Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals

Original Title: ファイナルファンタジー
Romanized: Final Fantasy
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

On a distant world somewhere where both magic and massive technological airships reign, a young girl training in summoning magic, Linaly, and her sword-swinging friend Prettz, are charged with a lofty goal: protect the Crystal of the Wind, the magical object that gives life and peace to the Tycoon Kingdom, from an unknown evil force. But when Pirates and the Tycoon Military get involved, and they all want the crystal too, things are going to get complicated (and violent) quickly.

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2005-11-11

This loose adaptation of Final Fantasy V has little to do with Final Fantasy (it's as if the production team had someone describe the games but never tried one), and even as a stand alone series is a rather juvenile disappointment of an action show more at home among US Saturday Morning fare than fantasy anime. If you look past the childish mood (despite a few borderline-sleazy touches), thin plot, and caricatured characters it isn't a complete failure, though; it does have an appealing perpetual-motion style of storytelling, the settings are relatively creative, and the wildly varied score includes some quality work, if well short of the bar set by Uematsu.

In all, it's best not thought of as having anything to do with Final Fantasy, and it's not without appeal as a very light fantasy romp, but basically it's a kids' action show aiming for the lowest common denominator of a rather young group.

US DVD Review

No US-released DVD exists as of this writing.

Content Guide

A few gross jokes, a bit of serious violence, and a lot of underdressed pirates probably put this one at a younger teen level; 13-up, maybe 10-up if you're permissive.

Violence: 2 - Some monsters get cut up, but not seriously at all.

Nudity: 2 - A lotta leather, some up-skirt views, and a statue in the background of one scene.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A few off-color jokes.

Language: 1 - Nothing serious.

Notes and Trivia

Based very loosely on Square Soft's SuperFamicom (SNES) game, Final Fantasy V (recently released in the US and re-released in Japan as an updated Playstation version). The original title of the anime was simply "Final Fantasy."

For those unfamiliar with the names Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano, both have long been associated with the Final Fantasy series of games.

Uematsu wrote the score of every game up through the 10th, including some very memorable character-based music and a number of spin-off albums with alternate-style, orchestrated, or vocal versions of pieces from the games. He has also conducted an orchestra playing selected pieces from the games on several occasions in both the US and Japan.

Amano is a graphic artist who painted evocative character images for the first six games, although his art only appears on a few character images within the games (until the Playstation re-release of Final Fantasy VI, which includes video sequences based on his designs). His Final Fantasy-inspiring art has been reproduced on trading cards and in artbooks, and he was also involved with the visual style of Vampire Hunter D (he illustrated the original novels) as well as the one-shot Amon Saga.

Availability

Formerly available in the US from Urban Vision on two subtitled or dubbed VHS volumes, now out of print.

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