Hell yea, Anise you are such a meanie
Now who would have thought that Arietta was raised by the very same Liger mother that our very own heros brutally murdered the other day? Not only that, they didn’t even spare her unhatched eggs. Those are Arietta’s brothers and sisters you know! How could you be so cruel!
Thoughts: Despite reading about how annoying or boring Arietta is as a character, I actually felt rather sorry for her and will at least offer some sympathy. This isn’t because she is the silent loli type with a potential heavily tragic past (oh no, not that being raised by wild animals is tragic at all) but because she has yet to do anything wrong so far so it is kind of unfair to critisize her…and because she looks so huggable 
I found this episode to be pretty much on par with the previous one so it wasn’t bad but still isn’t outstanding. But being inoffensive as well I still find myself enjoying this series more than I should…for the moment anyway. This series has proven to be quite enjoyable and relaxing to view and it is one of those series where you won’t want to ask for more even if there is space for improvement.
The episode starts off with showing that Tear is fine and well (thankgod to some haxx/godlike healing on her part, seriously) and they party journeys on through a fiend infested forest. After a quick fight scene, which showed off some quality, Guy learns about this scary person called Anise (“everything is find because it IS Anise” ~ Scaryyy).
Well soon enough Guy finds out that this Anise is a girl and of the worse kind for him being loli AND clingy. Speaking about Guy, I am now interested in what kind of past he has had to lead him to have such a flashback when Anise jumped onto him. It seems like his gynophobia isn’t something he was born with but something that developed sometime in his past. The falling woman in his flashback…mother? sister? girlfriend? Whoever she is, it seems like her death may have caused Guy to be in fear of the opposite sex.
Blah, blah some talking and then we see Arietta crashing in front of the party telling them to come to “x” place if they want to save the hostages. This lead the party into a fight with her in some castle and boy does she have a lot of animal guardians
Meanwhile, Luke is crap and gets kidnapped into some lab where horrible experiments a unfolded onto him by a mad scientist called Dist who has insanely long and CG animated arms (WTF).
I felt sorry for Arietta to see her animal friends getting hurt but she should have been prepared for that. But I will still give her some sympathy because she is being manipulated by others who do have some sort of evil plan in mind. What Arietta did was to follow her gut feelings of wanting revenge for her mother and those feelings where exploited and used to do someone else’s dirty work (glares at Asch the Bastard).
But the episode ends well with Ariette behind bars (okay, that is sad) and Luke being saved. Though his biological data was ripped off by Dist and god knows what he would be doing with it…probably clone an army of Luke for his own enjoyment? He seems like that type of fellow anyway.
Screen caps and “wise guy” comments:
MMM…Tear’s sleeping face
With healing powers like that, fatal injuries are a thing of the past
Indeed, it should be YOU who should do the apologizing
Kyaaa~ Jya nai!
I love this scene :p
Completely pwned
But Luke, you need to grind to level up and that takes hard work (which understandably you aren’t used to)
Anise…who the heck is this monster
I have said too much 😡
You still don’t know? O.o
Basically that in a nutshell
Angst, tragic, angst ;____;
YOU EVIL!!!
(For the reply, refer to the top image)
Awww, you guys don’t have to go out on a limb for some nameless character
“Gotcha!”
Wait…what’s this?
Some deep…dark…past huh
But its just typical to have amnesia at the important points
Luke sucks
So does Anise
This is another hint that she is fighting for Ion’s affection just like Anise is. It will be interesting to find how and why Ion didn’t chose Arietta instead
*Gasp!*
Those CG arms are “quality” and hilarious at the same time
NOOOOOOO!
Now lets see what is so special about Luke’s data…maybe they will find a cure for his ass-like personality
LOL ~ They sure posed for that picture XD
When Anime Past Meets Present 
The instinctive feeling when Anise got tossed to the ground off Guy is feeling bad for her. But then you think about what Anise has been up to overall and there is just less pity :).
True that if Arietta wanted her ‘friends’ to be safe she shouldn’t have gotten into the fight. Went into that thing with too many opponents to get through. Though Asch gets the plan going and then conveniently lets everyone else do something. Can’t think where he was during all of this.
Didn’t like what went down with the ligers before, and after finding out about Arietta liked it even less. Everyone trying to survive and sadly the ligers got the short end of the stick.
