Back to PedophileFucker's Profile PedophileFucker's Profile

This animated short which seems to be unrelated to any Sonic game story-wise takes place in a haunted mansion inhabited by ghosts who fight for the affection of an attractive female ghosts by taking pictures of visitors they scare, a concept which is whimsical and I daresay cute for the fact said ghost girl has an affinity for collecting said photos. At one point Sonic and Chip visit the house and the duo once again have an opportunity to impress their love interest. The ghosts manage to take a few photos of the scared Chip much to the girl ghost's delight, until she ... notices Sonic's face on the picture and throws a tantrum, I assume because on said shots he's not showing fear of any sort.

The duo then make their mission to try and scare Sonic to have his picture taken, but then he turns into the Werehog to fend them off, having their own pictures taken instead. This in turn sends the girl ghost into a fit of laughter that looks more like she's having an epilectic seizure, to which the male ghosts then decide to unite forces and turn into a menacing spectre to fight Sonic out of retribution for having their pride dishonored. What transpires can be depicted as a very shoddy fight scene, filled with slow-downs and unnerving camera shaking, the likes you would most likely experience in current Sonic games in fact. Sonic as the Werehog manages to defeat the duo as the girl ghost suddenly falls for him after seeing a photo on his Werehog estate.

On the next scene we see Sonic still transformed even though its daylight and Chip acting strangely affectionate towards him and forcing Sonic in taking a picture with with and surprise, in the revealing photo shows that Chip is in fact the ghost girl that decided to go on venturing with Sonic after leaving the mansion. On the post credits scene we see Chip tied up to a chair struggling to set himself free as the two remaining ghosts watch Sonic and the transformed ghost girl walk off in despair through a window.

The first thing that bothered me was the fact that this animation seems to come out of nowhere and out of the blue, being that it doesn't seem to be adapted from Sonic Unleashed itself so I am not sure where Sega intended to go with this in the first place. I agree that it is a random short and the story would not really matter as with other animated shorts of any kind done before, but if there is no connection between the scenario and characters introduced with said videogame world then it leaves watchers a bit confused as to what exactly this has to do with everything overall, this includes the fact that Sonic and Chip simply stumble into the mansion with no reason in the least. While the lack of spoken words seem ideal, it would had help if there was dialogue including Sonic's reason to enter said mansion in the first place.

The animation can be nice but blurry at times, some movements seem awfully awkward, as with Chip when he gives Sonic tips on dealing with the ghosts and the ghost girl having a giggling fit for instance. The ghost girl is awfully cute, and probably the best designed character of all, but her affections towards Sonic seems trivial at best. Another aspect of the animation is the fact Sonic remains as a Werehog even during sunlight, when he and the ghost girl posing as Chip leave the mansion. I cannot judge this episode to oharshly either, being that it looks more like an innocent animation project more than anything else, and its reasons seem equally as innocent. I just wish it could had been a bit more memorable and related to the game that it supposed to be derived from.

Before Square-Enix decided to doom your expectations with Spirits Within in 2001, there was an Anime made loosely based on one of the main entries of the series called Legend of the Crystals, which was a 4-part OAV serving as a sequel to Final Fantasy V. Released in Japan in 1994, then in the US in 1998, few got to glimpse and have their hopes shattered at how weird it really was. For one, it was decided that instead of a game, an Anime would be chosen to become the sequel to a game which not many were aware of at the time. Unless you ... had played a ROM of the game, you would had never imagined what Legend of the Crystals was based on, being that the first port of it for PlayStation was released in 1999, a whole year after the OAV was around. The Internet and word of mouth from gaming magazines would had been the only places where you could had known what it was a sequel to overall, and the Internet was quite young at that time as well.


To make matters worse, the events of said animated sequel take far into the future of the game's events, over 200 years to be exact, with not many of the cast from said game being present other than by name. The fact that some characters are descendants of the main videogame heroes doesn't make up much to make anything relevant about said game unless you had played Final Fantasy V one way or another and know about it which at that time was pretty darn hard to do. Fans would welcome it as a bizarre first entry to the gaming series when they had no idea just who everyone was here besides some themes from the franchise such as the Crystals for example.


