Winter 2022 First Impressions – Tales of Luminaria: The Fateful Crossroad

Streaming: Funimation and Crunchyroll

Episodes: 2

Source: Smartphone Game

Episode Summary: The Empire has enjoyed the benefit of a device called the Piliar, which draws forth mana from fossils within the Earth. Because of this, they reap the positive effects of almost limitless power, medical advancement, and food production. But the dark side to this is that the mana drain has had a terrible effect on many smaller surrounding communities, leaving them unable to provide for themselves and creating many refugees in the process.

Leo, Celia, and their instructor Lisette, have been coopted into the fight for the fate of the world, using their prowess in battle to help escort a scientist and his specially-modified key to the Piliar in order to stall its operation and reverse its negative effects. Unfortunately there are multiple factions after this key, including Hugo, who was once one of Leo’s closest comrades. When Hugo comes out victorious and utilizes the key in the Piliar, however, they all discover that they were simply the pawns of a much larger, and much darker, force.

Impressions: I realized probably too late while watching this that its the first part of a two-part short film, and while I wouldn’t typically give this sort of thing the first episode treatment, I felt like my time was well spent watching it so I may as well write something about it.

This two episode ONA was released in conjunction with a smartphone game. Tie-ins like this aren’t uncommon in the least; it seems like almost any gacha-style game these days that finds itself with enough popularity could end up with an adaptation. What’s maybe unusual about this one is, rather than being treated as a cheap cash-in, it seems to have been provided enough time and financial resources to develop into something that, if not exactly top-tier compelling, is at least fairly entertaining and definitely easy on the eyes.

The story is RPG-standard fare. The evil empire is doing a bad thing – in this case stealing resources – and the heroes are here to put a stop to it. The caveat, of course, is that what the empire is doing with the power it’s siphoning isn’t especially evil but for the fact that they’re hoarding the benefits they’re gaining. The populace is seeing the positive effects of powerful medical treatment and famine-proof food supplies, so for those who aren’t aware of what’s going on in the outside world, this is a paradise. Just as with reality, however, the lack of interest in the truth on the part of the citizenry, as well as the lack of interest by the authorities in revealing that inconvenient truth, creates an unsustainable situation. I appreciate that this story at least attempts to incorporate this bit of nuance.

The rest of the episode is pretty basic childhood friends-turned-enemies tropeyness with some cool powers to augment the conflict that the characters have, but if you’ve played any number of other JRPGs you’re probably not going to find anything groundbreaking about that. Still, it’s a fast-paced episode with some cool fights and very little else to really complain about, so I’m going to chalk that up as a small victory. Sometimes “not a waste of my time” is something worth savoring.

Pros: You know, perhaps this is simply because every anime season lately seems to come packaged with at least one real stinker of a CG animated show, but I spent the majority of this episode just absolutely delighted at the quality of the CG character animation. The character movement feels natural most of the time (I suspect they used motion-capture at least some of the time), and overall it manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that plague this type of animation, especially the weird facial angles and wrong-looking mouths (curse those goofy mouths!). The actions scenes are actually fun to watch and don’t seem to rely on gimmicky framing. There’s also a decent melding of the 3D elements with some 2D animated effects and accessories. The most impressive to me were two characters who wore capes for part of the episode; the capes were hand-drawn on top of the CG models and didn’t look completely out-of-place.

Cons: This is likely an effect of being a short series, but most of the characterization and plot material is extremely surface-level, meaning that however high the stakes might be stated to be, that weight isn’t completely communicated by what we actually get.

I’d also like to make note of the fact that two of the three women we see depicted throughout a good portion of the episode have some of the most ridiculous outfits I’ve seen lately. I suppose this is par for the course when it comes to RPG outfits, but it makes me want to revive the discussion about nonsensical boob armor and dangerously exposed skin just for old time’s sake.

Content Warnings: Fantasy violence (magic and swordplay). Discrimination against refugees.

Would I Watch More? – If this were a full series I probably wouldn’t bother, but with a mere 25 minutes left in the story I might just go finish it off right now. At the very least, I feel like I can expect some mindlessly-fun fantasy fighting entertainment.