If you ask most gamers what’s the best game Square Enix has ever made, chances are you’re one of the Final Fantasy games if you answer (with Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X common answers). However, if the person being asked this question doesn’t mention one of the legendary fantasy epics, there’s a good chance they will answer”Chrono triggerwith big grins on their faces. Those who played Chrono trigger are likely to respond with a smile, a nod, and a punch of their own. While Final Fantasy has been the company’s flagship franchise for years, for many gamers Square Enix’s masterpiece Chrono triggera time travel RPG with multiple endings, an intuitive combat system and character designs from Dragon Ball Z creator Akira Toriyama. The game was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo. While not initially a breakthrough success in Japan or America, word of mouth ensured that the game sold consistently enough that it was regularly revisited by the company and eventually became one of their best-selling titles.
In 2001, the game was re-released for the Sony PlayStation as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles. This edition not only brought the game to a new audience, but also received new anime cutscenes to further illustrate Toriyama’s outstanding character designs. While these animated sequences were a nice perk, fans wondered what a full anime was like Chrono trigger would look like. What were the odds that Square Enix would have an anime made? Chrono trigger? It turns out that an anime of the game DID existed… it’s just not at all what fans would expect or want.
The V Jump Festival OVA
The Chrono trigger OVA has no official title and would probably only be recognizable thanks to the inclusion of some memorable background characters in the game and a few musical cues that were used. The story takes place before the opening of the festival at the beginning of the game, where the stages and stands are set up. When the night comes, monsters and robots collide and destroy almost everything built. When morning comes, the townspeople look at the effects of the chaos of the night before.
And that’s really all that happens in this thing. You only get a brief glimpse of Chrono from behind his head and Lucca’s robot. Otherwise, the main characters are the random monsters you kill in the forest, which often disappoints viewers who take the time to watch it. At 16 minutes in length, there isn’t much of a story, and even the creation of the short is a bit of a mystery. It is made for the V Jump Festival in 1996 to promote the video game. Given that the game came out the year before and has little to do with this OVA, that purpose is questionable, and the short film hasn’t been well received by fans since then.
Is it worth watching?
Since the short was created as a promotional item and has little market value, Square Enix hasn’t done much to re-release the short. It was initially released as a promo tape of sorts, but while I was able to verify the existence of the tapes, I couldn’t figure out how viewers got it in the first place. While it may have been an interesting perk on one of the game’s various reissues, the studio doesn’t seem interested in revisiting it, putting it at risk of getting lost in the media.
The good news is that the short WAS fans were sub-subbed years ago and have been circulating the internet ever since! Since there was no fighting to keep the copyright, we’ve included the short one above if you want to take an extra 16 minutes out of your day to check it out quickly. As you can see, there isn’t much to say about it.
It’s a nice shorts I think, but it has nothing to do with it Chrono trigger the game, and while some fans might find the existence of this OVA interesting, most would probably prefer to see a regular anime that takes advantage of the animation techniques found in reissues of the game.
Maybe one day Square Enix will dust off the short film and give it a proper reissue with some behind-the-scenes interviews about how it all came about. I’d certainly be interested in hearing why the choices were made that not only made it look so short, but also why it was released an entire year after the game hit store shelves. Other than those potentially interesting questions, there really isn’t much to say about this one. It exists, that much we can say for sure. However, the value of that existence is probably quite debatable for fans of the series. Well, that is, it’s probably pretty debatable for fans of Chrono trigger who knows it exists.
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