Episode 5: The Pawn of Chaos
Meet with Velvet who’s a rather angry lady, especially after a certain man. The man in question? Artorius-sama who’s basically the highest ranked guy in the whole kingdom, leader of the exorcists and almost everything. All we know is that he killed her brother in order to save the world or something like that. So she’s angry, like really angry. She has some sort of magical arm which eat daemons and she was imprisoned in a prison special for daemons for 3 years.
She manages to escape from it with the help of Seres another mysterious lady. The two of them are chased in the prison by some exorcists, which role is to get rid of demons. While trying to escape, Seres and Velvet meet with Rokurou a dude who has some sort of cursed eye, like Velvet’s arm. So like her, he was imprisoned here by the exorcists and used to devour demons, day after day. All together they again, try to escape the prison. Velvet and Seres manage to reach the roof and Velvet jumps from it. Then, while walking on the beach, Velvet and Seres see an exorcist’s ship on the sea, which is about to land on the prion island.
Episode 6: Velvet Crowe
FINALLYYYYY!
MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED!
THEY DID INTRODUCE THE BLOND BEAUTIFUL BISHOUNEN!
I can die happy.
Dear lord, he’s hot.
So this fine looking fellow is named Oscar Dragonia and is a Praetor exorcist, loyal to Artorius-sama. Of course, since Artorius is the guy Velvet wants revenge on, those two are pretty much destined to fight. However, after a short but epic fight sequence, Oscar reveals that killing Velvet isn’t the real purpose of his trip so hop hop hop she better go back to that prison and eat demons because it’s her role. According to the smoking hot exorcist ( who’s also a little bit of a dick, blinded by his devotion to that Artorius guy ) everyone has a role in life: Velvet eats Demons, Artorious is the king of the world, he’s the hot guy in this tales of Series and Velvet’s brother was killed because he was meant to be killed. He’s also saying stuff like “Artorius created this world to prevent Malevolence” “Look Artorius is a cool guy, okay?” “Blablablabla I love Artorius, please bear my children Artorius Blablabla”. Before they can continue their fight they are interrupted by a CG dragon and while Oscar is fighting against it, Velvet meets with some sort of Elf magical girl who is talking nonsense. Honestly I forgot what she said, I don’t think it was very important though…
But anyway, Seres sacrifices herself to help Velvet. She asks her to devour her in order to acquire her powers, what she does while some epic music is playing background. I swear, this track was amazing. Before watching the rest of the episode I had to pause and rewind at least 3 times to hear that track again. So Velvet beats the dragon and escapes with Rangetsu and Magilou Elf girl, there begins their journey to the capital to defeat bad guy Artorius.
Impressions:
So here we are, the Berseria Crossover has begun. Set 400 years before Zestiria, Berseria will tell us more about the beginning of the whole Malevolence thing. During the first episode we are introduced to 3 new characters: Velvet, Seres and Rokurou who didn’t leave a huge first impressions on me. The second episode introduced Oscar Dragonia and Magilou. While I don’t give a flying fuck about that elf magical girl, Oscar has all my attention. Even if my estrogen are partially speaking for me here, you’ll have to admit that he’s pretty freaking bad ass. He’s a fine rival/ enemy for Velvet which promises us some awesome fight scenes.
Now, even if having a story about vengeance changes from Zestiria and offers some diversity, I
find Velvet a bit too one sided. Of course it’s only the first two episodes and her character is going to be developed but since we’re only getting 2 Berseria episodes ( at least for the moment) she’ll remain that vengeful lady in thin clothes. Furthermore I don’t particularly like characters devoured by vengeance, I find them annoying, always 
bringing up their goal and and stuff like “I want to kill X, I want stop until I kill X, I want revenge“. “Hey Velvet do you some bread?”, “NO I WANT REVEEEEEENNNGE“. You get the idea. However I’ll admit, she’s bad ass. She’s fighting for what she believes in, survived 3 years in a crappy jail and looks like a fair leader, things that I admire. So in the end she has all my respect and I’ll even say that I like her after all.
As for the rest of the gang Rangetsu looks like the usual comic relief, Elf girl is okay, I guess and Oscar is 11/10. Finally, while I did not care about Seres in the first episode, episode 2 made me want to learn more about her, what is she? What does she want revenge on Artorius? What’s her relation with Oscar, who by the way, looked pretty affected when he learned her death.
Judging by the OP they inserted after the credits, the Berseria cast is quite large so it’ll be interesting to discover all those characters later on. Also,I miss Eizen… Give me Eizen.
Now for the episodes, while I thought episode 1 was okay-ish , episode 2 really pumped me up. I still think those episodes were too short but the enjoyment was here. However, like the first episodes of Zestiria, everything was quite confusing. It took me a while to understand all that demon, or daemon I’m not quite sure, eating thing. And even now, I’m not sure I understand correctly.
