Chrono Trigger's Cutscene Comparison

For most RPGs with Full Motion Video, the events contained within the cutscene are an active part of the game’s sequence of events.  If you take out the anime cutscene in Tales of Berseria of Seres offering herself to Velvet as sacrifice, you’re going to miss the scene of her death and the revelation within her last words to Velvet.  If you remove the pre-rendered conversation between Adam and Eliza in her office from Deus Ex 3, you’ll be left without crucial information about the story of the game and its characters.  If you excise the boat scene in Lunar 1, you won’t have any idea, going forward, of just how incredibly boring it is when Luna sings.

Chrono Trigger, on the other hand, originates from the Super Nintendo, a full console generation before FMV cinematics became a reality for gaming.  As such, its anime cutscenes, added to the game when it was later re-released on the Playstation 1, represent an interesting situation: they show several major events in the course of Chrono Trigger’s plot, but they’re a duplication of events already playing out in the game, rather than the sole depiction of said events.  When you reach 1 of the correlating moments in the story, you’ll see the event transpire both within the game itself, as CT was originally designed, and also in its anime rendition.

Which naturally leads us to today’s question: Which version of Chrono Trigger’s narrative is better at these points, the original in-game scenario, or the anime cutscene version?  Well, rest assured, everyone, I am here today to answer this question so pressing and interesting that it never occurred to anyone in the past 20 years to bother asking it!



OPENING

We start with a pretty close call.  Both opening sequences to Chrono Trigger create an exciting montage that make great use of the game’s appealing diversity in settings, characters, and events, and while each opening is displaying a different set of scenes in a different order from one another, they’re pretty much equally intriguing and accurate representations of what the game offers.

Each opening has a couple potential flaws, but they’re totally negligible.  The fact that the original opening’s battles are staged is clear to anyone familiar with the game, but that’s insignificant since the point of the opening is to introduce you to a game you AREN’T familiar with.*  Each does technically show spoilers for the game (even such major ones, in the original, as the Kingdom of Zeal and Lavos’s emergence!), but most of what you witness in the cinematic will be forgotten by the time the player actually encounters the event, particularly with the scenes the anime version portrays (since they’re not a direct display of how it will play out in the game).

As far as which is better...I like the way that the original synchronizes the race with Johnny to the change in the music, and it has a slight advantage over its anime counterpart in terms of its ending--while the Epoch blasts off into another time at the end of each opening, it’s the original sequence that perfectly times it to the final few notes of the song, the exact right thrilling conclusion to the dramatic build-up that the opening has created.  Nonetheless, one really can’t deny that the pace and animation quality of the anime opening has an advantage in catching and holding the audience’s attention.  I also like the fact that the anime starts softly, reaping the benefit of slowly and gently intriguing the audience before it jumps into the flashy, exciting stuff.  And while we’re talking about the quiet beginning of the anime version, having us look fondly through Crono’s eyes at a picture of him and his friends is a great way of invoking a pleasing nostalgia, somehow more so than the actual original opening can!  Lastly, I like the fact that the anime makes a point of briefly showcasing each of the game’s main characters, lightly introducing them in a way that gives the audience a taste of them, yet doesn’t give anything away.  While the original certainly does show all the members of the party doing stuff (besides Magus, obviously), it’s the anime version that calls attention to them as characters rather than simply parts of the plot’s larger whole.

Thus, although each version is a great specimen of what a game’s opening should be, when one takes everything into consideration, it’s the anime introduction to Chrono Trigger that’s the better version, I feel.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 1


FINDING ROBO

Now this one’s much easier to award the win to the anime version.  In the original Chrono Trigger, discovering the deactivated and abandoned Robo is...well, it’s pretty much just a case of walking up to him and hitting the A button.  After all, the anime version is only covering the actual approach and initial discovery, not the dialogue and events that follow of Lucca deciding to fix him, Marle’s finding an insight about Lucca’s character, and Robo’s subsequent activation.  So this is basically just a case of whether it was better to have the player walk up to something and investigate it, or display the approach and discovery in anime format--no competition.

