 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | FUNIMATION ENTERTAINMENT | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 16:9 ANAMORPHICE WIDESCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH DD 5.1 AND JAPANESE DD 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 120 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | 13 UP | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 11/25/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 12/18/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | DAVEY C. JONES |
Bring on the sword and sorcery fantasy! It’s RPG meets anime in Tales of Phantasia. A band of heroes descended from the original Guardians who once sealed away the Demon King Dhaos, must now travel back in time to get the job done when the Demon King is resurrected and ready to annihilate mankind – again! Set in Midgard, a cleric, a warrior, a witch, a summoner, an archer, and a ninja travel back smack in the middle of the huge Battle of Valhalla. Now they have to face not only Dhaos but his army of demons and undead! Faster than you can sing the song Time Warp from Rocky Horror, the band of heroes travel space and time itself to save their magical realm. Like Lodoss War and World of Warcraft, Phantasia is all done RPG style, with elves, fighters, rangers, clerics and all the Dungeons and Dragons hallmarks. It’s a little bit of Lord of the Rings and a whole lot of sword and sorcery adventure. The anime is based on the Namco Bandai console game. The DVD holds all 4 OVA episodes. With all the time travel, the show gets a bit jumpy and hard to reason out at times. But it sure is super pretty animation. The story is bit ‘lite’, but it sure is cool to see another sword and sorcery genre hit the anime market again. There are so few these days. As a big WOW and D&D fan, I was happy to see it. The opening song is awesome and the animation is top notch. The production is great looking with some very cool action sequences. Phantasia has some attractive character designs. It made me think a little of Lodoss War Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. It uses the CG well, nothing too overpowering. I loved the action scenes and the show manages to hit nearly every Dungeons and Dragons character type right off the bat.
EXTRAS:
Bonus features include reverse cover art, a foldout mini-poster insert, Geneon previews, clean opening and closing animation, and art gallery.
IN SUMMARY:
Tales of Phantasia is the entire 4 episode OVA series on one disc. It’s a stand alone sword and sorcery anime short on the epic, big on the glossy eye-popping animation! |
