Final Fantasy Retrospective – Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals

 

At first glance it may seem that Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals intended to name its episodes after the four elemental crystals. Wind and Fire have been covered in episodes one and two, but the latter half of the series is named after things that clearly aren’t crystals. Could it have been possible that the third episode was intended to be named Water and the fourth named Earth? Maybe; let’s see if this checks out.

Where we last left the heroes, Pretz had defeated Deathgyunos’s minions by completely destroying Rouge’s island, and the entire group was about to be picked up by Tycoon’s flagship. In the chapter of dragon, Queen Lenna somehow discovers that Rouge the pirate is being treated like a prisoner and orders her to be treated much better. This can’t be the same Lenna from the game, considering how long it’s been, but it’s a neat little reference to when Faris removed the chains from the party while they were on the way to the Wind Shrine at the start of Final Fantasy V. At least, it had better be a reference to the fifth game, because it’s never brought up again.

Speaking of never being brought up, no one comments on Queen Lenna’s name. The anime doesn’t mention whether this is supposed to be the same Lenna from the game somehow, or if she’s a descendant using Lenna’s name, because there aren’t any roman numerals attached to it. We know that Square isn’t allergic to roman numerals, just look at the titles in the series. We’ll also meet a character in Final Fantasy IX who is the seventeenth to bear her name. For some reason, the kingdom of Tycoon wants to be very tight lipped about their current queen and how she’s related to the queen from two hundred years ago.

The Hiryuu tower from the first game returns in the anime as a temple where the kingdom worships the dragon god that watches over Tycoon, but Tycoon itself doesn’t resemble the Tycoon from the original game. It’s like the studio who made the anime wanted to design their own things while working from a general framework provided by Square.

Queen Lenna of Tycoon asks for help from Pretz, Lenna and Rouge, because even if the Wind Crystal is never taken, the world is in enough turmoil that it could be destroyed anyway just from the absence of the other three Crystals. It turns out that fire, earth and water are incredibly important, but then this should’ve been obvious to players of both the fifth game and the original Final Fantasy. Water will stagnate without the blessings of the Water Crystal, the earth will rot without the blessings of the Earth Crystal, and without the warmth of the Fire Crystal’s blessings, the world might as well be in another ice age. Comparatively, the wind becoming still doesn’t seem to have the same impact on the world.

The real world is definitely a lot more complicated than that, and air currents very much do have valuable ways in which it shapes our world. Believe it or not, South America is so verdant and green because of the Sahara Desert, and the reason for this is due to the power of wind. Everything on Earth is connected in strange and interesting ways, and throwing that balance off can have devastating effects. On R, even losing one of the crystals would probably be enough to upset the balance and lead to the world’s doom. Imagine a world that’s otherwise normal but you couldn’t drink the water any more. Or a world that’s otherwise normal except crops can’t grow. Or a world that’s otherwise normal but everything’s getting gradually colder every year.

Despite that Lenna is basically asking for the group to retrieve the stolen crystals, no one alive knows how to go about doing that, or even where they would need to look. I say “no one alive” because Mid suddenly grows pensive.

Two hundred years ago, during Mid’s lifetime, the Warriors of Light defeated Exdeath and saved the world, but the war took its toll on his grandfather, Cid. Despite supporting the party from behind the scenes, Cid passed away shortly after the war ended. He also regretted allowing mankind to tap into the powers of the four crystals and burned all of his research, intending to take his knowledge to the grave. However, Cid’s dead body was defiled by an otherworldly being, seemingly from space, and his brain stolen. Mid was killed by the same dark being, observed at the time only as a voice coming from inside a spaceship.

For two hundred years, Mid couldn’t accept his death and so has been wandering the world as a ghost, hearing his dead grandfather begging for help. Mid has determined that his grandfather’s brain is being held captive in a place known as the Black Moon. If you’ve been wondering what the black sphere floating in the background of certain scenes in the game is, that’s the Black Moon. I get what they were going for, but it seemed a bit out of place, almost like a spacecraft of some kind, considering it never looked like it was supposed to be a moon. It is assumed that the citizens of the world got used to it, but it’s so strange that an object in the sky would reject all light and show only darkness. In real life, the only object we know of that could do that is a black hole, an object that has such a gravitational pull, not even light escapes.

