Anime: Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV 252r5q

Say anything you like about how convoluted Final Fantasy 7 was becoming with every new entry, but Advent Children was a good movie. From the exceptional soundtrack, to the CGI that still looks amazing after a decade, to the cool action scenes, to seeing the characters more human-like. Even the plot which was confusing and rushed flows far better if you watch the extra footage from the complete version.

Kingsglaive on the other hand has nothing going for it besides the CGI, and maybe the action if are not confused by the constant teleporting everybody does every 10 seconds. There is no investment when you begin watching it, since it’s a prequel to Final Fantasy 15. You don’t know any of the characters, you don’t care about them, and you are not even going to see most of them again. You are not even going to get a full story like in The Spirits Within, since it’s just a prologue for the game. It ends openly with the bad guys winning and you not being satisfied at all. Which I guess is the point, so you will head for the game in order to find closure.

But let’s assume you don’t know any of that and you are blindly going in, not knowing anything about it. Let’s be more objective and imagine the movie as a standalone experience. Do that and be ready to scratch your head every 10 minutes, since it’s impossible to follow what is going on. From magic that seems to work in any way the plot wants it to work, to character motivations that change 3 times over the course of the movie, to war tactics that make no sense. I had no idea of what was going on half the time because of the awfully written script.

And it’s not because everybody was being cryptic or the plot was very subtle. The exposition was in your face, and they were infodumping everything simply enough for even babies to understand what is happening. The leaps in logic were the problem; everybody was constantly jumping to conclusions and stuff was happening out of screen, constantly messing with the continuity.
- Why was Crow murdered?
- Why did nobody besides Crow know there was a beacon in the hairpin, and then suddenly everybody knew?
- Why were the Glaives allowed to save Luna without being exposed by their traitors right away?
- Why did Regis fail to stop the treason even after he was told about it?
- Why was Nyx standing still, looking at Regis getting killed, when Regis was supposed to be stalling time for Nyx to get away?
- How did the guard in the palace suddenly appear in a car, when he was injured and captured half an hour earlier?
- Why was the city bombarded when the goal was to get the crystal and Luna and not to kill all the citizens?
- How did Nyx know the ring would not kill him?
- Why didn’t Luna use the ring all this time?

I couldn’t even enjoy the action as mindless entertainment. There was so much debris falling all over the place that I couldn’t see the characters. There was no fluent battle choreography since everybody was constantly teleporting all over the place. There wasn’t even good lipsync despite the original version being in English. In general, there are close to no proper transitions or scene compositions.

Even the soundtrack was completely forgettable, which is the most memorable thing of Advent Children, although I guess that had more to do with the songs being remakes from the game. That brings us back to the same problem of not caring because the movie is establishing things instead of expanding them, and does a very bad job at it.

So you basically waste 2 hours watching a terribly written opening to a videogame that is not even out yet, about stuff blowing up, characters who are constantly teleporting, and a plot that is never making any sense, before everything ends with an after-credits scene where some guys you never saw before are driving in the desert. Great job you guys; if that is supposed to make me excited for the game, you failed miserably. Advent Children remains the best CGI anime movie of all times, and everybody only anticipates the Final Fantasy 7 remake. To hell with the mess that is 15.

Review
Square Enix is pushing forward with its new Final Fantasy entry. The marketing is heavy, the battlefront is multiple, and the strategies seem to aim for the largest eastern release of this year and perhaps of the japanese industry as a whole. Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (Kingsglaive) is the material leading the charge of this aggressive marketing, a movie tasked with charming doubtful fans, introducing a world, making you care about some characters, and perhaps picking up the attention of the unware in order to buy the game and every other product from the company.

Yes. Kingsglaive is first and foremost a propaganda. Yet, considering all we have seen in of history from the Final Fantaxy XV game and how it looks quite unexciting and predictable within what we know of the japanese industry, it is somewhat refreshing to see Kingsglaive looking more like a Hollywood blockbuster than anything else released in Japan thus far.

This is the tale o Nyx, an agent of the Kingsglaive, a group of magic-apt warriors recruited by King Regis to face off Niflheim's advance over the kingdom of Lucis. Magic is fading though, and the fate of Lucis seems written in stone, only delaying the inevitable defeat to the technological prowess of the Niflheim empire and their daemons. Hope lies in saving the young couple-to-be prince Noctis and princess Lunafreya.

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1. The game and the movie
   Kingsglaive narrate events immediately before the start of Final Fantasy XV, focusing on the task of saving Lunafreya from the clutches of the empire and depicting the fate of King Regis. It is a kick-off to the game to be released in the coming months. With its purpose clear, it is easy to say it succeeds in that regard. You are presented to a never-ending war, a kingdom fading in power, and a grand event capable of making you want to see what comes next, or better, play it.
   
   As I said, it is a Hollywood-inspired movie
   Special operatives, secret missions, a military cast, and the entire atmosphere of Kingsglaive re far more a typical western blockbuster about warfare and action than what you commonly see coming from Japan. The characters even look european or american far more than what you see in Final Fantasy XV's graphics, and the magical setting with crowded streets, skyscrapers, and audis make it feel even more like a Jason Bourne movie or something more bizarre like Battle for Los Angeles and Cameron's Avatar.
   
