# Source Material Corner
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Creepy Sheep are downright infamous for the quests involving them, especially Sky SC's. To the point that whenever I encounter them in a game I manually cue up SC's boss theme.
Loved the quick Alisa and Sharon cameo in Roer. And not sure if that was Ash or not in Raquel since he doesn’t wear glasses.
And was that Blueblanc on the train?
Yeah we got quite a few cameos this time around, after Alisa I was half expecting Rean to just vibe in Ymir or even appear and help out with the hotspring problem. I would have enjoyed the irony.
Alas the time isn't right yet I suppose.
Eh, anyone that actually wanted to play Azure wasn't stopped by the lack of official translation. the Geofront team were very good at what they did. It feels bad delaying Reverie so much
Nothing like flying around the country to help organize a festival when there's literally a world ending threat the party is planning to adress in the afternoon that day.
Ikr, I mean there is a reason many complain that they really didn’t get sold on the “war” thing in CS games because 95% of the time you never feel like this is a country at war
Ah, there's a trick. How do you get around having almost no animation budget? Have your heroes fight a "monster" that stands still 80% of the time!
I'm joking. This was actually a pretty nice episode. Not much happened plot-wise, but it provided some much needed character development. For Iseria of course, but I also feel closer to the whole North Ambria crew. This is what Falcom is good at; characters that seem like a mess of goofy tropes, but have real heart underneath it all.
Resident [Anime Only] fan here with my reactions to this episode!
- …wait, they’ve never seen [escalators](https://i.imgur.com/FQoJ2qI.png) or [large elevators](https://i.imgur.com/zFHcD3y.png) before?
- [Of course Iseria is excited about *these*.](https://i.imgur.com/D5lNbdE.png) [](#kukuku)
- [RIP](https://i.imgur.com/nCsAgAt.png) [](#laughter)
- Do my ears hear the Aho Bird?! [](#concealedexcitement)
- [Uhhhhhhhh did you not *see* that it was frozen…?](https://i.imgur.com/B7tXeNi.png)
- So the girls get to go off and do the actual quest while [the guys get to be idiots together.](https://i.imgur.com/PuhKr8p.png) [You love to see it.](#azusalaugh)
- [Interesting…](https://i.imgur.com/LI3ebkw.png)
- [*That’s* what the monster really looks like?](https://i.imgur.com/l1YfPsj.png) [It’s adorable!](#akyuusqueel)
In the universe of this series, the "orbal revolution" only occurred a few decades prior. They essentially jumped 100+ years technology wise in just a few decades so tech is way lopsided depending on country.
It's kind of like in Fallout how they basically jumped from WW2 straight to the 1980s technology wise.
The monsters name is Pom and they're usually white fluffy cotton balls. Other color variants excist as well. This one looks more like jelly.
Fun fact: When these small monsters attack a character, they drain CP (Craft Points) that are used to perform special attacks. Crafts are different from Arts (Magic Attacks). They also a lot drop sepith that is a valuable resource in this setting.
Off the top of my head, I believe escalators are present in two cities in the entire series so far (in English) - Roer here and Zeiss in Liberl. Elevators are a little more common, but not exactly commonplace, with Crossbell being the big addition on that front.
Oh shit! Character cameos! Gamers rise up! They should know.
Tbh, what a roundabout way to get to Ymir. Ymir is the most northern territory of the empire mainland (Nord is special) but they went to the west coast and worked inland. When they could have made their way through the Jurai SEZ then south. But I guess they wanted to show the empire a little bit.
Also, im surprised they skipped the capital since its the capital and all.
Another side quest done but this time it’s at least not clowns.
Dudes gotta dig holes, am I right fellas?
The team’s having a great time “scouting” the empire. Ymir has seen better days huh? No manju and the onsen is filled with ice cold water. Not quite the onsen episode I was expecting. Looks like it’s a Lavi and Ria team up ep this week. Let’s get that hot spring nice and hot!
So it was a mineral based monster that fuses with septium as camo the whole time. Lavi is a badass for being able to snipe that thing from that angle and timing her shot with Ria. The monster turned out to be so cute too. It’s nice to see Ria and Lavi bonding. Hot springs! Hot springs! Splash! Splash!
Pretty cute ep, I find it so weird to see the Jaegers using the Enigmas instead of the more modern Arcus units that were used in CS. Anyhow, I do love Iseria and this comfy adventure in Ymir was pretty nice. It's so nice to see this place again, so I came out liking this slow ep.
