Product: Xenosaga: The Complete Series (2010)
Rating: 1.0
This makes me cry. And not in a good way, like the game.
If this is the only animated show version of the series that exists, then I have seen it, and as someone who completely worships the games, this show version made me cringe. The events are completely out of order, people show up in scenes they're not supposed to be in, and things jump around and happen so fast that it makes the overall meaning of the story hard to follow. Some of the characters do things that conflict with their own personalities and/or motives, and it makes you wonder as a fan what exactly the show producers are going for; my favorite character, Albedo, for example, is shown doing things he would NEVER do in the game, partly because of his personality, and partly because it would conflict with his goals and completely waste his time. As he is a brilliant mastermind in the game, it completely ruins his character to show him doing petty, useless things in the show (and worse, they make him look like a pedophile, which he totally isn't if you fully understand the game's story). In a lot of ways it seems like they are going for dramatic shock value or something, because there are plenty of scenes in the game with long, involved, thought-provoking dialogues which would probably not grab the attention of many anime viewers, and which were thus left out of it. (I know this because I've actually read more than a few reviews of the game which criticize how drawn out the cutscenes are.) While Xenosaga explores several deep, philosophical themes, and many new popular anime shows do the same, for some reason this anime version seems more shallow and designed almost for children, it's sad to say. As far as the technical aspects, the animation/graphics are decent, and it is interesting to see the characters drawn in a different way physically, but the graphics in the game are far more attractive, and the game's soundtrack is so engrossing that it is not to be missed either, unlike the show's soundtrack. It's hard to tell how the voice acting/dialogue compares with the game, as the version of the show I've seen is in Japanese with subtitles, but the subtitles do seem to cut out a substantial amount of depth. And like I said, this show version is SHORT, compared to the cutscenes in the game. Any way you look at it, if you are a fan of the game, the anime series seems something of a disappointment, and I would definitely not recommend showing this to someone to try to get them involved in the series. If they were trying to showcase the game's story to a larger audience, this was not the way to do it. I really hate to say this too, because I desperately wanted to like it.