prism heart – Ramblings of DarkMirage http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com Anime, Games, J-Pop and Whatever Else Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:10:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 Prism Ark http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/10/08/prism-ark/ http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/10/08/prism-ark/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:31:52 +0000 http://2pwn.tk/websites/www.darkmirage.com/2007/10/08/prism-ark/ Continue reading ]]> Prism Ark (aka Prism Hearts II) is a 2006 SRPG/ADV game from Pajamas Soft. The heroine, Priecia, is the daughter of the main characters from the original Prism Heart. She’s voiced by Yui Sakakibara, aka Haruhi from Happiness!.

Prism Ark

The general premise of the game is turn-based strategy role-playing etc, and I sort of recall the game having a few somewhat innovative features in its battle system but I can’t remember what exactly.

I thought the game wasn’t that great despite all the hype and I didn’t think the anime adaptation would be anything special either. But Priecia is kind of cute so I gave episode one a try.

Prism Ark

Basically the story of Prism Hearts/Ark revolves around this war fought between two religions. There are three neighbouring kingdoms in a land that looks suspiciously like Europe. Windland (where Germany should be) and Vietaly (where Italy should be) are allies and Sablum (symbolized by a red patch of evil) are the weird foreigners.

Prism Ark

By calling upon the powers of fearsome biological weapons called “Angels”, Sablum created a vast and powerful army and invaded Windland, conquering a huge portion of it (dark red on the map) before finally coming to a stop. The king and queen of Windland were assassinated by Sablum before the war began, during their trip to visit their neighbouring ally Vietaly. After the war, a knight took over the running of the kingdom and set up the Rozenberg Knighthood Academy to train a new generation of knights to fight and defend Windland.

Prism Ark

The main characters of Prism Ark, Hyaweh and Priecia, are students of this school.

In the game, the story starts with you, as Hyaweh, enrolling in the school and learning how to fight, while slowly getting entangled in a web of conspiracies that have their roots in Windland’s past and meeting new party members during the course of the adventure.

Prism Ark

The anime, however, takes a different route by beginning with the full party so as to expose the audience to all the important characters first.

Prism Ark

I didn’t actually play the game to the end because, despite the admittedly high production value, I was bored by the story. But it seems to me that the anime is really shuffling things around because I don’t recall seeing the flashback scenes in the first episode at all. In fact, I was a little confused by the whole sequence until I did some research.

Prism Ark

The first episode basically alternates between two timelines. The first is Hyaweh and his merry gang fighting Sister Hell (what a name), a sister who gave up her faith and joined the Sablum army. Also she has a fricking huge cross-shaped claymore.

Prism Ark

In fact, almost everyone has funky-looking weapons. I guess that’s why it’s a fantasy RPG.

Prism Ark

The other timeline tells the story of Princea, who is actually Priecia’s mother… (Also, witness how much the graphics have evolved between the two games)

Prism Ark

Basically, the flashback tells the story of how Priecia’s father and mother first met and fell in love…when they were like eight or something. These things never happen in real-life.

Prism Ark

This part of the episode was quite confusing because I don’t think it was in the second game. I thought at first that the flashback was of Priecia’s childhood, but that wouldn’t make any sense at all due to reasons that you will find out later on in the series.

Prism Ark

It also doesn’t help that the two of them look so much alike that for a good while my brain didn’t register that they were supposed to be different characters. I simply assumed that it’s the lack of consistency in animation quality that seems so common with UHF titles these days…

Prism Ark
Priecia

Prism Ark
Princea

The first episode actually has tons of information crammed into twenty odd minutes. That’s not to say that it’s good or interesting, but it does seem like the producers is trying very hard to grab the viewers’ attention. Maybe too hard. I think a person who has never played the games before might feel somewhat overwhelmed and disengaged by this barrage of disjointed information, but then again maybe not. At least they managed to give every girl some airtime…

I guess ultimately, this is what’s going to keep people coming back for more:

Prism Ark

Prism Ark

Oh well, perhaps I shall stick around for one more episode to see if the story gets interesting. Priecia does look kind of cute…

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