Yay, speedlines.
Double length episode, so if the screencaps seem a little disjointed, that’s why.
Impressions:
Can’t say that I’m super impressed though, or that this needed to be a double length episode. I can’t even say that it’s because they needed to fit in all the random-ass 108 Stars of Destiny cameos that would become random tagalong party members or base NPCs. There’s just long sections where it pretends like something’s about to happen and then just… doesn’t. Especially the failed escape into… successful escape. That’s five minutes of spinning its wheels in place. And since we’re not an RPG, all these cameos are just unique designs who pop up, say two lines, and then vanish back into the ether.
It certainly has that turn of the century PS2 level writing. The antagonists just want to kill things because why the hell not. And their plan when the two walk back up to ask what they meant by “we murdered everybody as we planned to murder everyone,” is to yell “And I’m gonna murder you too!” It also doesn’t help that there’s only one sort of action scene in the entire episode, which is five seconds of very well animated rooftop parkour, but it was also already shown in the promos. Rather than being just a taste, that turned out to be the entire meal. When the big rescue came, it was stills on speedlines.
Maybe Suikoden fans will get more from this than me, or simply excitedly clap their hands at seeing it adapted… or be angry at it not being adapted correctly, I honestly couldn’t say, but it wasn’t a very engaging first episode that took a very long time to extricate itself from its obvious setup and then ended on embarrassingly unanimated scenes.
