Otaku Review

Tears to Tiara
aka: ティアーズ・トゥ・ティアラ
Genre: Fantasy Adventure
Premiere Date: 4/5
Studio: White Fox
Official Website

Story

Based on the original eroge (and subsequent recent tamed down PS3 re-release), the story for the anime seems that it will attempt to stay as close to the original story as possible. The girl in the hat you see in the trailer is Riannon, she lives with her tribe as their priestess with her brother who is the first soldier of the tribe (not first as in numerically, that’s his title). One night a dark wizard for the empire appears and kidnaps her attempting to use her as a living sacrifice for the dark god Arawn. Upon the awakening however, the completely misunderstood Arwan decides to make a new life for himself with Riannon and her tribe… despite the objections of her brother Arthur.

Escaping to his old kingdom, Avalon, the tribe attempts to make a new life while the empire and other forces attempt to disrupt their peace.

Artwork

This is where Tears to Tiara had me the most worried at first. Looking at the character artwork, it took me a long time to adjust to seeing the characters re-imagined from their PC versions. I mean, just compare the stark difference between the two versions:

The different is noticeable and honestly, at first when I looked at the new character artwork I preferred the older version. I thought that Riannon and Llyr both looked very stupid in their hats, Arwan looked much less imposing, Limwris just didn’t have the same charm and the list just went on. My excitement for this series started to wane quite a bit. Then I saw the trailer and I almost instantly felt better.

Looking at the characters as still images does nothing for the animation that White Fox is putting together for this series. Providing that they don’t decide to show off by overusing the computer animation (such as the overhead camera drop during one of the battle scenes), this will be a very fun series to watch because of how it looks.

Early Impressions

I’ve gone through a range of excitement levels when it comes to this series. At first I was excited to hear that it was getting an anime version, then I saw the character artwork and became nervous and now I’m excited again. The animation in this series looks very sharp and the story looks like it’s not going to stray from its roots so there’s little to fear there it seems.

The vocal cast is filled with talent as well; Toru Ohkawa (Roy Mustang in FMA) will be taking on the role of Arawn while being surrounded by Yuko Goto (Mikuru in Haruhi Suzumiya) as Riannon, Mai Nakahara (Nagisa in Clannad, Rena in Higurashi, Nola in Spice and Wolf) as Morgan, Kaori Nazuka (Nunnally in Code Geass) as Llyr, Rie Tanaka (Shuri in this season’s Asura Cryin, Maria in Hayate the Combat Butler, Yuri in Toradora) as Octavia and Ami Koshimizu (Kallen in Code Geass, Holo in Spice and Wolf) as Limwris. It’s hard to go wrong with that much talent in the booth but there’s still the matter of focusing all of that into a decent finished product and doing that will be Tomoki Kobayashi (Sola, Utawarerumono [also an eroge adaptation], Ichigo 100% OVA) in the director chair.

It will be interesting to see how the eroge story is adapted when it needs to be though. Throughout the course of the original game, Arawn manages to acquire at least eight wives in various ways (naturally he beds them all because he is a god after all). Of course the eroge moments are removed but will Arawn still get to collect his wives or will he be written as just getting married to Riannon? I’ll certainly be curious to see and I’m willing to bet an excited waiting audience does too.

There’s always a chance that this one could end up not living up to expectations but I think this one is going to be a pretty safe bet for the season.

ETA: The PS3 designs in the image above are essentially the same as the ones that will be featured in the anime which is why I included it.