Definitely need to remind Luke that grinding levels takes time. Have to deal with the weaklings or you’ll get owned by the boss later.
Going back to the killing humans is wrong but killing monsters is okay question, I remember that Luke did show remorse for the destruction of the Liger Queen’s babies (If not in the anime, at least in the game). So for Luke, it’s one thing to kill monsters to survive. It’s another thing if he starts killing humans and unborn monsters.
You know, I think Sunrise should’ve made it somewhat like the game and actually had Anise be frightened. In the game, she got freaked out by something (Forgot if it was a rat or not), which caused her to accidently latch onto Guy. The fact that the anime made it look like she accidently latch onto Guy for the sake of trying to “act” like a scared loli definitely made her seem more annoying. However, I do like the fact that they gave Guy that quick flashback instead of the game’s ten second pause. People can now see that there’s behind his gynophobia and not just because people think he’s gay (Though there is the questionable Luke and Guy “Sonic Thrust” training session).
I’m pleased with the general pacing of the story in this episode. They actually skipped a couple of stops and scenes from the game, but it was all for the better. After all, Sunrise wants to hit all of the major scenes in the game within the 26 episodes so I’m glad they took the time to cut out a couple of scenes (Though I do miss Ion’s impression of Anise’s “I’ll kill you bastards!’ line and Tear using Guy’s fear of women to get him to shut up.)
Asch is a jerk. I like him a lot, but yes, he can be a real jerk.
Honestly, Dist’s CG arms was just plain awesome and it’ll be hilarious once he show himself before everyone in the next episode.
You also forgot to mention a couple of new mysteries added:
*Jade’s reaction to the machinery. When someone like Jade is actually surprised, you have to take notice.
*Sync’s mask being knocked off. We all know he’s hiding something and while I do know what it is, that’s definitely something you have to wonder about.
@Deathkillz:
“This is another hint that she is fighting for Ion’s affection just like Anise is. It will be interesting to find how and why Ion didn’t chose Arietta instead”
You’re just gonna have to wait for it, because there’s a very good reason for that.
Another awesome skit from the game. No Tear this time (Since the other ones would be spoilerish), but it deals with Guy’s gynophobia and Jade’s awesomeness:
@FlareKnight ~ Pity? How can you even think that XD
She had it coming to her 😉
And whilst I do say that it is sad that the team completely trashed mama Liger, on the other hand, she did bring it on herself for being such an angry beast…then again she is just an animal void of many human emotions. The main culprit here is Mieu…
As if it wasn’t for that little bugger buring away the mama liger’s home, then she wouldn’t have been in such a situation in the first place. Yea…damn you Mieu!!
@Setsu ~ Ahh…I surely can’t escape from your eyes XD
Okay I did forget about Jade losing his cool for once (which is like “ZOMG IMPOSSIBLE!”). Maybe he is an old “friendly” acquaintance of Dist. *Shrugs*
But Dist is great as the mad doctor character type…talk about first impressions with those CG arms XD
And Sync’s mask being knocked off eh? Well the first thing that comes to mind is why he needs to hide his face in the first place. Either he doesn’t want anyone to recognise him because he is a spy for the bad guys (or something) or he has something to hide away from our heros, I’m pointing towards Guy alone seen as he was the one who knocked the mask off.
The sonic thrust scene…ahhh, that made me laugh XD
Oh and, “Peta peta peta peta ~”
@Setsu: The answer to your question from elsewhere is that I think the Tales of The Abyss anime is doing what it should be and doing it well. That is, providing a solid adaptation of the games story from one format to another. You know, Phantasia and Symhonia really blew it completely with the 4 episode OVA format. Everyone who has ever played either of those games should know that 4 episodes is simply not enough to cover even an arc of the storyline let alone the whole thing without sacrificing important or favourite plot details and the proper development of the characters.
Abyss is doing it right so far though and it owes more then anything to the 26 episode count that has been allotted to the project. I hope (but doubt) that this will encourage other enterprises to step up to just do what darn well needs to be done when it comes to an adaptation. It’s not that they are hard to do right, no matter what somebody might tell you, it’s just that companies rarely try.
@Setsu
Yeah, this is the scene I was talking about… So I guess I can expect more Anise/Ion/Gloomietta (lol) drama later on then 🙂
@Death
(Oh and, “Peta peta peta peta ~”)
“Hai hai, peta peta peta…” 😀
Thanks for you visit ^^