn 90s comic hero with a head that's too small for his overly muscled body.
Madhouse did get some really good voice actors for this. Particularly Ogata Kenichi, Yamazaki Wakana and Minaguchi Yoko. However, they don't give their best performances. In fact, their performances are kind of mediocre. The music is the best part of the OVA. It's the only aspect of the OVA that actually feels like a Final Fantasy game.
The yuri factor is a 1/10. The female characters barely even interact.
that was Legend of the Crystals, and it is bad. To be fair, the story is only the fifth worst I've seen in conjunction with the Final Fantasy title, but that isn't saying a whole lot. The franchise may have some great stories and characters, but it also has some really bad ones. It's not the worst video game adaptation I've reviewed either, but it's down there. My final rating is a 2.4/10. 4 of 4 episodes seen Bones(All reviews)
5 people found this review helpful |
| Overall | 8 | | Story | 6 | | Animation | 6 | | Sound | 7 | | Character | 9 | | Enjoyment | 9 |
For someone like me that has never played the games before, a lot of this anime's references will be utterly lost, however that doesn't stop it from being a fun and enjoyable anime in its own right. The story is midly confusing (probably attributable to the short lenght and its links to the games) and moves quite quickly in places which certainly doesn't help those with no game knowledge, but that doesn't really detract from the overall experience. This OVA is pretty much carried by its characters, which were interesting, varied and utterly insane: from a block-headed protagonist (who nevertheless remains endearing, despite his occasional displays of stupidity); S and M pirates (terrifyingly hilarious); the nose hair guy (also terriyingly hilarious, especially when the romance starts).
If you've played the games or know much about Final Fantasy in general, you will probably watch it with different eyes, but for a novice like me, I found this a thoroughly rib-tickling (for those who've seen it, pun intended) little series.
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