Besides that, Legend of the Crystals does a good job in giving shoutouts to various themes from the game itself, such as the world they live in dubbed Planet R in the Anime, showing a map of the entire place as shown in the game as well as apparitions from the main heroes and characters like Mid who were in said game overall, along with familiar locales like the Wind Shrine and Tycoon Castle. The rest is simply added as an afterthought, featuring flying machines, robots and advanced technology found in otherwise otherworldly locations such as the Black Moon which was added for the Anime only and has no play within the original game's story. I was able to experience it on VHS during my days as a Blockbuster employee, with the only upside being that I didn't had to pay the rental fee.


The story centers around two young kids named Prettz and Linally, who the latter is a descendant of Bartz, one of the main characters from Final Fantasy V and an amateur summoner, whose ability is mostly calling forth ugly Chocobos. Very ugly Chocobos. Both embark on a journey to prevent a new evil being called Ra Devil (how original,) who attempts to gather all Elemental Crystals and use them for his own malign desires. On their attempt to protect the remaining crystal, it dives inside Linaly's body, leaving her with a glowing ass. No joke.


They also meet with a ghost named Mid, grandson of the legendary Cid (who never gets mentioned by name,) which helped the heroes back in the events of the game, Valyos, captain of Tycoon Castle's Iron Wings, and Rogue, leader of a sky pirate group who seemingly has nothing to do with the characters before the events of Anime. Mid goes explaining that an evil being called Deathgyunos has been gathering up the Crystals for his own nefarious motives and decided to hide last remaining one in Linaly's body to prevent being stolen. He also explains that he is a ghost who lived 200 years prior and came back to help protect the crystals.


Things get a bit sketchy after Mid's explanation of the main bad guy here. He goes on stating Ra Devil (who would become Deathgyunos) was the one responsible for stealing his grandfather's brain from the graveyard (what?) killing him in the process. They all assume that his base would be located on the Black Moon which orbits their planet without much insight of just who Deathgyunos came from in the first place. Guess a back-story for the main villain was just not needed nor cared for other for his pendant for brains. From then on Ra Devil would become Deathgyunos which has been known by the time the Anime's story was brought.


They come to the conclusion the Black Moon must be his base of operations since his grandfather's voice continued calling out to him from said place for hundred of years. That's pretty depressing to be honest. On their way to awake a flying dragon that would take them to the Black Moon, Linaly gets captured by Ra Devil explaining he would now go on to become Deathgyonus, even though he was already being called by that name to begin with. Prettz and the rest board ships anchored by the flying dragon that then flies into space to reach the Black Moon. Upon arriving the dragon gets struck down by lightning and all fall into the surface, which for some strange reason looks like a destroyed modern day city from Earth, complete with demolished buildings and highways. At this point I just stopped making sense of what was going on anymore.


The big final battle ensues and Deathgyunos gets defeated with a single slice of Prettz' oversized sword. Everyone gets reunited with whoever was around and the world is saved. A parting shot of the heroes from Final Fantasy V is shown in the sky before the ending is played. And that was Legend of the Crystals, an animated sequel to Final Fantasy V which was not that known during that time but it was distributed overseas taking up that risk.


Legend of the Crystals is quite an oddity. If you get past its weirdness and amusing concepts, Legend of the Crystals serves its purpose well to a point, honoring the gaming series in a way. The fan service shown is pretty absurd as well, not sure why the crystal would glow inside Lilyana's posterior of all places for example. There's also some inconsistencies within the Anime, one being that in the game, the crystals pretty much were destroyed and thus no longer part of the world by the end of the game's events, in here however they all appear even if they are smaller in size, and some of the locales like Tycoon Castle resemble the Taj Mahal, with the world having this weird oriental look to it in comparison to the medieval style that was in the game. The OAV really doesn't explain why there are crystals during this time but I guess this is just a trivial issue to ponder upon at most. All in all Legend of the Crystals is a bizarre concept, and it would be up to fans of the gaming series if this would be accepted into the overall Final Fantasy medium given it is canonically tied with such in the first place. Otherwise is just plain weird, very short, and not much else.

Only watch this if your desire to watch every other Tenchi Muyo series pushes you to be a completionist. Otherwise, its just a waste. This spin-off has little to do with anyone who is a mainstay of the series, no one here has any relation to the main cast from most of the series unless you count that character named after the famed space pirate. It is quite funny and raunchy, but the connection to the series its supposed to be part of isn't there and quite frankly it could had gone by any other different name so to not make it ... seem like it wanted to gain status by sharing the title on its series.