Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & The Secret Hideout the animation

 Finally these awesome JRPG's have been adapted into an anime, starting with Atelier Ryza. 

No isekai, just pure fantasy!

Reisalin Stout is a simple farmer girl living on Kurken Island.  But perhaps her life is to simple, as she craves for adventure and exploration.  To that end, she decides to break tradition and go to the mainland, something none of the islanders tend to do.  But just as she convinces her friends Tao and Lent to join her, and they set of in a rowing boat, a caravan of a famous merchant approaches to travel to Kurken island.

As Reisalin, or Ryza for short, wander the woods, they run into the merchant's daughter Klaudia, who got seperated.  They decide to bring her back, but soon are hard-pressed against some low level monsters as they lack any experience.  Two experienced adventurers that had joined the caravan, Empel and Lila, save them.  Back on the island, the friends decide to ask the two to train them, and Empel discovers that Ryza jas all the aptitude to become an alchemist herself.

She starts her training by learning to make simple ointments.  To get all the required ingredients, she gets permission from Empel to get back to the beginning of the High Way on the mainland, together with Tao and Lent.  When she receives her alchemy staff from Empel, she helps out a villager with a special scented flower, putting her alchemy skills to use for every day people.  Later on, our three heroes in training are send to a cave on the island as a test, but barely manage to escape as they still need to learn a lot, but never the less they show good promise.

 

 

To unwind a bit at the request of Klaudia,  Lila and Empel set up a training at the beach instead, allowing for some fun challenges to relax a bit, as well as improve their team skills.  Seeing the old abandoned sanctuary, the group decides to make it their secret hide-out, and go about rebuilding it while Klaudia refines the recipy for goat milk pudding as a payment for the building materials the group could have.  As such, Atelier Ryza is born, and they now have a place to hang out and train together.  But a monster, referred to simply as "them" by Lila and Empel is seen nearby, putting the latter two on high alert.  When the beast seemingly vanished though, the heroes can occupy their base again, and Klaudia comes forward that she wants to join the group actively instead of supporting them, resulting in her father setting a challenge for Ryza to prove she can protect his daughter.

She passes the first tests easily, like cleaning up ruins by making a special sort of bomb.  When the final test is upon them, a race against another group, they find the other group attacked by a dragon and save them, barely escaping themselves.  Empel thinks the dragon and the monster from earlier are connected as the village forms a dragon hunting party.  Ryza and her companions, including Klaudia who is allowed to adventure by her father, set out after the party to help them where possible.

They manage to overcome the dragon when it ambushes the hunting party, thanks to Tao being able to decipher the glowing command stones and putting them to good use.  As a reward, they are allowed to now venture on and off the island, but first they make a treasure hunt on Kruken Island itself due to the uncovering of stone tablets with the villagers, that result in finding a treasure of ages long past...

So, this is a beautiful anime, but frankly, it wasn't that good at all... to many of it's episodes literally had the feel of sidequests in the videogames, like hunting goats, gathering herbs.  They did a good job bringing the vibes of the Atelier series to an anime, but it just feels they went one or two steps to far.  The result is like if you would be watching a playthrough on YouTube or the likes to be honest.

Sorry miss Reisalin Stout, you started out nice, but quickly lost your gravitas I`m afraid...