Completed: Ancient Book of Ys

But Rai... you beat that DS port a long time ago...
you are correct..... i did beat that game a while ago.... but this is the 7 ep OVA based on that game...
Now i think we all know that movies based on games tend to suck cause your compacting a lot of info into a short amount of time...  well most of the time the same is true for OVAs but it tends to be worse cause they make it in such a way where only those who have played the game/know the story will enjoy.

However overall i think Ys did the best job it could... i'll be comparing it to the Tales of Phantasia (ToP) OVA which was four episodes to show what ys did right.

now as i mentioned... i have played and beaten the game so i know the story going in... but i think someone who had never heard of the Ys games (which is a lot... people need to play more Falcom games) would be able to watch this and get the story.... but they still may not like the show overall. Unlike ToP which you have to have played the game in order to figure out whats going on...
So falcom successfully gets it's plot in two ways.
1. more episodes so obviously more story.
2. Ys is a short game... i think book 1 can be beaten in 5-10 hours other then the fact that it's really really hard (damn near unplayable as the ds version.... but i haven't played the psp one so who knows i keep hearing it's better) so that length of story can easily be condensed cause well most of that time is spent grinding so the boss doesn't kill you.

However OVAs are released in a very odd way.... lets just put it this way...
 Episode 1 aired in nov 1989... episode 7 aired in Sep 1991
so while watching you can see the gradual change in style (mostly in eyes and colouring) over the years... it' kinda fun but a little distracting

Also the animation overall is terrible... you can tell they were trying hard but it's just not as good as it could be... my favorite part is at sunset when the shadows are orange..... and lighter then every other colour on screen....good times.

but yeah it's Adol first adventure so if you come across it, are curious about the Ys games (3 and origin are out on steam you should at least check 3 out!) but don't want to play 1+2 (they are bundled in north America and out for ds and psp... psp version is better) then give this series a shot at it will give you the basic story... however all ys games for the most part are stand alone... you may miss some references but other then that there no harm just jumping in! but yeah this anime was fun... silly and badly animated but fun