Catching up to: Tears to Tiara (11)
nekosasu | July 6, 2009 | 4:57 pm
I’ll say it right away: mai waifu. There. Shut up.
Another series from the long Spring season (as in double seasoners) that impresses me quite a lot.
I would have done a true mid-season review if I had watched episode 12 and 13, but since ep 11 marked the end of an arc, I don’t know if the next one will be over by ep13, and I don’t feel like reviewing anything on a cliffhanger. So here goes yet another long post.
So far, I love this series. On a scale of 1-5, it would be
0 = Loathe (ex. Queen’s Blade, Juuden-chan (to come))
1 = Hate (ex. Minami-ke Okawari/Okaeri, too fanservice-y/generic shows)
2 = Dislike (ex. Anything Kyoto Animation)
3 = Like (ex. Detective Conan, Minami-ke)
4 = Love (ex. Basquash!, Utawarerumono, Tears to Tiara, etc) <– there
5 = Adore (ex. Eden of the East, Cross Game)
6 = Words alone cannot describe it, i.e. otherworldly extraordinaire (ex. ARIA)
Sorry for the partly old examples, I really couldn’t think of anything new I watched that would fill these categories)
Let me explain.
I loved Utawarerumono, so I love Tears to Tiara.
The end.
………
Ahem.
…well! I guess I need to elaborate on this after all, because there is more to this simple comparison.
The combo behind Tears to Tiara is, as I hinted, the same combo that was behind Utawarerumono: Leaf and Aquaplus. Both titles were originally SRPEGs, and they were both adapted to anime by Aquaplus. They even share the same OP intro artist (Suara). Even the setting is similar: both works take a medieval-esque fantasy swordplay. When I watched the first episode back then, I did not know this fact[1], but I was reminded of Utawarerumono nevertheless. Subsequently, I implicitly expected a similar storyline. And to a certain extent, it is as I suspected.
The main character seems to be Riannon, although she will eventually revolve around the Demon God Arawn, who, if he had a mask, could be Hakuoro in Black. Just kidding. So Arawn, who was freshly summoned by an omnicidal megalomaniac, now leads a small renegade clan, the Gael tribe, against the Divine Empire which reigns supreme over the land. In order to do so, he needs to gather powerful allies, which results in various additions to his army (read: harem): Morgan (included in the Gael Girls Package), Ermin, Limwris, Epona, Llyr, Rathty and last but definitely not least, Octavia, who used to serve under the Empire but ended up switching camps. At some point, they do retrieve their ships which have been seized by the Empire, advance as far as Avalon (a sealed town with a huge tower which belongs to Arawn), and mug the Empire’s belongings, but until now, however, there have been little to no clues as to how this party will advance into enemy territory in order to take out the archenemy whose leader seems unknown still. And that’s as far as I have come.
Suck my carrot!
Wow. I didn’t think I could sum up the story up until this episode in so few words. It did actually feel like a lot more happened, but in the end, it was basically only new introductions, Arawn taking new warriors under his wing. So, what makes this anime enjoyable to watch despite the lack of story progression? The characters. And, yes, us perverted males do get a feast for the eyes: not less than 8 girls to choose from! But beyond their stunning visuals, which range from the wild amazon to the loli fairy, they are captivating characters with various personalities.
Let’s start with Riannon: she is a seemingly reasonable, but ultimately naive girl. She always goes for the safer way to resolve problems: tricked into submission by the priest, decided to make Arawn her husband and leader of the tribe (only to stop Arthur from attacking him), etc. And yet, she seems to enjoy the bloodbath that is caused between the Gael tribe and the Empire. Everything to please her husband, huh?
But there’s another girl who is claiming Arawn: Morgan. She is the amazon of the harem: scantily clad, very impulsive, loves drinking. She would be a nice pick for raw, animal fun. Plus she knows archery, so she could help me master the Huntsman in Team Fortress 2.
To the opposite, Llyr is plain dimwitted and slow. Of course, through a stupid mistake, Arawn ended up burning her seal outfit so she cannot return to her folks anymore and is bound to be Arawn’s wife now. While her dojikko nakimushi impulses might look cute, she does not really appeal to me much.
There are the domestic faeries Ermin, Limwris, and Epona. While Limwris is fairly placid and pretty well endowed, Ermin is jovial and childish and above all, she’s a DFC.[2] Same for Epona, the merchant. These three seem to be the support characters, so they might only play a minor role in the future. Still, they’re very cute.
Not so for the next fairy: Rathty might be a small mine fairy with lo- I mean DFC features and kigurumi fetish, but she can lift huge hammers twice her size. It could bear the writing 100 t for comical purposes, but it is indeed pretty… heavy. She can also drill some great holes into the earth, heck, I would drill her too. Erm… assuming it is a girl. Don’t dare telling me it’s a trap. :|
Strong trap or not? Because I do NOT want her to be a trap. :|
The most interesting and beautiful character of them all is Octavia. By the end of episode 11, I declared her to be my second wife after Hisui. …ehehe, I’m joking, just joking!! o.o;;
But she is really lovely indeed. And she has a very strong sense of justice, so much she never seemed to question the Empire, its rigid laws and goals. As such, I always thought she was a pure soul, misled and abused by a charismatic dogma. Turns out though that she has always been with the Empire only to gain access to the upper levels to take revenge on the people in power for the murder of her parents. Her adamant beliefs were hard to break, but eventually Arawn and Arthur made her realize that she is only wasting her time (and jeopardizing other people’s lives for her own goal as well) and that there is another, more direct way to achieve it: join forces with them. This caused her to clash with Lidia, a like-minded, righteous woman, whom she already defeated in the past in an arena fight.