   Not only the atmosphere matches the western influence though, the quality also does. You have plenty of action, frantic combat sequences, explosions every minute, tons of magical effects, car chases, and so on. It is a non-stop popcorn experience as by the guidebooks of Hollywood. This is a decent refresher when it comes from japanese producers, especially when the very Final Fantasy XV game is composed by a cast of four guys draining the standard stereotypes from japanese animation in extreme levels. Yet...
   
   It also means it's a bland experience
   You see. You learn about King Regis, you watch him die (yes, it's Sean Bean dubbing him and we already knew that from all previous marketing material), you are presented to the city of Insomnia, the legacy of Lucis, and the prowess of the Niflheim empire. But beyond that there is little depth in here. Nyx is a decent guy, but he is barely explored, barely humanized. The same happens to the other Kingsglaive agents, all typical western stereotypes of military soldiers with little to tell us beyond the fact they were all recruited from territories previously ruled by Lucis and now dominated by Niflheim. All the action, all the magic, all the visual fest robs the scene and leaves little room for a personal approach, for giving more life to these muscled soldiers and players of this grand war. The exageration in the popcorn moments is good, but perhaps it would be better to mix things a bit more.
   
   And it's Final Fantasy
   Final Fantasy fans can rejoice. This is a true member of the franchise and it holds its banner with a decent amount of pride and subtely. There are many spells you can identify from all games, there are massive Weapons reminding us of the great Final Fantasy VII, there are impersonations of the Knights of the Round, fantastic landscapes, massive swords, and so on. It pays tribute to the franchise in a decent way and it also manages to feel quite grounded and non excessive such as in Final Fantasy: Advent Children, where the movie seemed more like pure fangasm than anything else.
   
   And it's fuc*n beautiful
   A few robotic scenes aside, this is a tremedous CG movie in all regards. Characters are expressive, lightning effects are amazing, landscapes are gorgeous, combats are fluid, chaotic, and exciting. We even have audis running the streets that you can barely tell the difference from real cars. Square Enix once again shows off its capacity at doing amazing computer graphics animation. It also helps when you have an amazing english voice-acting with top-quality actors and an equally on par sound direction. This is a solid production in its technical aspects, just a little short of the best the industry can offer.
   
   The end is quite... typical
   If things are chaotic through the tale but not that much excessive, the same cannot be said about the final battle, where Nyx and the villain clash in a Advent Children-inspired combat. Gods. It is kind ridiculous, like an abuse of excuses to show off the amazing CG skills of the producers. Superhuman strength, absurd jumps, giant beings, explosions... there are many similarities here with the recent battle between Superman, Wonder Woman and Apocalypse in Batman vs. Superman movie. I wouldn't find a problem if the rest of the movie didn't feel so grounded around Nyx and the others until then. Anyway, a clichêd combat, but still an amazing demonstration of the animation.
   

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Comments
I was expecting a piece of sh*t, truth be told. Almost every released peek into Final Fantasy XV these last couple years made me feel as if the game was moving away from me. The four emo-bros doing a bro-trip crossing the USA gave me a headache. Prompto's and Ignis' annoying anime-like stereotypes made me screech in pain at every trailer, and Noctis typical japanese silent protagonist was hurting me from time to time. Add that the open world concept that I know japanese developers suffer a lot with and nothing released thus far made my hopes for the game rise. In fact, it only worsened with each and every gaming event where Final Fantasy XV was commented.

So I was certain Kingsglaive would just be an Advent Chilren based on something like the bro-trip. I was ready for typical anime tropes swarming the screen, perhaps even a loli characters robbing the scene or a tsundere woman charming the protagonist. Yet... damn. I was wrong. Kingsglaive throw away typical japanese standards and follows a Hollywood route, which is a good thing to do this time around. The setting immediately felt more serious, darker, interesting. King Regis seemed like a guy I could like even if little explored. The war between Lucis and Niflheim felt real, far more than the similar war that served as the starting pont in the poorly scripted Final Fantasy XII. The movie did its job on me. It was a popcorn action I least expected it to be. It never tried to be "a show for intelligent people" as I was fearing it would, trying to tackle social problems and the consequences of warfare with text dump and poor dialogues as many japanese works end up being... or worse.

Anyway, Kingsglaive is far from being a masterpiece. It is bland, yes. It is clichêd in a western way and it feels similar to many things released these days in the US. Yet, you can't fault its execution. It manages to be more eye-catching and thrilling than any recent Marvel films with their overused and superfical superheroes, it gets a vibe of a true blockbuster, and it succeeds in its mission, which means presenting you to the setting and preparing for the coming game. Anyway, watch it. Enjoy it. And perhaps your hopes can be lifted, only if just a little. If you are somehow hyped by Final Fantasy XV and enjoy the bro-trip thing, well... this is something completely different.