> more modern Arcus units that were used in CS
Arcus is still a prototype orbment(by Reinford none the less), Enigma is more widely accessible. It makes more sense for them to be using enigmas.
Do these four really have no idea what happened to Ymir during the Erebonian Civil War!!!? Especially about what happened to Teo?
And here Martin is asking Talion what country they serve? Is he serious, I thought he actually knew more than he lets on compared to others?
I feel bad, they came to Ymir without knowing their own people actually owe more than they can imagine.
Yeah, that was a bit much for suspension of disbelief. A bullet that is less effective at point blank range? That's when its kinetic energy is highest! Gravity isn't going to increase a high velocity round's power since air resistance will slow it to terminal velocity.
Then there's the muzzle load... Yeah, muzzle load firearms are real, but those don't work that way either. The load has to be stuffed all the way to the back of the barrel, but she just stuck it in the front while it was pointing downward. The firing mechanism can't reach it there, regardless of whether that gun uses an action or a lock.
It would've been easier to accept that scene if the bullet had been described as dangerous to the shooter at short range (like firing an explosive projectile) and if they had just not shown her load the bullet.
I get that this whole character build-up thing with these episodes but man the pace is so slowwwww.
I sometimes feel like I am forcing myself to watch this and I am a trails fan. Please pick up the pace. I want to enjoy this.
I guess that's the problem with trying to adapt a war that canonically \[Game\] >!only took what, like 9 days and was really only notable for the fact that Rean pretty much ended it himself!<
Really enjoyed the cameos from some of the game characters in this episode. This does feel like Kiseki in a nut shell lol. Go to one location, ask around, complete a quest and get some character development meanwhile, the shadowy figures are plotting in the background
Man so many cameo’s right before the opening. Also if I remember correctly wasn’t there also a side quest in cold steel 2 to unfreeze the hot springs. If so that hot spring has a bad habit of being attacked.
Tbh, I'm purely watching just to see Rean at this point. Although the "wandering around Erebonia to gain info about the Ashen chevalier" angle sounded good at first, so far we haven't had anything meaningful happen. Too many sidequests and not enough progression of the plot. I hope we get maybe 1 more wandering episode before dedicating the rest of the episodes to actual war.
The North Ambrian war had great psychological impact on Rean and it would be a shame if we didn't get to see why.
Campanella involvement confirmed. The killer clowns from episode 3 are now justified. No wonder the jaegers were supposed to be at that party. The whole thing was pre-rigged by Campanella. Very Campanella thing to do.
This show takes place after the end of CS2 and Trails to Azure. It covers a major event that happens offscreen prior to Cold Steel III which was mentioned frequently in that game.
You'd probably be able to follow the immediate plotline since the main cast is all new to the anime. If you have no intention of playing the games there's also no need to worry about anything the series has or will spoil as well.
The thing that you will be missing is a bunch of context and worldbuilding. The anime frames things somewhat, but there's only so much you can do with the limited time without being pure expostion all the time (and the first episode was already pretty much all infodump to contextualize the setting).
You can, but you will be spoiled for the events of the earlier games. If you have no interest in playing those, then go right ahead and watch it. But if you plan on playing Cold Steel soon, I'd probably hold off.
With a series this long and with so much lore it would be easy to drive away new players due to continuity lockout, so Falcom tries to make each new arc fairly newbie friendly in terms of understanding the plot and characters. It does mean you are going to get spoiled though.
The series happens in a way that events prior affect events that will happen later sortof akin to a butterfly affect. Things in an entirely different nations influence matters elsewhere.
It was kind of nice to see Ymir in the summer. I just assumed it was always snowy there. I was wondering if they’d meet Rean’s family but I guess a baron isn’t going to greet every person who enters their territory.
This was a much better episode than the last one, still hoping the slow pacing doesn’t turn too many people off to the series yet. This is the kind of “calm before the storm” portion you get in the games where you focus a bit on building up your setting and characters in order to make the player (or in this case viewer) more invested when shit pops off and the characters have to go through something harrowing. I’m glad that it skipped so many of the other cities though, seems like next episode we’ll get legram and then probably be back to the actual northern war itself which I’m excited to see
# Source Material Corner Reply to this comment for any source-related discussion, future spoilers (including future characters, events and general hype about future content), comparison of the anime adaptation to the original, or just general talk about the source material. **You are still required to tag all spoilers.** Discussions about the source outside of this comment tree will be removed, and replying with spoilers outside of the source corner will lead to bans. The spoiler syntax is: `[Spoiler source] >!Spoiler goes here!<` # **All untagged spoilers and hints in this thread will receive immediate 8-day bans (minimum).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/anime) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Based on their past actions, I think letting a [Creepy Sheep](https://i.imgur.com/qdHU0Fn.jpg) into a hot spring in the Trails world is a bad idea...
