Final Fantasy

Two hundred years have passed since the hero Bartz and his companions saved the inhabitants of Planet R—a world where crystals control the natural elements—from the threat of Exdeath. However, agents of the wizard Ra Devil steal the crystals of Earth, Fire, and Water. With three of the four crystals in his possession, Ra Devil seeks to claim the Wind Crystal, the final piece he needs to summon the destructive god Deathgyunos.

Novice summoner Linaly—a direct descendant of Bartz—lives with her grandfather Hassam. After receiving an ominous message about the Wind Crystal, Hassam travels to the Wind Temple. Concerned for his safety, Linaly suggests that they make the journey together. On their trip, they encounter Prettz, a rowdy yet amiable swordsman, who is captivated by the young girl and accompanies the duo for his own mysterious reasons.

During a battle, an antlion monster injures Hassam, leaving him bedridden. As a result, the responsibility of securing the Wind Crystal falls on Linaly, with Prettz assuming the role of her guardian as they continue their perilous adventure.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Klauser, Linaly Main

Minaguchi, Yuko Japanese

Prettz Main

Matsumoto, Rica Japanese

Ra Devil Supporting

Ogata, Kenichi Japanese

Valkus Supporting

Chiba, Shigeru Japanese

Rouge Supporting

Hirano, Fumi Japanese

Hassam Supporting

Tomiyama, Kei Japanese

Mid Supporting

Kozakura, Etsuko Japanese

Queen Lenna Supporting

Kasahara, Hiroko Japanese

Rintarou Director, Episode Director

Ookubo, Tomihiko Director, Key Animation

Sekijima, Mayori Script

Iso, Mitsuo Special Effects, Key Animation

Reviews

Sep 6, 2008

MikariStar

Recommended

Aside from the references, this anime isn't directly connected to the Final Fantasy V game. It takes place many years after the game, and though it is said that Linaly, the main female character, is a descendant of Bartz, this Bartz could very well be some random legendary hero.

There are job classes, though without the particular outfits and there are four crystals as in practically every Final Fantasy. The plot features the quest to protect the wind crystal after the others are stolen by a new enemy, a strange alien with advanced technology whose base is located in the black moon, a natural satellite of ... planet Gaia.

The story has its fair share of humor and amusing characters especially Pritz and Rogue. The plot is easy to understand even if you haven't played the game, but the references would be lost.

Overall it seems this anime has received more criticism than praise, possibly because people expected a sequel with more connections to the game. But if you look at it as a strand alone Final Fantasy story, it's not bad.

The art and sound are not the best, but to be fair the anime is rather old and has decent art for its time. Despite it not being one of the best anime out there, it's still enjoyable and I recommend watching it with an open mind, being ready to judge it on its own instead of holding it against the game.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 8, 2019

PedophileFucker

Mixed Feelings

Before Square-Enix decided to doom your expectations with Spirits Within in 2001, there was an Anime made loosely based on one of the main entries of the series called Legend of the Crystals, which was a 4-part OAV serving as a sequel to Final Fantasy V. Released in Japan in 1994, then in the US in 1998, few got to glimpse and have their hopes shattered at how weird it really was. For one, it was decided that instead of a game, an Anime would be chosen to become the sequel to a game which not many were aware of at the time. Unless you ... had played a ROM of the game, you would had never imagined what Legend of the Crystals was based on, being that the first port of it for PlayStation was released in 1999, a whole year after the OAV was around. The Internet and word of mouth from gaming magazines would had been the only places where you could had known what it was a sequel to overall, and the Internet was quite young at that time as well.


To make matters worse, the events of said animated sequel take far into the future of the game's events, over 200 years to be exact, with not many of the cast from said game being present other than by name. The fact that some characters are descendants of the main videogame heroes doesn't make up much to make anything relevant about said game unless you had played Final Fantasy V one way or another and know about it which at that time was pretty darn hard to do. Fans would welcome it as a bizarre first entry to the gaming series when they had no idea just who everyone was here besides some themes from the franchise such as the Crystals for example.


