Ark: The Animated Series - Vestigialization Of A Series

Ark: The Animated Series is a 2024 animated series based on the video game, Ark: Survival Evolved. The story is taken directly from collectable pages that could be found scattered throughout the video game. These pages recount the same story from the perspective of multiple characters, each writing in their native language. Hand drawn animation was chosen for the series because it "ages better" than 3D and is not easily mistaken for a video game cut-scene. Snail Games (publisher) chose the American based studio, Lex + Otis, to animate the series and paid for a massive, star-studded ensemble to voice the characters.

The series was announced in 2020 but went without a confirmed release date or streaming platform until 2024, when the first six episodes were released unexpectedly in a surprise drop. For unexplained reasons, 'part two' was delayed to sometime in 2026. Given the developer/publisher's history of abandoning projects and announcing vaporware, I have decided to release this review of "Part 1" and will update it in the future if or when 'Part 2' is released.

Credit Music: Awakening (by Gareth Coker)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

The Mighty Nein: Season 1 - Bigger And Darker

The Mighty Nein is an adult animated series based on campaign 2 of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. Critical Role is a group of professional voice actors that get together to play D&D 5th edition. The cast own the intellectual property and have already produced a number of licensed works based on the show. A single Critical Role campaign will consist of a series of story arcs, played over multiple sessions. Between or sometimes within the major story arcs, the characters rest, resupply, or go on side quests. While each campaign centers on a different party of adventurers, the campaigns are all set on the various continents of Exandria, a world of Matt Mercer's creation.

Campaign 2 ran from January 2018 to June 2021; totaling 141 episodes with an average runtime of 3 to 4 hours per episode. It follows the adventures of the Mighty Nein party and is set primarily on the continent of Wildemount roughly 20 years after the Legend of Vox Machina. The Critical Role cast reprise their characters for the show, which consists of 8 (50 minute long) episodes.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Werewolves Within - Maybe I'm The Werewolf?

Werewolves Within is a 2021 American film loosely based on the video game of the same name; itself an adaptation of the social deduction game Werewolf. While the game was set in medieval Europe, the film is set in the modern day United States. Filming was done in New York State's Hudson Valley, near the town of Woodstock. The historic Fleischmanns Yeast family estate served as the Beaverfield Inn. Due to the movie's meager budget, they were not able to afford the license to the U.S. Postal Service's logo. A made up "National Mail Service" was used instead.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

Devil May Cry (2025) - Where Is The Humanity?

Devil May Cry is a 2025 animated series based on the video game franchise of the same name. The TV series was written by Indian-American film producer Adi Shankar and animated by the South Korean studio Mir. Adi Shankar claims he was approached to write the script by Capcom (game developer) in response to a Devil May Cry cosplay he had worn. Adi (incorrectly) thought the DMC franchise was dead and that the new Netflix series would be his chance to revive it, unaware that the video game, Devil May Cry V, had released in 2019 to critical and financial success. Dante's long-time English voice actor was not asked to reprise his role for the show. He was replaced by the game's voice actor for Nero (Dante's nephew).

Opening Song: Rollin' (by Limp Bizkit)

Credits Song: Devils Never Cry Remix (by Evanescence)

Some episodes include a licensed insert song. I have included links to the songs in the episodes where they appear.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Castlevania: Nocturne - Season 2: All Bark, No Bite

Castlevania: Nocturne is an American animated television series based on the video game series of the same name. It acts as a stand-alone follow up to the Netflix Castlevania animated series and loosely adapts the 1993 video game Rondo of Blood and its remake Dracula X, with elements taken from Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance. Select characters from the game Bloodlines also make an appearance.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Wild Arms: Twilight Venom - Japanese Flavored Cowboys

Wild Arms: Twilight Venom (abbreviated Wild Arms: TV) is a Japanese animated series produced in 1999. It is a standalone story based on the Wild Arms series of video games with cameo appearances of characters from the games. The series was distributed across eight DVDs containing 2 to 3 episodes each in Japan, and five DVDs containing 4 to 5 episodes each in America.

The soundtrack was recorded at Victor Aoyama Studio, Sound Inn and tries to emulate the game's style of western music to mixed success. The show's opening theme directly copies parts from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" while the show's ending theme is Japanese hard rock. The song "UNIVERSE" was used as the ending theme for the first 10 episodes of the televised version of the show and "Starry Sky Jet" was played as the ending theme for episodes 11 to 21. The final episode features "CONTINUOUS" as its ending theme. In the VHS and DVD releases "Starry Sky Jet" is the only theme used for every episode.

