Ask John: Are Anime Segments from Video Games Part of Longer Episodes?

Question:
A number of RPGs I’ve played have had animated openings or animated segments though out them (Wild Arms and Lunar: The Silver Star Story for example). Were these animated bits only for the video games, or are there actually animated episodes/movies of these in Japan?

Answer:
Quite a massive number of Japanese video games include anime opening animations and FMV “cut scenes.” RPGs including the Wild Arms series, Namco’s “Tales” series, the Lunar series, Guardian Recall, the Sakura Taisen series, Breath of Fire 4, the Summon Knight series, Langrisser 4, the Growlanser series; fighting games like Erretzvaju, King of Fighters ’99 Dream Match, Advanced Variable Geo 2; puzzle games like Puyo Puyon 4; action games including Tail Concerto, and shooting games including Magical Cotton all contain original anime opening movies and FMV sequences. In exceptional cases including the Playstation Yarudora series and Konami’s Dancing Blade series, the games are nothing but interactive FMV anime. Some of these games have been turned into anime, but none of them are directly adapted from pre-existing animation in the way you’re thinking. Sometimes games such as the Card Captor Sakura Playstation RPG and Rurouni Kenshin Playstation fighting game will employ video footage taken from the TV animation. And in the unusual case of Advanced VG 2, animation from the Variable Geo OAV series was used in the game to establish the game as a direct sequel to the OAV series story. But in most cases, the video footage seen in console video games is not excerpted from longer, full length anime productions. For example, The Wild Arms TV animation series has no relation to the animation footage in the games. Lunar does have a short Magic School Lunar movie, but the animation clips in the Lunar games, including Lunar: Magic School for the Sega Saturn, are all original and not taken from the Lunar theatrical anime movie. Other commonly questioned titles are Xenogears and Chrono Trigger. While it may seem as though the movie quality animation in Xenogears and the Playstation re-release of Chrono Trigger is excerpted from a longer work, it isn’t. The animation in these game was created specifically for the games. There is no Xenogears anime. There is a short Chrono Trigger anime OAV called “Time & Space Adventures: Nuumamonjaa!”, but it was produced years before the Playstation re-release of the game, and was never actually released to the Japanese public.

The anime clips in console games often seem as though they’re from longer works because of their unusually high quality. In fact, this high quality is actually due to the fact that the animation isn’t excerpted from a longer work. Because these clips have to be no more than perhaps three minutes long, it’s more feasible to devote proportionally great amounts of time and money to their production. It’s simply faster, cheaper and easier to produce 3 minutes of expensive stellar animation than produce 30 minutes of even typical quality animation. For example, the stunning two minute long opening for the Playstation Ghost in the Shell action game cost as much to produce, and used as many frames of animation as a normal 30 minute OAV. Satoshi Urushihara, for example, produces much more animation for video games than he does traditional anime because his ultra detailed character design is simply too expensive and time consuming to animate for 30 minutes or more, but feasible in 2 minute long segments.