review - Xenosaga the animation

Technical sheet :

Other titles ゼノサーガ (Japanese)
Format Series
Studio Tôei Animation
Genre Science Fiction
The period 2005
episode 12
Duration 25 min
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Staff Director: Shigeyasu Yamauchi
Screenplay: Yuichiro Takeda
Character design: Nobuteru Yûki
Art Direction: Makoto Suwada
Music: Kôsuke Yamashita

summary :

In the very distant future, a fleet of the galactic federation performs reconnaissance missions in space. Officially, it must investigate planets attacked by the Gnosis, a mysterious race of aggressive and powerful alien monsters, enemies of the federation and of all humanity. Embarked aboard the federation's ships, a group of special forces, following secret orders, discreetly seizes a mythical artifact, the Zohar, which crosses the fleet's route.

Shion Uzuki is a talented young researcher who also participates in the journey. She is specialized in research related to androids and is responsible for department within the all powerful Vector Corporation. Man has succeeded in creating artificial beings, the realians, halfway between being human and android, endowed with a certain consciousness and with notions of free will. Shion has a very good knowledge of the realiens, and appreciates them. However, his main research project does not concern them. With his second in command, Allen, Shion is working on the development of the KOS-MOS combat android. However, since the terrible accident where the android has become uncontrollable and has caused the death of several researchers, Shion only makes computer simulations on KOS-MOS programs and no longer performs any real tests with the robot.

The squadron is suddenly taken by fire from a multitude of Gnosis ships, which arise from space time. Quite invincible, the Gnosis decimate the fleet of the federation and it is quickly the saving that can general. While Shion is in mortal danger, KOS-MOS activates on its own and saves her, as well as Allen and Lieutenant Virgil. All can escape into a rescue capsule, while the Gnosis disappear leaving behind a vast field of debris, all that remains of the federation's fleet.

Like a scavenger, the cargo ship Elsa comes to the ruins of the battlefield to recover valuable debris. Captain Matthews and his crew fall on KOS-MOS, which forces them to collect Shion and the other two survivors on board.

Comment :

In the world of video games and especially the RPG (Role playing game), Xenosaga is a title like Final Fantasy or the series of Tales of. Six releases of the saga are at least planned and the first animated series resumes the first episode. This is not the first time that a video game is suitable for animation and this aspect is even part of the normal life of a successful game from a marketing point of view. For platform and fighting games, screenwriters typically rely on the universe and characters of the game and design a story over them, with more or less brilliance. You have many examples with the adaptations of Street Fighter to Pokemon, passing by Sonic and other Bomberman. In some cases, the game and the animation are episodes in their own right, included in a global strategy. The different opus of the .hack family are an example, where each title, cartoon, manga or video game, brings its stone to the building and unveils a pan of the overall plot.

In the case of Xenosaga, the adapters preferred to take up the scenario of the game, rather than design a completely original story, as was the case with the first feature film of Final Fantasy. The challenge is not easy because the originality of Xenosaga does not come so much from its game system but from its complex and captivating history. The player linearly follows the narrative and is immersed in a world where he sometimes has to wait twenty minutes before the sequence of cinematic that exposes the story. Thus, the narration takes more place than the actual playing time on the tens of hours that lasts the adventure. To take the entire episode one into a six-hour animated series in all, is therefore already a bad omen.

The big production company Toei, however, has appealed to the great professionals of animation to work on the series. The director, Shigeyasu Yamauchi, has worked on the series of OAV Hades of Saint Seiya and is a regular of feature films, with the last film of Saint Seiya Tenkai-hen under his belt, as well as films of Digimon and Dragon Ball Z. The drawing of the characters was mainly entrusted to the great character designer Nobuteru Yûki, who had made those of Escaflowne, Lodoss, Kaze no Tairiku, X or Gunnm, to name only the most famous. Kousuke Yamashita signed a very honorable soundtrack with a beautiful opening theme and a super credits of ending, In this serenity, sung by Mayumi Gojo. On the other hand, at the average level of production, the Toei seems to have been rather dull. We have very nice synthetic images for the scenes in space with the ships but this one is difficult to integrate with the scenes of animations in 2D, where the colors do not have a good rendering and the details are rather poor. We are at a hundred places of super television production like Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.

In terms of the script, the story is very confusing for someone who does not know the whole world of Xenosaga. The original story is itself deliberately obscure and the first volume of the game is careful not to answer all the questions. Compelled to be condensed, the story takes shortcuts too fast in the series and leaves in all directions, while being too long to set up. Given the multitude of characters, it takes eight episodes out of the twelve to introduce everyone. The characters, however, are thoroughly studied, even if Shion, the main heroine, pales in front of other more secondary actors, such as KOS-MOS. The plot is also slightly different from the game, with unexpected events, such as the meeting of Shion and the real Kirschwasser in the first episode, or the appearance of Jin Uzuki, the older brother of Shion.

Due to lack of time, themes for reflection are barely overlooked as they appear in large numbers in history. This is the case of the problem of identity and human consciousness, raised by the nature of the realiens and the existence of Ziggy, a dead human being transformed into cyborg. The theme is mentioned but remains almost anecdotal. While the game has very good bases for conducting a great military politico plot, with many details about the various organizations, actors and planets, the series remains very short and remains very vague on the role of some of the other. Again, we are far from the level of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, which takes time to deepen, without detracting from the action, unlike Xenosaga the animation. The constructed and interesting plot concerns only the last four episodes, whereas we are bored almost during the first eight episodes, without seeing more clearly.

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