Tales Series

They started with Sara as main then realized she wasn't cancer-inducingly Moe enough and made Kana to pander to the otakus.

...or that. That sounds sadly believable.

Yeesh! That certainly took a depressing turn.

Then in the end they shouldn't have bothered even making her.

Its depressing being a Sara fan now.

Admittedly I am a bit jaded when it comes to the replacing of established, competent women in media with more Moe types. Or even just having the competent women disappear in place of boring Moe.

grumbles about Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 25th 2018 at 4:34:10 AM

Dark Fina deserved better.

I liked Sara because she was actually really fresh. A spunky, energetic girl who WASN'T a tsundere and DIDN'T randomly and needlessly lose her temper with the protag for stupid reasons? Christ, she was one of the friendliest main characters I could a been partnered up with while still being ready to fight.

Jesus the fact that JP had to do a second arc to make her the protagonist again shows how badly the writing was botched.

Didn't she start turning evil when JP's story stopped? I seem to remember spoilers along those lines.

The red eye Sara thing was bewcause a resurrected Feil magically stole her sight. She was still on the good side I believe.

@Mighty Kombat: Tales Link is a semi-annual Comicket-like Japanese fan gathering organized by fellow fans. Of course they’re going to feature characters that the -Japanese- fans who organize the gathering love. You’re just overreacting.

Speaking of ignoring certain characters/games, a month ago there was a fan outrage towards Rays’ scenario writer because the latest Mirrage Prison chapters and events focus so much on Abyss and Symphonia characters Mithos, Sync, Kratos, and Luke in particular (note that the writer also did those two games). The writer later said that Bamco asked certain characters/games to be prioritized sooner because they’re more popular within fans, however.

Semi-related, but it’s an interesting thing to note that the games that majority of Tales fans tend to love have Kosuke Fujishima as a character designer. Maybe Inomata’s art is too overcomplicated or just unappealing >_>

Edited by IrueruPunch on Jul 26th 2018 at 10:59:37 PM

I find his designs bland and samey really. I love Inomata's noodly fashion art, though I think recently she's been recycling design elements too.

It doesn't help that a bunch of the games Inomata worked on never made it to North America. Also, it's funny that people complained about that because that was a big reason I wasn't interested in Tales of the Rays. I don't care about a lot of the "popular" characters so it didn't appeal to me.

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 26th 2018 at 10:12:54 AM

Oh yeah Sara was that cutie with the hairpin with side ponytail right

She’s cool

@Vicarious: yeah she was.

@Phi: Inomata's tend to look more unique and a lot better to look at compared to how Fujishima plays it almost obnoxiously safe. I mean look they can look cool but they can also start blurring together pretty badly.

I like some of Daigo Okumura's stuff, but it's hard to find stuff he actually worked on despite being credited for a few different games. I also find his designs don't seem to translate well in whatever art style they choose for the game itself. Like poor Magilou's, for instance; one of my favourite designs when Okumura draws her, one of my most hated in Ufotable style.

Still, I wouldn't have an issue with him being the main character designer from here on out if only for some fresh blood and potentially fresher designs.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that. He's certainly been with the franchise enough to know what a "Tales" design should look like, if that makes sense.

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 26th 2018 at 11:10:19 AM

Yeah. c'mon Namco, let him have the reins for a while. There's no harm in it, honestly.

To this day I still hane no idea why Elize from Xillia and Emaraude from graces have the exact same dress...

Also Legendia was my first ever tales, and also one of if not my first non Pokemon jrpg. I'd love to see a remake, even if they'd refund it all.

Well design reusage is the norm in video games and anime so..

Loko at it this way: Elize gets a new outfit in Xillia 2.

They don't look all that similar to me to be honest. Color scheme maybe but not much else.

You know what's even weirder? They weren't designed by the same person.

Same with the similarities between Elize's colour scheme and Magilou's. Coincidence, apparently.

Edited by PhiSat on Aug 1st 2018 at 12:32:43 PM

Checked out the Tales of Stastica thing, pretty interesting, nothing super shocking though (aside from Yuri not being in the top 10, I thought he was a fan-favourite).

It's good though that my bae Abyss snagged best story by a country mile.

"'Racism' was a popular theme, as was 'Anything but Racism'".

The latter honestly sums up my opinion of a lot of JRPG plots; it's a crutch that's way too easily relied on since it's so convenient (motive can be applied to members of the party and thus give them chances for character development, can be given to villains to provide an easy motive for evil, and big bads can be the victim of it to provide an easy Anti-Villain motivation).

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Aug 1st 2018 at 8:34:54 AM

The problem is that, of the Tales games that I've played, none of them have handled the subject particularly well. None of them handled it poorly but it could be handled better. Of course, writing a good story about racism is pretty tricky and may even be impossible for the Tales series since I'm pretty sure all of the writers are Japanese and they have a very bad history of understanding that.

Rebirth is probably the best at it imo, though the Eldritch Abomination made out of racism is a little heavy-handed and very JRPG.

Edited by PhiSat on Aug 1st 2018 at 2:52:15 AM

Kinda hurts that most of the time the people being discriminated against are largely white skinned. (That and never actually using the word "racism" seems like dancing around the issue.)