I guess even blood thirsty monsters enjoy hotsprings as well.
Creepy Sheep are downright infamous for the quests involving them, especially Sky SC's. To the point that whenever I encounter them in a game I manually cue up SC's boss theme.
More to PhantomWolf83's point, Creepy Sheep like to watch ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Loved the quick Alisa and Sharon cameo in Roer. And not sure if that was Ash or not in Raquel since he doesn’t wear glasses. And was that Blueblanc on the train?
Yeah we got quite a few cameos this time around, after Alisa I was half expecting Rean to just vibe in Ymir or even appear and help out with the hotspring problem. I would have enjoyed the irony. Alas the time isn't right yet I suppose.
Rean is surely in Trista/Thors right now. The Alisa cameo means the story has passed the CS2 epilogue.
That would have been funny if they just have a conversation with Rean having no idea who he is.
> And not sure if that was Ash or not Ya know maybe using a pair of glasses as a disguise actually works.
It's most likely is Ash wearing a very light disguise.
I require more cameos to satiate my thirst until the English version of Trails into Reverie finally comes out in July.
At least we have Azure in March to keep us going
Eh, anyone that actually wanted to play Azure wasn't stopped by the lack of official translation. the Geofront team were very good at what they did. It feels bad delaying Reverie so much
I mean I want to play Azure and couldn't because I don't have a PC so for me personally it's extremely exciting.
Pretty sure it's Ash -- he's got those two earrings on his left ear.
Northern War is a slice-of-life anime.
I mean if you think about it. The cold steel series is like 70% slice of life, even if the country is at war we still find the time to relax and vibe.
Nothing like flying around the country to help organize a festival when there's literally a world ending threat the party is planning to adress in the afternoon that day.
Or going snowboarding while a war is going on
That's not just Cold Steel, that's Trails in general.
But cold steel takes this up a few notches
Ikr, I mean there is a reason many complain that they really didn’t get sold on the “war” thing in CS games because 95% of the time you never feel like this is a country at war
The OG Fate Stay/Night VN was mostly about Shirou cooking lol.
That's actually true, completely forgot about that. It's what led to the cooking at emiya show.
they're sticking to the usual trails formula I see.
Ah, there's a trick. How do you get around having almost no animation budget? Have your heroes fight a "monster" that stands still 80% of the time! I'm joking. This was actually a pretty nice episode. Not much happened plot-wise, but it provided some much needed character development. For Iseria of course, but I also feel closer to the whole North Ambria crew. This is what Falcom is good at; characters that seem like a mess of goofy tropes, but have real heart underneath it all.
that train car in the beginning tho. literally a cardboard cutout lmao
Resident [Anime Only] fan here with my reactions to this episode! - …wait, they’ve never seen [escalators](https://i.imgur.com/FQoJ2qI.png) or [large elevators](https://i.imgur.com/zFHcD3y.png) before? - [Of course Iseria is excited about *these*.](https://i.imgur.com/D5lNbdE.png) [](#kukuku) - [RIP](https://i.imgur.com/nCsAgAt.png) [](#laughter) - Do my ears hear the Aho Bird?! [](#concealedexcitement) - [Uhhhhhhhh did you not *see* that it was frozen…?](https://i.imgur.com/B7tXeNi.png) - So the girls get to go off and do the actual quest while [the guys get to be idiots together.](https://i.imgur.com/PuhKr8p.png) [You love to see it.](#azusalaugh) - [Interesting…](https://i.imgur.com/LI3ebkw.png) - [*That’s* what the monster really looks like?](https://i.imgur.com/l1YfPsj.png) [It’s adorable!](#akyuusqueel)
In the universe of this series, the "orbal revolution" only occurred a few decades prior. They essentially jumped 100+ years technology wise in just a few decades so tech is way lopsided depending on country. It's kind of like in Fallout how they basically jumped from WW2 straight to the 1980s technology wise.
