Hello everyone,
Let's go ahead with another review of a rather recent (2007) battle/comedy/romance anime series adapted from a very successfull erogè named Prism Ark ~ Prism Heart II.
Let's start with a synopsis :
The Sablum Empire has been attempting to take over the kingdom of Windland for many years, and are now plotting with the mercenaries Sister Hell and Darkness Knight to start a new offensive using powerful magical beings called Angels. Hyaweh, a carefree yet talented swordsman, and Priecia, who just might be the lost princess of Windland, are enrolled at the Knight's Academy in Windland to hone their skill at swords and sorcery. There they meet many friends and allies who can help them protect their homeland from the impending invasion.
The story is pretty much clichè, but the execution is really wonderful (especially in the original erogè) that adding up to a graphic very advanced for the time made the success of this title.
I'll be honest, the anime adaptation sucked cause they tried to stick up everything into a mere 12 episodes series making the whole concept fall apart.
They forgot about some wonderful scenes and just crammed up a bunch of parts from the erogè that in the end maked no sense. They also recreated the ending from scratch I think due to time constraint as they stopped less than halfway in the erogè storyline.
The erogè instead had a great cure for the details and the story, divided into chapters, is slowly shown to the user and explained till the final confrontation with that damned Judas!
It had many recurring antics like Fel destroying the principal statues (there is a full warehouse of them) with her magic or wonderful comical scenes.
I'm still laughing out hard when they pone you a choice with three magic to chant during a recreational break in the school and two of them are spell that would likely destroy the entire school if cast!
Wondeful are also all the misunderstanding scenes between Karin, Hyaweh (our protagonist) and Fillia in the Karin's own route.
Great care is given into the characters backstory in the erogè, I was particularly touched by Sister Hell's backstory with all the pain she had to endure during the last years after she decided to fight for the peoples she care for.
Also very touching is the Fel backstory with her time prisoner into the facility, the experiments on her and finally her escape. I was really happy when she was finally free together with Hyaweh at the end of her route.
You'll end up loving all the characters and to be honest, but I enjoyed killing Judas at the end of each route as they managed to create a really hateful enemy character that you can really despise from the bottom of the heart.
If you're about to ask, no the whole scene with the two becoming a mecha using the sword and fighting the other mecha is totally new created in the anime, in the original erogè the sword power was to STOP all creations based on the genetic code of the angels and the only time it was willingly used was as a last resort against Judas using a chant by our protagonist and the heroine in the climax of the story
I still remember clearly the Fel type of chant (each heroine had a slightly different one) :
我、主の命を受けし時、其の輝きを以て有翼の民を治む
これわ希望。ひとの世の安息を護持センと期する心の光
その尊き想いこそが審判の剣
真なる裁き、その身に刻め！
The soundtrack is another nice part of this series, each and every (there are twelve of them) song featured inside the game are really good and I still listen to them now years after playing this game.
Loved especially "Far and Away ~ Party Nights" and "Sigh..." both sung by Momo-i Haruko.
Also the anime opening and ending were quite good likely because they were mostly from the same artists from the game.
Concluding I suggest to anyone looking for a story with a solid plot to give a look at the original game, but to stay away from the anime that while funny is just a random assemble of scenes that if you don't know the original game will make no sense to you.
See you soon,
feal87