Opening Song: Main Theme by Sho Wada

Credits Song:

• Episodes 1 to 10: UNIVERSE by TRICERATOPS
• Episodes 11 to 21: Starry Sky Jet by Guitar Wolf
• Episode 22: CONTINUOUS by Michiko Naruke

Apologies in advance for the poor image quality. A high quality version of the show has not been made available through streaming services. Physical copies have been out of print for years and now command prices of roughly $130 used and $250+ factory sealed.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Assassin's Creed: Lineage - Half A Story

Assassin's Creed: Lineage is 2009 Canadian web series, later compiled and sold as a movie that serves as a prequel to the Assassin's Creed II video game. Lineage was Ubisofts first foray into film making, for which they opted to shoot actors on green screen and then insert re-worked environmental assets extracted from the video games. Half of the costumes used were period re-creations leased from Italy; the rest were made by a design studio on behalf of Ubisoft. The total run-time of this "movie" is a measly 35 minutes and it could be purchased as a physical DVD in stores or watched for free on Ubisoft's official YouTube channel.

The Legend of Vox Machina: Season 3

The Legend of Vox Machina is an adult animated series based on campaign 1 of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. Critical Role is a group of professional voice actors that get together to play D&D 5th edition. The cast own the intellectual property and have already produced a number of licensed works based on the show. A single Critical Role campaign will consist of a series of story arcs, played over multiple sessions. Between or sometimes within the major story arcs, the characters rest, resupply, or go on side quests. While each campaign centers on a different party of adventurers, the campaigns are all set on the various continents of Exandria, a world of Matt Mercer's creation.

Campaign 1 ran from March 2015 to October 2017; totaling 115 episodes with an average runtime of 3 to 5 hours per episode. It follows the adventures of the Vox Machina party and is set primarily on the continent of Tal'Dorei in locations such as the metropolis of Emon and the city-state of Whitestone. The Critical Role cast reprise their characters for the show, which consists of 12 (24–28 minute long) episodes.

Tales of Eternia: The Animation - Wacky Island Vacation

Tales of Eternia: The Animation is a 2001 Japanese animated series that acts as a side adventure to the video game of the same name (it was called Tales of Destiny II in North America). The show uses an original storyline featuring the four main protagonists and was supposedly produced as part of a multimedia campaign, but information on this is scarce. The series was picked up for an English translation in 2002 but the license ended up expiring and so the dub was never released.

Apologies in advance for the poor image quality. This anime series is very old and not widely available in good quality.

Opening Music:

Sora ni Kakeru Hashi (by Masami Okui)

Credit Music:

I'd Love You to Touch Me (by Masami Okui)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Fallout Season 1 - It's The Bomb

Fallout is an American live-action series based on the video game series of the same name. Since 2008 Bethesda Game Studios (developer) had been approached with offers for a television adaptation, but game director Todd Howard turned them all down for failing to meet the series vision. The marketing executive for the company, Pete Hines, also cautioned against such adaptations in 2015 because "more things can go wrong than can go right". Amazon managed to purchase the film rights in 2020 after a successful pitch by screenwriter Jonathan Nolan to Bethesda. As an avid game fan, Nolan understood the Fallout universe and was given free reign to craft a standalone story set within the world. The show is considered canon with the games and is set farther in the future than any other piece of Fallout media. Filming took place in New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Namibia in 2022 and uses 3,300 visual effects shots.

The show incorporates a licensed soundtrack similar to the video game series and includes many of the same songs as the games. I have included a list of the featured songs for each episode.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Silent Hill: Revelation - Kill It With Fire

Silent Hill: Revelation is a 2012 film loosely based on the video game Silent Hill 3, and was produced as a direct sequel to the previous film. A sequel was discussed just a few months after the first movie had been released but soon entered development hell when director Christophe Gans dropped out and writer Roger Roberts Avary was imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. In 2010, M. J. Bassett took over the writer and director positions, and allowed fans to post casting suggestions on their blog. None of the suggestions were used however, and the post was eventually removed. Filming took place in Canada while audio mixing was done in France. The movie cost $20 million to produce and grossed $55.9 million worldwide, but did not fair well critically. In a 2018 interview, M. J. Bassett stated that trying to please both gamers and general movie goers while filming in 3D was a tough balancing act, and that it "was one or the other".