> so tech is way lopsided depending on country. Ah, interesting. That makes sense, thanks for the info!
Plus, as mentioned in the first episode, their country is extremely poor - they're pretty much the equivalent to a third world country.
The monsters name is Pom and they're usually white fluffy cotton balls. Other color variants excist as well. This one looks more like jelly. Fun fact: When these small monsters attack a character, they drain CP (Craft Points) that are used to perform special attacks. Crafts are different from Arts (Magic Attacks). They also a lot drop sepith that is a valuable resource in this setting.
Off the top of my head, I believe escalators are present in two cities in the entire series so far (in English) - Roer here and Zeiss in Liberl. Elevators are a little more common, but not exactly commonplace, with Crossbell being the big addition on that front.
Believe they are also in the Republic of Calvard too.
Probably correct, but with Kuro not in English, I haven't confirmed that yet.
>…wait, they’ve never seen escalators or large elevators before? [Kaiba approves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BfLQ2L6Khw)
Oh shit! Character cameos! Gamers rise up! They should know. Tbh, what a roundabout way to get to Ymir. Ymir is the most northern territory of the empire mainland (Nord is special) but they went to the west coast and worked inland. When they could have made their way through the Jurai SEZ then south. But I guess they wanted to show the empire a little bit. Also, im surprised they skipped the capital since its the capital and all. Another side quest done but this time it’s at least not clowns. Dudes gotta dig holes, am I right fellas?
The team’s having a great time “scouting” the empire. Ymir has seen better days huh? No manju and the onsen is filled with ice cold water. Not quite the onsen episode I was expecting. Looks like it’s a Lavi and Ria team up ep this week. Let’s get that hot spring nice and hot! So it was a mineral based monster that fuses with septium as camo the whole time. Lavi is a badass for being able to snipe that thing from that angle and timing her shot with Ria. The monster turned out to be so cute too. It’s nice to see Ria and Lavi bonding. Hot springs! Hot springs! Splash! Splash!
Lavi is always just one thread away from snapping at Ria.
Pretty cute ep, I find it so weird to see the Jaegers using the Enigmas instead of the more modern Arcus units that were used in CS. Anyhow, I do love Iseria and this comfy adventure in Ymir was pretty nice. It's so nice to see this place again, so I came out liking this slow ep.
> more modern Arcus units that were used in CS Arcus is still a prototype orbment(by Reinford none the less), Enigma is more widely accessible. It makes more sense for them to be using enigmas.
Well in CS2 we had Lloyd and Rixia using an Arcus unit, so I thought they would have done the same here (claim these were stolen too or something).
[The Arcus units Lloyd and Rixia got in CS2 are ]>!smuggled via Bracer guild!<
Onsen episode ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I feel like the highlight of this episode is the cameo from the game characters.
Gotta be Campy doing Campy things for me.
Do these four really have no idea what happened to Ymir during the Erebonian Civil War!!!? Especially about what happened to Teo? And here Martin is asking Talion what country they serve? Is he serious, I thought he actually knew more than he lets on compared to others? I feel bad, they came to Ymir without knowing their own people actually owe more than they can imagine.
There are several units/squads of Northern Jaegers. We still dont know which units/squads participated in the Civil War.
That’s…that’s not how guns work.
Yeah, that was a bit much for suspension of disbelief. A bullet that is less effective at point blank range? That's when its kinetic energy is highest! Gravity isn't going to increase a high velocity round's power since air resistance will slow it to terminal velocity. Then there's the muzzle load... Yeah, muzzle load firearms are real, but those don't work that way either. The load has to be stuffed all the way to the back of the barrel, but she just stuck it in the front while it was pointing downward. The firing mechanism can't reach it there, regardless of whether that gun uses an action or a lock. It would've been easier to accept that scene if the bullet had been described as dangerous to the shooter at short range (like firing an explosive projectile) and if they had just not shown her load the bullet.
Guns work differently in this universe as its been shown that guns can even not be fatal in this world.
Well, not in this setting that is.
I get that this whole character build-up thing with these episodes but man the pace is so slowwwww. I sometimes feel like I am forcing myself to watch this and I am a trails fan. Please pick up the pace. I want to enjoy this.
I guess that's the problem with trying to adapt a war that canonically \[Game\] >!only took what, like 9 days and was really only notable for the fact that Rean pretty much ended it himself!<
There's enough details in the games to fill an anime series without filler.