The one problem is that The Black Moon exists beyond the reach of normal flying machines, so Tycoon’s Iron Wing won’t be able to get them out to space. However, there is a legend that a powerful dragon sleeps beneath Tycoon, the very dragon they worship as a god, and that this dragon should be able to carry them there. In a sense, it’s sort of like the Lunar Whale from Final Fantasy IV, but as a living being. The Flying Dragon is the only hope for the world, and Linaly feels like she’ll be able to recruit the dragon to their side. Pretz and Mid offer their help, but Rouge refuses to take part in such a dangerous journey until she’s bribed with Tycoon’s most valuable riches, and once Rouge’s help has been secured, Valkus offers his help as well.

I’ve been taking a bit of a hybrid approach to the names of people and places in this anime, sort of like the approach I took when talking about the game. There’s a fan translation of this anime that uses the name Flying Dragon, but if you listen, you can clearly hear this animal being referred to as a Hiryuu. Just because it’s easier on me, I will be referring to this character with the name from the fan subtitles.

It should be noted that they’re far from perfect. They do refer to Bartz in a manner a lot closer to the way his Japanese name would be pronounced and not once do they use “Butz”, but there is absolutely no consistency when referring to other characters from the game. Exdeath is mentioned in three different places using three different versions of his name, including at one point being called Exodus. Cid’s name is similarly mangled; it’s a miracle Mid survived intact.

I will say, though, that Exodus would’ve been an absolutely cool name for a villain.

It was shown in episode two that the Iron Wing has technology that can find the Wind Crystal, but that it doesn’t work while the crystal is inside Linaly. It was also suggested that Deathgyunos has a similar means to find the crystal. A sudden attack on Tycoon suggests that Deathgyunos’s method of finding the crystal is much more powerful than Tycoon’s, for he seems aware that the crystal is in hiding.

There’s no time to lose, and suddenly having two very urgent goals, the party splits. Pretz and Linaly take Mid and venture underground to try to enlist the aid of the Flying Dragon, and Rouge and Valkus take their ships and defend Tycoon.

Sure enough, Deathgyunos realizes that the crystal is underground and sends some of his minions to retrieve Linaly. She tries and fails once more to flee on a chocobo and it becomes necessary for Pretz to save her. Interestingly, there’s a bit of a puzzle in the temple that seems to be designed specifically for someone in Linaly’s circumstances to solve, because solving it causes a beam of light to shine from her butt and guide the way to the Flying Dragon. They actually probably could’ve gotten the same result just by holding the Wind Crystal in their hands, but this is a comedy anime that is trying so hard to justify all the times they focus the camera on Linaly’s butt and either way, the puzzle is solved and they find the dragon.

However, the dragon is just a little baby, and I am trying to resist calling him Spike. Have you ever noticed how, every time the ponies meet a baby dragon in My Little Pony, he ends up having or receiving the name Spike?

Pretz and Linaly are confronted by an evil being known as Radevil, who claims that he is destined to become Deathgyunos, and Mid becomes terrified because this is the voice he heard on the day he died. This is the being that stole his grandfather’s brain. Radevil succeeds in capturing Linaly and laughs, convinced that victory is within his reach.

Throughout the anime so far, the evil being bent on world destruction has been referred to as Deathgyunos, but it turns out that this being is only going to be able to manifest and destroy the world once all four crystals are collected. The being who is going to turn into Deathgyunos is named Radevil.

As Radevil withdraws his forces, the Flying Dragon suddenly grows, coming into his power after having been woken from his slumber, and he emerges from the underground as his temple collapses. This is more like it! Pretz watches the enemy forces retreating and shouts his intention to save Linaly, and this is where episode three ends.

It’s probably for the best that the original naming convention of the series didn’t continue, because there isn’t a lot of water in the third episode, nor did they fit a lot of water metaphors or allusions into the story. The fourth episode might’ve worked as Earth, due to the nature of the plot being that this is the episode where the world is going to be saved, if not for the fact that the planet is actually named R, not Earth.

It’s funny, too, because some of the games go to great lengths to try to seem like they take place in our solar system and in our world by being a bit vague on the details, but this is the first world in the series to be given a name. Even Dragon Quest gets in on this sort of thing from time to time by literally having the third game take place on a world shaped almost exactly like our own and with biomes that reflect our own, right down to the Africa look-alike being mostly desert and the game’s version of North America having one of the First Nations living there.

With Linaly captured and therefore all four crystals in the possession of the enemy, the final battle for the fate of R is about to begin, and this blog will be covering the climactic battle on Friday. To be concluded!