Besides that, Legend of the Crystals does a good job in giving shoutouts to various themes from the game itself, such as the world they live in dubbed Planet R in the Anime, showing a map of the entire place as shown in the game as well as apparitions from the main heroes and characters like Mid who were in said game overall, along with familiar locales like the Wind Shrine and Tycoon Castle. The rest is simply added as an afterthought, featuring flying machines, robots and advanced technology found in otherwise otherworldly locations such as the Black Moon which was added for the Anime only and has no play within the original game's story. I was able to experience it on VHS during my days as a Blockbuster employee, with the only upside being that I didn't had to pay the rental fee.


The story centers around two young kids named Prettz and Linally, who the latter is a descendant of Bartz, one of the main characters from Final Fantasy V and an amateur summoner, whose ability is mostly calling forth ugly Chocobos. Very ugly Chocobos. Both embark on a journey to prevent a new evil being called Ra Devil (how original,) who attempts to gather all Elemental Crystals and use them for his own malign desires. On their attempt to protect the remaining crystal, it dives inside Linaly's body, leaving her with a glowing ass. No joke.


They also meet with a ghost named Mid, grandson of the legendary Cid (who never gets mentioned by name,) which helped the heroes back in the events of the game, Valyos, captain of Tycoon Castle's Iron Wings, and Rogue, leader of a sky pirate group who seemingly has nothing to do with the characters before the events of Anime. Mid goes explaining that an evil being called Deathgyunos has been gathering up the Crystals for his own nefarious motives and decided to hide last remaining one in Linaly's body to prevent being stolen. He also explains that he is a ghost who lived 200 years prior and came back to help protect the crystals.


Things get a bit sketchy after Mid's explanation of the main bad guy here. He goes on stating Ra Devil (who would become Deathgyunos) was the one responsible for stealing his grandfather's brain from the graveyard (what?) killing him in the process. They all assume that his base would be located on the Black Moon which orbits their planet without much insight of just who Deathgyunos came from in the first place. Guess a back-story for the main villain was just not needed nor cared for other for his pendant for brains. From then on Ra Devil would become Deathgyunos which has been known by the time the Anime's story was brought.


They come to the conclusion the Black Moon must be his base of operations since his grandfather's voice continued calling out to him from said place for hundred of years. That's pretty depressing to be honest. On their way to awake a flying dragon that would take them to the Black Moon, Linaly gets captured by Ra Devil explaining he would now go on to become Deathgyonus, even though he was already being called by that name to begin with. Prettz and the rest board ships anchored by the flying dragon that then flies into space to reach the Black Moon. Upon arriving the dragon gets struck down by lightning and all fall into the surface, which for some strange reason looks like a destroyed modern day city from Earth, complete with demolished buildings and highways. At this point I just stopped making sense of what was going on anymore.


The big final battle ensues and Deathgyunos gets defeated with a single slice of Prettz' oversized sword. Everyone gets reunited with whoever was around and the world is saved. A parting shot of the heroes from Final Fantasy V is shown in the sky before the ending is played. And that was Legend of the Crystals, an animated sequel to Final Fantasy V which was not that known during that time but it was distributed overseas taking up that risk.


Legend of the Crystals is quite an oddity. If you get past its weirdness and amusing concepts, Legend of the Crystals serves its purpose well to a point, honoring the gaming series in a way. The fan service shown is pretty absurd as well, not sure why the crystal would glow inside Lilyana's posterior of all places for example. There's also some inconsistencies within the Anime, one being that in the game, the crystals pretty much were destroyed and thus no longer part of the world by the end of the game's events, in here however they all appear even if they are smaller in size, and some of the locales like Tycoon Castle resemble the Taj Mahal, with the world having this weird oriental look to it in comparison to the medieval style that was in the game. The OAV really doesn't explain why there are crystals during this time but I guess this is just a trivial issue to ponder upon at most. All in all Legend of the Crystals is a bizarre concept, and it would be up to fans of the gaming series if this would be accepted into the overall Final Fantasy medium given it is canonically tied with such in the first place. Otherwise is just plain weird, very short, and not much else.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 3, 2013