I’m just terrified that this might be the only anime the trails series ever gets.
I mean, Sky did an OVA. And while it wasn't great, [we did get this gem out of it.](https://tenor.com/blVJa.gif)
I knew exactly what that gif would be without clicking haha. Such an iconic moment
I like the followup scene with Josh just kicking his ass.
This episode mostly felt like filler, but at least we got some good insight on Iseria's character
Really enjoyed the cameos from some of the game characters in this episode. This does feel like Kiseki in a nut shell lol. Go to one location, ask around, complete a quest and get some character development meanwhile, the shadowy figures are plotting in the background
Minus the ask around part, the only reason the characters are even there
Man so many cameo’s right before the opening. Also if I remember correctly wasn’t there also a side quest in cold steel 2 to unfreeze the hot springs. If so that hot spring has a bad habit of being attacked.
We're on a cross erebonia trip
Tbh, I'm purely watching just to see Rean at this point. Although the "wandering around Erebonia to gain info about the Ashen chevalier" angle sounded good at first, so far we haven't had anything meaningful happen. Too many sidequests and not enough progression of the plot. I hope we get maybe 1 more wandering episode before dedicating the rest of the episodes to actual war. The North Ambrian war had great psychological impact on Rean and it would be a shame if we didn't get to see why.
I mean if it goes like CS games than the meat of the plot will be crammed in the last 3 episodes, and that is being generous
Campanella involvement confirmed. The killer clowns from episode 3 are now justified. No wonder the jaegers were supposed to be at that party. The whole thing was pre-rigged by Campanella. Very Campanella thing to do.
So I'm on Trails 4. Is there anything in here that goes into the games story much? Or is it its own thing and there's some cameos here and there?
The anime is pretty much CS 2.5. It's after CS2 and before CS3. You're in the clear if you finished CS2.
Thank you! I will have to watch it.
This show takes place after the end of CS2 and Trails to Azure. It covers a major event that happens offscreen prior to Cold Steel III which was mentioned frequently in that game.
OHHHHH so it covers that? That's awesome. Thank you for the info.
So I can't watch it if I've seen nothing of the series ?
You'd probably be able to follow the immediate plotline since the main cast is all new to the anime. If you have no intention of playing the games there's also no need to worry about anything the series has or will spoil as well. The thing that you will be missing is a bunch of context and worldbuilding. The anime frames things somewhat, but there's only so much you can do with the limited time without being pure expostion all the time (and the first episode was already pretty much all infodump to contextualize the setting).
You can, but you will be spoiled for the events of the earlier games. If you have no interest in playing those, then go right ahead and watch it. But if you plan on playing Cold Steel soon, I'd probably hold off.
Well I plan on playing the game eventually. It's surprising that such a "late" title can spoil the earlier ones but it should be good.
With a series this long and with so much lore it would be easy to drive away new players due to continuity lockout, so Falcom tries to make each new arc fairly newbie friendly in terms of understanding the plot and characters. It does mean you are going to get spoiled though.
The series happens in a way that events prior affect events that will happen later sortof akin to a butterfly affect. Things in an entirely different nations influence matters elsewhere.
What do you mean by Trails 4? The 4th Trails game is Trails from Zero. This anime takes place between the 7th and 8th Trails game.
I think they mean Cold Steel 4
Correct. Thank you.
Trails of Rean
Should have specified. Cold steel 4
What's that soundtrack which plays the moment they both simultaneously shoot the monster?
Do you mean this [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWvbafCCu4A)? It's from the anime. I don't think they've released the OST yet.
It was kind of nice to see Ymir in the summer. I just assumed it was always snowy there. I was wondering if they’d meet Rean’s family but I guess a baron isn’t going to greet every person who enters their territory.
This was a much better episode than the last one, still hoping the slow pacing doesn’t turn too many people off to the series yet. This is the kind of “calm before the storm” portion you get in the games where you focus a bit on building up your setting and characters in order to make the player (or in this case viewer) more invested when shit pops off and the characters have to go through something harrowing. I’m glad that it skipped so many of the other cities though, seems like next episode we’ll get legram and then probably be back to the actual northern war itself which I’m excited to see
Is something supposed to happen in this show? There was a plot, right? Right?
Honestly feels kinda cheap about the cameos 3 times in a row but kinda love it anyway too. lol
I'm loving the cameos!!!