As for the story, although it might look like your simple Revenge story I have high hopes things will evolve later on. Artorius is presented as the bad, bad guy like the evil guy Velvet must destroy at all costs but I bet there’s something else. Artorius can’t be such one sided villain and I’m sure the reasons why Velvet’s brother was killed are going to be much more complicated than they seem. But again, will we be able to see it or will we have to buy the game to discover more about Berseria? It is most likely that they’ll follow the second option just in terms of marketing, so here I’m confused. While those episodes, especially the second one were highly entertaining, is what I saw really relevant to Zestiria’s story?
Maybe they should have made some OVA episodes for Berseria instead of inserting them in the Zestiria anime. I’m not against that Crossover thing but I just want it to be relevant. Because in the end, we are halfway through the anime and what are we left with? An incomplete cast for Zestiria and same with Berseria. THE ZESTIRIA CAST IS NOT EVEN COMPLETE! Was it really the perfect moment to start Berseria? Also, will we get other Berseria episodes or was it just those two episodes? Like I mentioned before, for the moment I fail to see the relevance of those Berseria episodes and while I did enjoy them and find them pretty good, I don’t think it was appropriate to put them in the Zestiria anime. But Oscar was eye candy, so it’s okay… for the moment.
Maybe we’ll get more Berseria episodes since Zestiria the X is supposed to be a two cours show. But again, I don’t think the creators would want to spoil Berseria too much since the game isn’t even out in Japan yet. Which is a shame since it means we’re not going to get far in Berseria’s storyline.
Finally I liked the addition of Zestiria and Berseria game openings at the end of each episode. White light ( Zestiria OP) is freaking awesome and the Berseria OP is pretty fine too, I love those J rock songs!
So next episode we’re back with the Zestiria cast, hopefully they’ll finish introducing the rest of the cast and start the Shepherd’s journey!
Also more Mikleo
Technically Eps 5 & 6 ARE an exercise in marketing for the Berseria game, since the Japanese are getting it first this coming 18th August. It’s safe to assume that the game developers’ marketing department saw these episodes as the perfect opportunity to create more hype amongst the Japanese Tales fanbase to buy the next game instalment.
No doubt Berseria’s plotline will contain all the relevant tie-ins to Zestiria, which I’m sure Japanese-fluent gamers will spoil in due time (and which yours truly shall dig up for AngryAnime, if they can be found). The anime doesn’t have to overly put too much Berseria spoilers into Zestiria the X, but I think they should put just enough allusions so newcomers to Zestiria don’t get too confused as to how both series link together.
That said, I get the impression that Zestiria’s storytelling is mainly focusing on appealling to the established Tales fanbase over franchise newcomers, something like how the plot of the recent Warcraft movie was tailored to mainly appeal to existing Warcraft fans.
Thanks for the precision! As expected it was quite naive from me to believe no marketing plan was behind this crossover. After all, non original anime are mostly made to boost the sales of the original source material right?
Uumm.. What you said is quite true,even with some little knowledge of the game content I’m still having issues understanding all that happened in Zestiria. Like those Armartizations for instance, Sorey did one with Lailah but that was never explained.
As for that Berseria crossover I remember my brother who doesn’t know shit about Tales of Zestiria nor Berseria, saying: ” What’s happening? Where’s Sorey? Are they in another dimension or what? Who are those people”. Clearly newcomers for the series and anime watchers only who did not do any research must have been surprised. They had no way to know Velvet wasn’t part of Zestiria wen she appeared in the OP sequence.
So eh, I’m still having some concerns with Zestiria the X because in my opinion, a success anime adaption should please fans on the original material and newcomers as well (which is why good adaptations are hard to make). 🙂
Also remember in Japan that the established fanbase/otakus are the ones that usually drive demand for anime merchandise and tie-ins. Perhaps Zestiria’s backers think they’re a safer target consumer group to invest in and get returns from, over trying to attract new customers.
I’m reminded of a commenter on another blog who summed up the Japanese fandom as:
“You got a hardcore audience of fans which are increasingly pandered too, an unwillingness to step outside limited genre boundaries to try and find new audiences, as well as too many projects trying to do the same thing and win a share of that core demographic. So you get the situation that every season you have series with not only suspiciously similar stories, but suspiciously similar scenes, like with Asterisk Wars/Chivalry of a Failed Knight (Rakudai Kishi) in the (last) Fall 2015 season.
…in the short term, making yet another mediocre light novel adaptation makes good business sense: it’s a known market and nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. It’s only unsustainable in the long term because by pandering to this established audience the industry limits its ability to attract new viewers. “
We got even a eclipse and not Griffith, this was literally Berserk with female Guts