Credit Music:

Rain of Brass Petals-Three Voices (by Akira Yamaoka)

Silent Scream (by Akira Yamaoka)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - A Stroke of Bardic Inspiration

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a 2023 American live action film based on the Forgotten Realms setting of the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. It has no connection to the previous D&D film trilogy consisting of D&D 2000, Wrath of the Dragon God, and The Book of Vile Darkness.

In 2013 Warner Bros. Pictures teamed up with Sweetpea Entertainment, who had worked on the 2000 film, to produce a script for a new Dungeons & Dragons movie. The project was held up for two years by a lawsuit over who possessed the film rights to D&D - Hasbro or Sweetpea. Hasbro argued that the rights had reverted back to them because Sweetpea had not made a movie based on D&D since 2000, and the the TV films (Wrath of the Dragon God and The Book of Vile Darkness) did not constitute proper sequels. In 2015 the two companies settled the case with an undisclosed arrangement. The project then shifted from Warner Bros. to Paramount Pictures sometime around 2017, switching writers and directors several times. Filming finally began in April 2021 in Iceland and Northern Ireland with a crew of 60-70 people.

Credit Music:

Wings Of Time (by Tame Impala)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

 

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV - Chaos Reigns In This Kingdom

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV is a 2016 Japanese animated film set during the events of the Final Fantasy XV video game. Kingsglaive was part of a planned multimedia project built around Final Fantasy XV and received a limited theatrical release. Production began in 2014, using discarded concepts from the game's storyline with the aim of being a self-contained story that could reach a wider audience than the video game. Approximately 50 different companies from around the world were involved in the film's production which used motion capture for the characters' body and facial movements.

Credit Music:

NYX (by Yoko Shimomura)

APOCALYPSIS NOCTIS (by Yoko Shimomura)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - Flying Too Close To The Sun

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese computer animated film considered part of the Final Fantasy video game franchise. Director Hironobu Sakaguchi named the character Aki Ross after his late mother, and tried to make her as realistic as possible by rendering and animating 60,000 separate hairs on her head. Square Pictures (production company) had planned for Aki to be the world's first "artificial actress", with modifications made to her age and appearance for different positions within multiple films. Aki appeared on the cover of Maxim dressed in a bikini, and was ranked by the magazine as one of the sexiest women of 2001, placing at number 87 out of 100 and becoming the first fictional woman to make the list. Livia Monnet (professor of comparative literature) however, argued that Aki represented little more than "an ideal, cinematic female character" and an example of the constantly kidnapped woman in Japanese cinema.

At the time of its release, The Spirits Within used the most advanced processing capabilities available, taking 960 workstations in Hawaii and a staff of 200 people (a combined 120 years of work), approximately four years to complete. Motion capture was used for character body movements while hand and facial expressions were animated manually. All the backgrounds were created using matte paintings because the animators did not want to use any actual photographs. This process made The Spirits Within one of the most expensive films produced around that time, netting it a Guinness World Record for the largest video game movie budget. At the box office the movie did not fare well, making back only $85 million of its $137 million budget and is blamed for the closure of Square Pictures in 2002. When Square Pictures was absorbed into Square (now Square-Enix), they cancelled any future plans they had for Aki as a ' digital actress' and ceased using the character altogether.

As of December 2023, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is officially available on YouTube for anyone to watch for free, although the video quality is not as good as paid streaming services.

Credits Songs:

The Dream Within (by Elliot Goldenthal)

Spirit Dreams Inside (by L'Arc-en-Ciel)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

Castlevania: Nocturne - Season 1: There Is Light In This Darkness

Castlevania: Nocturne is an American animated television series based on the video game series of the same name. It acts as a stand-alone follow up to the Netflix Castlevania animated series, and loosely adapts the 1993 entry Rondo of Blood and its remake Dracula X, with elements taken from Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance. Select characters from the game Bloodlines also make an appearance.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Tales of Zestiria the X: Only Link Can Defeat Ganon

Tales of Zestiria the X is a 2016 Japanese animated series based on the video game of the same name. It features an alternative take of Zestiria's premise, with elements taken from the prequel game Tales of Berseria. The "Cross" in the title is a reference to the cross between timelines.