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Before I begin, let me start with a quick disclaimer. I like the Final Fantasy games, for the most part. If I poke fun at the franchise a bit during the course of this review it's not because I just don't like the series, it's because the series has a lot of goofy aspects. I've looked at a few anime adaptations of video games in the past. I've looked at bad ones, Ninja Gaiden being the obvious example. Average ones, Nightstalkers and ones that were pretty good, Tales of Phantasia. This week I'm going to be looking at a selection from one of my favourite ... game companies, Square and our old friends at Madhouse. This is Final Fantasy, Legend of the Crystals.

Legend of the Crystals takes place several centuries after the events of Final Fantasy V. Linaly, a descendant of Bartz, is going to the temple of the wind to safeguard the crystal. She's followed by a young man named Prettz. The two find the crystal, which decides to hide itself in Linaly's body, which causes her bum to glow for some reason. The two find out that the other crystals have been stolen and find themselves targeted by mechanical beings who are trying to get the last one. They even build a Proctologist robot for that very purpose. Not really, but that would've been moderately less stupid than what actually happens. The actual story is pretty minimal and very cliche. The plot element of Linaly's firefly bottom mostly serves as an excuse for fan-service shots, on a character who looks to be all of twelve, classy. The final battle scene is quite anti-climactic and a lot of the events in the plot happen by virtue of plot contrivance instead of as a part of any kind of cohesive whole.

The characters in this are dreadful. You have Linaly, who spends most of her time either getting kidnapped or acting as a compass. She brings great shame on Bartz's name, and he's not even one of the good FF protagonists. He's okay though, which still makes him far too good of a character to be associated with this helpless twerp. Prettz is only slightly better, being an annoying moron. Then you have Rouge, a character who does absolutely nothing plot relevant. The other major characters are Mid, a ghost who basically serves as a guide for the majority of the OVA, Valkus, a muscle-head with all of one personality trait, and Ra Devil, the antagonist who makes Exdeath look like the best developed character ever by comparison.

The art in this is largely just lazy. With shading being used almost never. The facial expressions used for the characters tend to range from blank to dull surprise with very little variation. A lot of scenes are also repeated pretty much verbatim. To give an example, there's an action scene in which a large woman tries to slice our protagonists with a sword, only to have them duck. Then it happens two more times and it's pretty much the same every single time. The chocobos in this look terrible. They don't have their traditional yellow feathers, looking more like plucked ostriches, their beaks and eyes are also off. Then we have the fan-service. There are a lot of panty shots of our twelve year old heroine, because Madhouse decided to put their grossest people on this project. Linaly, put on some proper pants. Your shorts are far too short. Especially given your age. Rouge's outfit is just terrible. She looks like she's wearing bondage straps. Lady, most people can't pull bondage gear off as an outfit for action and you certainly aren't Sephiroth. Valkus just looks like a badly drawn 90s comic hero with a head that's too small for his overly muscled body.

Madhouse did get some really good voice actors for this. Particularly Ogata Kenichi, Yamazaki Wakana and Minaguchi Yoko. However, they don't give their best performances. In fact, their performances are kind of mediocre. The music is the best part of the OVA. It's the only aspect of the OVA that actually feels like a Final Fantasy game.

The yuri factor is a 1/10. The female characters barely even interact.

that was Legend of the Crystals, and it is bad. To be fair, the story is only the fifth worst I've seen in conjunction with the Final Fantasy title, but that isn't saying a whole lot. The franchise may have some great stories and characters, but it also has some really bad ones. It's not the worst video game adaptation I've reviewed either, but it's down there. My final rating is a 2.4/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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