Tales of the Abyss Anime - Ep. 1, 2, & 3

Synopses and Fansub group listings/ratings at:
AniDB & ANN


Unlike most adaptations of the Tales of games into anime, the current anime adaptation of Tales of the Abyss will be a full length anime, and it is being handled by Sunrise (which is a part of Bandai, which is now a part of Namco-Bandai, which is responsible for Tales of now). As such, it's expected that the show will go into a fair amount of detail with the plot, in contrast to the OVA adaptations that Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia recieved (both of which were not even 6 episodes--half a cour--long).

I'm unsure what to say of it, other than that thus far I have enjoyed it, and am very happy at how faithful it is to the source material, without getting too tedious. The personalities of the characters are brought out well, and the nuances of the original are typically preserved. In the end though, there is quite a lot of material to cover, and they're forced to do it rather quickly, but
I am sure that was done in the interest of the casual viewer, though some may question the wiseness of appealing to the general populace rather than the established fanbase.

As expected of Sunrise, the production values are great, and though I had played the English version of the game (and thus, heard the dub voices rather than the Japanese voices), the acting seems overall well done. The fact that Tear (who, before now, was probably my least liked character from the main party) is voiced by the same actor as C.C. (as she always was, so perhaps it's more correct to say C.C.'s voiced by the same person as Tear), makes her a lot more interesting, though her random moments of "kawaii...!" still fail to really amuse me. Anise's "I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU BASTARDS!!!" on the other hand, was really well delivered.

My only complaint so far with the series is the strange, seemingly unnecessary adjustment of Anise's skin tone, which, for whatever reason, they saw fit to lighten up. And not only did they just lighten it up, but they left all the other elements of her character design to be suggestive of a more Latin sort of ethnicity, with the particularly curly hair and all. The result is what seems to be a sickly pale brown child, rather than "just another fair skinned person". Observe:

Compared to:


Otherwise, the show is shaping up to be one of the better offerings this season, which isn't saying much due to the high volume of good shows, from everything I've watched thus far.

The OP is Karma by BUMP OF CHICKEN, just like the game, and is as excellent as the first time I heard it (though that time, there would be no vocals due to the English localization of the game only having the instrumental cover for it, not wanting to pay licensing fees for the vocals, or trying to make a probably terrible English cover of it), while the ED is Bouken Houkiboshi by Kurumi Enomoto, which I've taken quite a liking to too.

For your listening pleasure:

The Original Game OP:


The Anime OP:


The Anime ED:


To note, I am particularly happy with the fact that at the end of the anime OP, it has Anise running up to Luke and hugging him rather than any of the other female characters, since it shows they prioritized the personalities of the characters, over decision based on "true pairings" (that is, though Luke's ultimately destined to actually end up with a girl who's not-Anise--not that I think that's hard to guess at--, it's only Anise--especially early on in the series--who would actually hug him like that).