I totally loved the dramatic showdown between both of them. Lidia always reproached Octavia that she should have finished her off right away instead of letting her live a life of humiliation, but in the end we find out that it was actually Lidia herself who backed off first. Her endless pride subconsciously suppressed that memory; for long years, she hypocritically reproached Octavia with the fault she had herself: she did not want her friend to die. It was an epic battle, I quite liked the execution. It might not have been a novelty, but it was touching. Especially crying Octavia. T__T
I am sure Lidia would have made a great character herself, even though she was portrayed a little too negatively (or at least perceived as such; the grass is greener/fouler on the other side).
Nevertheless, I admire Octavia for her valiantness and her very humane side. She must have felt very lonely within the Empire, and I am glad she turned out to be how I thought (hoped) she would and switched sides, where she finally found people whom she can trust. And she’s not joining Arawn’s harem either.
This scene made me smile. Octavia, you’re so awesome!!
Arawn, you popular ass! You don’t do anything, yet the cute girls keep flocking to you like dung flies. Seriously, I am glad Octavia seems to have the hots for Arthur. Poor guy must have felt lonely, Arawn indirectly claiming all the females in his close environment. He can’t even have his sister, like the siscon he used to be. But now, with Octavia, he seems to have found his soul mate, mainly because he implicitly reminds her of her late brother… (she is actually a brocon!)
But speaking of Arthur, he is also developing well. His impulsive and violent behavior of the past were corrected by Arawn’s liberal but consequent leadership; he learned from his reckless mistakes, and has grown a lot wiser. He still has occasional primitive outbursts of naivete, but I am sure he will become a great leader and make for a great king. That’s what the image of the sword in the stone is hinting towards, isn’t it?
For the time being though, Arawn remains the leader of the Gael tribe. While the first episode made him look like a bad guy, it still remains a mystery what or who he really was. It might be safe to assume that he is a god, since there was one episode where Riannon talks about the legend of the crying god Myrrdin, and Arawn knows that person well enough to know he doesn’t cry (or that he did cry indeed, but denies it). Furthermore, when he got summoned, Ogam said he only had the vulnerability of a human being, implying that he knows his powers must be a lot greater than that, such as those of a god. However, it might just be a legend of the past, where important swordsmen and mages were passed down in songs and history as gods, and Ogam probably is overrating Arawn’s powers.
Since he used to be some kind of warlord of some sorts with his ally or friend Myrrdin, I suspect he tried to overthrow some kind of kingdom in the past, but was overpowered by another entity (who eventually became the ruler of the land and called it Divine Empire, like the God they are believed to be) and got sealed away.[3] Perhaps Arawn could not prove his royal lineage by pulling out the sword? Who knows. But at least we can be sure that he is not an evil person, even though he takes advantage of that bad image the current generation has of him.
Let the bloodbath begin!
So I ended up talking a lot about the characters, and I’m approaching epic tl;dr levels again. Well, let me quickly address other good and bad points before lulling you to sleep… HEY! WAKE UP!
Okay, so. It wasn’t as apparent in the first episode, but in the later episodes, the outstanding production just screams QUALITY! There’s no denying this. The animation is flawless, the design is delicious, the characters and story seem very promising, and there are many comic relief moments. At some points, elements of the eroge origins do show through (i.e. very mild fanservice), but I will raise a minus point though: violence.
It’s not even about the very graphic battles that do take place in this anime – cart loads of hemoglobin will continue flowing uncensored and that’s fine by me – but it’s the fact that both Arawn and Arthur, as the good people, enjoy slaying enemy soldiers. There is a real bloodlust emanating from the main protagonists, sometimes it’s a little sickening to see how much they are exhilarated by the sight of enemy soldiers. I don’t know, had this been a more historically relevant account, it would have been fine, but in my opinion, the emphasis should not lie on the gore, but the end result, and how to save a handful of lives – after all, it is as Octavia says: it is not the soldier’s fault for being swayed by the dogma of the Empire; the leaders are at fault. Well, perhaps Octavia will tame Arthur later on in the series. :3c
I’m pretty much interested in how the plot will turn out. The bodies Arawn and Ogam found in the boxes most likely indicate that the Divine Empire will honor its name and play God, meaning, trying to resurrect those corpses in order to creating an army of zombies. Frankenstein meets Return to Castle Wolfenstein? Interesting. One thing I suspect though, is that Gaius, that general from the Empire, seems not to be that bad. He probably bears the same sense of justice as Octavia, and will falter once the Empire’s true intents are revealed. I don’t know, he sounds so much like an anti-baddie, he is not portrayed as the absolute evil guy. Whether he’s just cynical or bored, I don’t know, however I am pretty sure he will be a decisive enemy… or ally. At least I believe that he’s a lot less evil than that emasculated Taliesin the Minstrel who only appeared in episode 5.
That merchant looks so much like a pedophile. Just look at his lust-filled face.
Aight I’m done, tl;dr: watch this or die.
Next series I will watch/midseason review is… Saki. I feel like raging a little over fanservice now.
Notes- until I looked it up, of course [↩]
- Technically speaking, she is not a loli, because she and Ermin have been keeping the tower tidy for long, long years. I think they don’t age, or very slowly at least. [↩]
- Here is the only doubt I have about this theory, since I cannot imagine regular people being sealed away except gods and spirits… [↩]
I LOL’d at the Octavia – Arthur -con analysis, awesome XP