You probably know all the drama and what not about Crestoria getting shut down and how there’s now a manga adaptation that’s on a seesaw of continuing serialization and getting on the verge of cancellation. Yeah, I have the manga in my possession right now. The manga isn’t licensed in English and it’s all in Japanese. You might be thinking, “Oh, you must be good in Japanese for you to get the manga.” To that, I cackle. I can’t read Japanese very well; if I were to rate myself, I’d give myself a 4/10. I can read hiragana, katakana and very little kanji. I had to rely on translations to read through this manga.
Now that I finished Volume 1, how is it? I liked it. It was clearly nice to see Crestoria again even if the story has been filtered to remove the Tales cameo characters and alter a lot of lore revolving around them. It sort of makes you want to think about how they’re gonna do that for future content and how well they’d do it. Because they took out the cameos, the story does feel a bit fast-paced, but another reason for that is because Bamco hates Crestoria which is why this manga is often teetering between continuing to get serialized and on the verge of cancellation.
The character interactions and portrayals do seem a lot better than how they were in the game. I think the biggest notable difference between the game and the manga is how Misella is portrayed. To be honest, I despised Misella in the game—easily one of my least favorite Tales characters overall. However, the manga actually redeems her a lot by toning down her Kanata-simping and having substance. She still has an dependency towards Kanata, but it’s not overdone. She even makes her own questions outside of Kanata like how an Enforcer took Gordon and wonders if sending criminals to die is acceptable. Vicious feels a lot more vulgar in terms of speech pattern and behavior, but that’s how he is like in general. He flips Aegis off in the manga and I am actually entertained by it. I also do like that Kanata isn’t too naive like he was in the game and that he does question things once he learns the truth about his father and what not. Also, his feelings for Misella are more obvious in the manga as his actions and a lot of his thoughts revolve around her and how he wants to protect her. It feels cuter and sweeter in the manga compared to the game. Aegis does feel more capable and competent in the manga compared to the game. Perhaps it’s because he appeared at the beginning and at a low level when you fight him with Leon, hence why he felt weak in the game. Without Leon and just being by himself really gives him that spotlight to show off why he’s one of the strongest knights in Medagal. He spins his spear to deflect Vicious’s bullets, which sort of shows that even if he isn’t super buff, he’s a strategic guy.
Because the game was in a visual novel style, some scenes and such aren’t shown in full detail and only through implication. The manga allows some of these off-screen details to be fleshed out like showing off Nash’s sister Nisha in person and how sweet she is and seeing graphic scenes like Kanata killing Cody. I think manga allows the scenes and characters to be a bit more expressive compared to the game where they only have a certain amount of expressions and what not. Heck, I quite love the ending scene of this first volume where Misella is shown stabbing Vicious while giving a ‘yandere girlfriend’ expression that you’d never expect Misella to have in-game.
Because this is a manga adaptation of a game, some important scenes are rearranged while some scenes have additional details either added or removed. For example, the scene with Kanata and Misella at the Brightblaze flower field is actually shown some time after Misella is announced of her adoption. In the game, it happens right after that scene. I honestly do think the manga does handle the timeframe a bit better because it did feel a little awkward placement-wise in the game. Meanwhile, some scenes in the game had Nash involved like him third wheeling Kanata and Misella’s little heart-to-heart moment which was removed from the manga and Kanata stumbling upon Cody and Misella’s conversation by himself and not having Nash show him what’s going on. Some additional scenes that was added are one rather icky scene with Cody and Misella that I’d rather not say and another scene where Kanata and Misella run away from an Enforcer but get separated when the latter falls off a steep ledge. I do like that the manga isn’t a 100% complete replication of the game and that the author is doing their best to make their own interpretation of the story while staying true to the game’s lore.
I guess my only real gripe about what I’ve read in Volume 1 is that the manga is written in a way that you’re expected to know the game’s lore about Vision Orbs and Enforcers. They don’t explain this for potential first-time readers, so there could be a chance that a person unaware of Crestoria’s story might have to look it up on the Internet to get a sense of why these people have Vision Orbs and why there are Enforcers. I mean, they explained what the Great Transgressor is but they couldn’t have time to explain the system of the world and what not?
Overall, this was a solid adaptation of the first half of the first chapter of the game. I have the other two volumes, but I don’t know when I’ll get to them. I think this is also a good item for Tales collectors to have. If you want to buy the manga, it’s available in some Japanese online stores. A friend said that Suguruya is a good place to buy it. I bought mine from CDJapan. My blog Arum Journal is affiliated with CDJapan, so here’s my post on where to buy the manga! If you do buy it from Japanese sites, beware of shipping prices. They can really eat up your wallet. If you do buy it from CDJapan, I do recommend getting it shipped from DHL because they’re the fastest. Anyways, if you have any additional questions about the first volume of the Crestoria manga, please let me know!
Tales of Crestoria is an upcoming mobile title dedicated for smartphones that is an entirely new story and doesn’t focus on previous Tales of titles. The game features Kanata Hjuger, a young man branded as a Transgressor because of the crimeof “protecting someone important” to him. The game will be released for iOS and Android on 2020.
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