Okay, the Shukufuku no Campanella anime is here, and along with it the last 4 points in this aptly-named “Twelve Points” series (Part 1, Part 2). Today I’ll delve a bit more into a few of the side characters, and then sum up with some of the overall highlights of what you can expect to see going forward. I will avoid any serious spoilers, but this will give away a few more things you might see if you watch the anime in the weeks ahead. I’ll also wrap up the post with some thoughts on the anime’s opening episode.
9. Garnet: The “Wise” Queen of the Legendary Dragons
Garnet is a manifestation from the world of the dragons, and can be summoned to the human world through the power of artifacts. Minette and the Clan Oasis party often do so in order to draw on her vast knowledge and experience with the artifacts, the powers the influence them, and the beasts that are appearing in the human world. Or at least she claims that she’s wise and knowledgeable, but much of what she said leaves the party — and Agnes in particular — to wonder if she really knows much of anything at all. She is often asked the names for the beasts they encounter, but her names always sound like they were made up on the spot. She speaks in an older dialect (think sort of Horo from Spice & Wolf) and appears to “float” in mid-air all the time. But, while appearing in the human world through this physical form, she is still able to eat, drink, and interact normally. Garnet’s always willing to help out, even if they sometimes wake her up inadvertently in the process…
10. Nina: Supporting on the Home front
Nina is the caretaker for Clan Oasis and Carina’s loyal personal maid. She takes care of all of the cooking and cleaning for the clan house, maintains the schedule of events, and also gathers and organizes the information about potential quests. All in all, she’s a dependable and indispensable resource to the entire clan. Her main role in the story is mostly to help keep everyone grounded in reality and to provide a familiar, normalizing presence whenever the Clan returns from a quest. She doesn’t often speak of herself or her own wishes, but all in all she seems to enjoy serving Carina and the Clan very much.
11. Comedy, Silliness, and Romance: Over-the-top in every way
Take this diverse cast of characters (and more that I haven’t mentioned — should have made it 13 points and added “Meet the Parents”…) and you get a story full of eccentricity and silliness. Shukufuku no Campanella is a comedy first, and a romance second, and at most of the story simply connects on silly or funny plot point to the next. There is a rhyme and reason to it, but I suppose the overall message is that it isn’t a game you should take too overly seriously. The story is full of clichéd characters and situations, but always plays them up for laughs. So I suppose it goes without saying that your enjoyment of the game (and probably of the anime) will depend on how much you appreciate the sense of humour.
I guess you could say that most of the humour in the game is “situational comedy” — the story quickly establishes the personalities and quirks of the cast, and proceeds to place them in situation after situation that exploits these quirks. As you get further along a given character’s route, the comedy begins taking a bit more of a back seat to be replaced with a bit more backstory and character development. But even then, a lot of situational comedy is extended to the romantic relationship, and the rest of the cast plays an on-going role.
The actual romance aspects of the game follow the same overall pattern by being “lovey-dovey” to the extreme. Given that it’s rather obvious from the very beginning of the game that most of the heroines have either already developed or are fast-developing feelings for Leicester, they’re honoured when Leicester chooses them. It isn’t always smooth sailing exactly, but everything is very much happy, romantic, and totally mutual. Some people may not like these sorts of sugary-sweet romances, but it’s one of the things Windmill has become more famous for.
12. The Grand Finale: One part serious, many parts parody?
(But the above collage kind of makes it look epic! ^^; )
As you get towards the end of the story, it takes it turn for the dramatic. I won’t get into any specific spoilers, but suffice it say that, like any RPG, the main paths all culminate in a final battle that puts everything on the line. But really, in spite of the more serious tone, I think it has to be said that it isn’t truly meant to be all that serious at all. Most of the plot points are, without so much as saying so, simple parodies of famous RPGs from years gone by, and some of the dialog is just so over-the-top and silly that you know you’re supposed to laugh. Again, I can see how this could be a dividing point for some people — people who try to take the plot at face value might think it rather horribly clichéd, but if you recognize the parody and see how the over-the-top campiness is the point, then I think you might enjoy it. I would probably point again to Windmill’s Happiness! (both game and anime) as a sort of example of the sort of stories to expect. And yes, the anime’s title is explained at some point through one of the endings (which they will probably follow, at least in some ways, in the anime).
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Well, those are 12 points that will help give you an idea of what you might expect to find if you pick up the Shukufuku no Campanella game, either in its already-released PC version or the PSP version arriving late-Septempber, or in the anime that just recently started airing.
Speaking of the anime, my general impressions are that the first episode did a pretty okay job at introducing the characters and condensing the game’s prologue into 24 minutes. There were some sacrifices along the way (Chelsea’s introduction in particular was abbreviated immensely), but I think it hit on most of the key points that needed to be covered in order to move things forward (the identify of the characters, their personalities, their relations to each other, and the main mechanics of the world). It was an introductory episode in every sense of the word. The overall tone of the anime is a little bit more childish than I was expecting, but it’s not as if the game was ever too overly mature or serious. They delivered fairly well on the humour front, and quickly established the dynamics between the cast.
The character designs are simple but cute, and manage to maintain a fair bit of ko~cha’s style (though clearly greatly simplified for this low-budget production). Speaking of low-budget, the anime seems to have been upscaled from SD (at least on certain stations) and I would fully expect that the show probably wasn’t drawn or animated in HD in order to save money. But the overall look is bright and colourful, even if it lacks some of the precision of the bigger-budget works. It was hard to say too much about the music other than that it was pretty okay and was used fairly well in the episode — the overall sound direction was clearly to keep things very happy and cheerful, and the music delivered well in that regard. And, as expected, all of the cast from the game returned for the anime, so it was great to hear everyone in action again — though I suppose we’ll be hearing a lot more of them with both the consumer version and the PC fandisk on their way this Fall.
Next episode looks to continue following the game’s overall plot by proceeding with the first quest that introduces Garnet and sets more events into motion. I suspect that, like the game, the anime will begin with some flashbacks to help explain the first episode’s ending and transition into what happens next. So it’s a bit of an auto-pilot for these first two episodes, but I would expect that if they were planning to follow the game at all. The anime-original opening sequence gives game players a pretty good sense of where they’re heading with the content (which is pretty much where everyone who played the game would expect anyway). The main enemy of these adaptations is always time, and they’re proceeding through the story at a very brisk pace.
So overall, I would say that the anime probably won’t be a suitable replacement for playing the game, but it looks so far that — like this very series of posts — it can probably at least serve as a basic introduction for the sorts of thing you can expect to find in the game. And that’s really all I expected of it. We’ll see what happens next week!
