By your powers combined, I am…
What They Say:
Episode 24 “The Chosen Answer”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This episode of Zestiria starts to throw around terms which mean little to an anime-only audience once again. The supreme seraph of the world is, for unclear reasons, a dragon which retained its personality. A tragedy in the past, one born of jealousy, corrupted even this purist spirit. The world that both the previous Shepherd, and his successor Sorey, dream of is one where seraph and humans live side by side in harmony. That dream was crushed by an enormous act of betrayal. It’s hard to imagine that one man would be so bitter than he’d destroy his friend so thoroughly. Yet that’s what Heldalf, the Lord of Calamity, did to the previous Shepherd Michael.
To make matters worse, Michael then cursed Heldalf, dooming him to a future forever alone. Solitude made the malevolence in his heart grow larger, eventually engulfing and utterly consuming him. Or at least, that’s the past as Sorey witnesses it through Heldalfs heart as he attacks him.
This is the final missing clue as to the motivation of the end boss. The fact that the previous Shepherd is ultimately responsible for creating this monster is sort of a kick in the teeth. Lailah knew all of this, but when the dragon gave her the ability to choose the next Shepherd he swore her to secrecy. That’s one big burden to bare, but we don’t really get Lailah’s opinions on the whole mess.
It’s easy to run into the lair of the final boss and start swinging your biggest and best attacks at it, but violence isn’t the answer to the darkness here. There’s a corrupt world dragon to fix, and an enormous amount of energy is going to be required to purify the scene. An amount of power that’s unlikely to come from Sorey himself. So he does something unheard of and attempts to armatize all four elemental seraphim in his employ to break through the negative barrier keeping the Lord of Calamity cut off. Sorey thinks the man can still be saved because why would he have gathered his forces away from the wars of civilization? It doesn’t make sense unless a small part of him wants to save humanity.
The animation in this episode looks just a touch off. It’s not bad, just more stilted and less creative than normal. The attacks are still flashy, but the camera work is just okay and there’s not a lot going on despite all of that. Which might explain why the final episode has been postponed a month. Either that or Tales studio is using it as an excuse to coincide with the announcement of another Tales game. After all, this project is nothing more than one long advertisement.
In Summary:
I have a feeling that Tales of Zestiria the X will be one of those series best binge watched. This entire episode is a whole lot of build up and one flashback. Granted, it’s a hugely important flashback that shows how the big bad became that way, but it lacks emotional context. The episode ends just prior to what I assume will be the final attack. An attack we won’t get to see for a month because the final episode has been pushed back. Hopefully that means it’s going to be an animation explosion because everything looked a bit reused in this episode.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Funimation and Daisuki
