Tales of Vesperia ~The First Strike~

Finally! I was waiting for the movie for nearly 9 month before the Blu-Ray and subs were released :D

Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike (テイルズ オブ ヴェスペリア 〜The First Strike〜) is a 2009 Japanese animated film directed by Kenta Kamei and written by Reiko Yoshida. It is the prequel to the game Tales of Vesperia and the first animated feature film in the Tales series. It was released in Japan on October 3, 2009. While other Tales games have been adopted into other media, this is the first Tales game made into a film. The source game's theme song, "Ring a Bell" (鐘を鳴らして, Kane o Narashite) by Bonnie Pink, was reused as the movie's theme song.

Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike takes place a few years after the end of the Great War before the events in Tales of Vesperia. The previous Emperor had just died and his position remains vacant with no heir appointed before his death, however the world seemingly remains in a state of peace. Utilizing the power of a powerful substance known as aer the people of the planet Terca Lumireis are in an age of discovery and prosperity. The crystallized form of aer which is known as Apatheia, is considered to be a very powerful energy source as it is essential to human life. In order to protect towns from attacks by monsters large amounts of Apatheia are being produced to create barriers around towns.

One day in a deep forest near the town of Shizontania, Yuri Lowell and Flynn Scifo, two knights who have just joined the Niren Corps, together with two of their senior knights and fellow Corps members, Hisca and Chastel, are sent on a mission to investigate an abnormal gushing of aer in the area

• trivia: Just want to note that the info above (sauce Wikipedia) is not quite accurate, as while concentrated Aer does indeed form Apathea, this entity never existed or used in the movie, not until the video game where Apathea was formed through crystallization from Entelexeia (all these are terms from the game which does not make sense for non-player, but in short, the article actually refers to Blastia, and not Apathea).

As summed above, Tales of Vesperia ~The First Strike~ tells the events happening a few years back before the game took place which eventually leads to Yuri resigning from the Knights and live at the Lower Quarter as we saw at the beginning of Tales of Vesperia, the game.

The movie starts off with the basic of Vesperia – the aer, blastia, though they leave things like Core, Aer Krene etc until midway through and never dwelve into game-specific terms like Apathea and Entelexeia. Together with Flynn, Yuri joined Knight of the Imperial and were stationed in a rural town called Shizontania. The town currently faced trouble in that the aer concentration around the area increased drastically due to experimental Blastia located in an ancient ruin located near the town, causing negative side effects to plants and monsters aggression. And so they went to investigate the cause of the aer abnormality, with some surprise awaiting them... In the end, we never really know what’s the blastia in those ruins and never given the chance to visit those place in the game, at least in the 360 version.

The movie was about 2 hours long, and all I can say is that the movie is totally awesome. Really good animation, it has pretty mnuch the same design as the anime cinematic in the game, but with somewhat polished environment and side effects. The spells used early in the movie when they terminate all those horde of monsters were awsm, kinda like the infamous Indignition lol.

New characters were introduced in the movie, and one of the highlight would be the ponytail twin Hisuka and Chastel (the bigger one LOL). Funny that the only way to distinguish both of them is by their bust size. There's also the a few other knights in the town and peoples from the guilds that we never saw in the game. Meanwhile, some major game's character plays little to no role in this movie. Estelle appeared for about 2 minutes talking to Flynn; Raven with his usual guild work and disguise; Alexei was worse than the "good-attitude" commandant we saw early in the game; Rita only appeared to give some advice and Blastia that helps with the ruin investigation. NO Judith. NO Karol. NO Duke. And NO Droite and Gauche :( Well, not that they matters.

Original music compositions were used for the movie. None of the bgms from the game were used, except a few that I remember like the early bgm and of course, the ending song which was the game’s original theme. I just realize that the lyric of Japanese translated ED song is totally different than the English song (Ring a Bell by Bonnie Pink) used in the game. Overall I do prefer the English version though.

On a side note, I see Yuri still maintains his sword-flipping skill that he always done after each combo in battle. Didn’t realize at first that was fighting without any blastia, no wonder we were not shown any Artes usage by both him and Flynn in the whole movie (except those final battle). With the amount of monsters and bosses in this movie, I would not be surprised if someday there will be a short game based on this movie/story. Oh and Repede chibi made me LOL. He just can’t stop chewing something in his mouth :3

Overall, I am very satisfied with the movie, it explains a number of stuff that makes the game a bit more clearer, especially regarding Yuri and Flynn's past; a bit of Repede's past; the sources of Yuri's Bodhi Blastia (what a sad story) and why he come to resent the Knights of the Imperial. Comedy and humor, sadness and touching moments all mixed well. Really good movie overall, a good watch for people who like adventure/fantasy anime, and totally a must watch for Tales of Vesperia fans.

Niren: “The larger one’s going with me”

Yuri: “You said the larger one, but they’re the same height, right?” LOLOLOLOL

p/s: there’s so many animated scene of the game cutscene in the ED. Implying there would be Vesperia TV series??? AWSM!