The series was released in two halves, with the first half or season releasing in 2016 and the second in 2017.

Opening Song (Season 1): Kaze no Uta by FLOW

Credits Song (Season 1): Calling by Fhána

Episode 5 only: White Light JP / White Light EN (Zestiria main theme) by Superfly

Episode 6 only: BURN (Berseria main theme) by FLOW

The instrumental version of White Light is used in the English version due to licensing issues.

Opening Song (Season 2): Illuminate by Minami

Credits Song (Season 2): Innosense by FLOW

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Halo: Nightfall - Knockoff Riddick

Halo: Nightfall is a 2014 live action web series comprised of five episodes meant to bridge the video game storylines of Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians. They were released weekly and later collectively as a feature length movie through the defunct Halo Channel app. The series was included with copies of Halo: The Master Chief Collection to introduce the new character, Agent Jameson Locke, as Nightfall is considered to be his origin story.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of the plot and my opinions at the very end.

The Legend of Vox Machina: Season 2

The Legend of Vox Machina is an adult animated series based on campaign 1 of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. Critical Role is a group of professionalvoice actors that get together to play D&D 5th edition. The cast own the intellectual property and have already produced a number of licensed works based on the show. A single Critical Role campaign will consist of a series of story arcs, played over multiple sessions. Between or sometimes within the major story arcs, the characters rest, resupply, or go on side quests. While each campaign centers on a different party of adventurers, the campaigns are all set on the various continents of Exandria, a world of Matt Mercer's creation.

Campaign 1 ran from March 2015 to October 2017; totaling 115 episodes with an average runtime of 3 to 5 hours per episode. It follows the adventures of the Vox Machina party and is set primarily on the continent of Tal'Dorei in locations such as the metropolis of Emon and the city-state of Whitestone. The Critical Role cast reprise their characters for the show, which consists of 12 (24–28 minute long) episodes.

Tales of Symphonia: The Animation - Is The Charm Still There?

Tales of Symphonia The Animation is a Japanese direct-to-video animated series made to promote the video game of the same name. It consists of three arcs, originally released as separate DVDs, and later as a complete Blu-ray collection in 2013. The series has never been dubbed in English and only recently become widely available via streaming services in 2021:

• Sylvarant Arc: Four 30 minute long episodes released in 2007.

Opening Song: Almateria by Eri Kawai

Credits Song: Negai ("Wish") by Kaori Hikita

Episode 3 only: Uchi e Kaerou ("Let's Go Home") by Kaori Hikita

• Tethe'alla Arc: Four 40 minute long episodes released in 2010.

Opening Song: Tenkuu no Canaria ("Canary in the Sky") by Nana Mizuki

Credits Song: Inori no Kanata ("Beyond the Prayers") by Akiko Shikata

Episode 8 only: Tsui no Kodomo-tachi by Akiko Shikata

• The United World Arc: Three 30 to 40 minute long episodes released in 2011.

Opening Song: Ho-n-to-u-so ("Truth and Lies") by Misono

Credits Song: Episode 9 only: Ta ga Tame no Sekai ("A World for Someone Else") by Akiko Shikata

Episode 10 only: Ibitsu ("Distortion") by Akiko Shikata

Episode 11 only: Hikari furu basho de ~Promesse~ ("At the Place Where the Light Falls ~Promise~") by Akiko Shikata

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Silent Hill - In My Restless Dreams I See That Town...

Silent Hill is a 2006 live action movie based on the video game series of the same name. The movie draws inspiration from the first Silent Hill video game whileborrowing elements from it's sequel. 107 different sets were used to represent the town, and professional actors and dancers covered in latex and prosthetic makeup were used to bring the monsters to life.

Director Christophe Gans had tried for five years to gain the rights to a Silent Hill film and finally succeeded after sending a video interview to Konami (the game publisher) explaining his plans for adapting the games. Gans had originally wanted to adapt Silent Hill 2 because it was the more "emotional" Silent Hill game, but felt the titular town itself was too much of a background element and the origins of the town would need to be explored. Konami required the movie to retain the game's plot and setting, and rejected the initial script for not having enough male characters. Konami approved the script with the addition of the Christopher Da Silva subplot, which Gans used to highlight the peculiarities of Silent Hill's reality.

Opening Song: N/A

Credits Song: You're Not Here (by Akira Yamaoka)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.