I will say that the cutscene has its flaws, though.  It begins strangely comically, with a rat’s goofy eyes blinking to a silly sound effect before we see the scene proper.  It doesn’t really feel right to this moment in the game, to me.  I mean, you’re still in the midst of the exceptionally portrayed apocalyptic world of 2300 AD, and this is the first major location that Crono and company have come to since only recently witnessing, to their horror, a visual record of the day the world was destroyed.  This dome seems completely empty and abandoned, a worse state even than the previous domes of residence we’ve encountered.  Put all that together, and...should this moment really start with something vaguely lighthearted?  Still and all, that weird start is done with very quickly, and the rest of the scene is adequate.

...Well...sort of.  I mean...if you’re gonna use a cutscene to introduce Robo, is showing him sitting in a scrap heap really the best way to do it?  Couldn’t they instead have had the cinematic portray the moment of his activation, with the energy sparks and spinning and whatnot?  Would’ve been way more dynamic.

Still, it’s a fine enough cutscene, doing well with showing just how alone and wrecked Robo is when he’s first discovered, and neatly displaying Lucca’s enthusiastic science-first questions-later attitude.  And like I said, there really isn’t any notable competition for it here.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 2


MEETING AYLA

Ayla’s introduction is awesome either way you slice it.  In its original format, she comes leaping on screen for a jump kick against 1 of the reptites that have mobbed Crono’s party, then proceeds to kick the ass of several more, before running another off the screen.  The previous fight has established to the player that these things are resistant to physical attacks, and yet here this out-of-nowhere cavewoman is wrecking each of them with a single hit.  Badass!

Being a bit divorced from the game’s visuals, the anime version doesn’t carry the same inherent gameplay-created implication to the player that Ayla must be incredibly strong to be so devastating with clearly physical attacks.  Also, I gotta say that it’s annoying that this cutscene (like Ayla’s official art) prominently displays her using a club, when she never actually does in the game, or is even implied to ever do so.  Weapons are for sissies; when Ayla wants something immediately and violently reduced to its component parts, it’s a hands-on approach or nada! 

But despite that, and although the in-game version gets the job done very well, I have to hand the victory once again to the anime iteration.  It’s fast, it’s exciting, it’s animated really well (this might be the best damn animation the whole game has, even!), it gives us an opportunity to see what reptites look like up close, it adds to Ayla’s combat prestige by showing her beating the crap out of even more of them, and it even makes her exit from the scene better--she’s actively leading a bunch of the enemies away from Crono and company to help them further, not just deciding to single 1 out to particularly work over off-screen.  I even dig Crono’s dumbfounded “I gotta tap me some ooga-booga ass ASAP” stare at the end of it.  Ayla kicks fucking ass, and this cutscene escalates on the original in showing that.  A well-earned point to the anime.

In-Game: 0
Anime: 3


FROG WIELDS THE MASAMUNE

Possibly the most cool and epic moment of Crono Trigger is that in which Frog accepts the mantle of Destiny, even if it had been meant to be worn by Cyrus, takes the Masamune in hand, calls his heroic pledge to the heavens, and cuts a freaking mountain in twain.  And this time?  The point goes to the original version.

Don’t get me wrong, the cutscene is a worthy contender!  Frog moves and acts with awesome purpose, the moment is appropriately epic, the skybeam is appropriately shiny, the mountain’s splitting is clean.  And the anime has an advantage in the windstorm that converges on Frog as he brandishes the Masamune--that’s a cool touch.

But honestly, the in-game version is just better.  First of all, it’s way, way more meaningful that Frog is not already carrying the Masamune, but instead asks that Crono give it to him, finally ready, having confronted his memories of Cyrus 1 final time, to become the world’s hero.  As awesome as the scene is for its own merits, it’s also meant to show an emotional culmination of Frog’s will, and his accepting, demanding the Masamune is a necessary part of it.  And of course, it’s also cool (if admittedly inexplicable) that Crono does not simply hand him the sword, but plunges it into the ground so that Frog can claim it for his own--very reminiscent to King Arthur drawing the sword in the stone.  Which in turn allows for Frog to gaze on it for a moment, and then make a vow to the world and to fate that he shall use the blade to slay his foe and restore honor.  Honestly, that moment of monologue by itself elevates this version above its anime counterpart; you really just can’t have the scene without it.  Finally, I actually think that the skyward explosion of power from Frog’s drawing the sword is in fact a lot cooler in-game, even with the SNES’s limited graphics.  While the anime version is neat, seeing an exploding dome of pure power radiate outward from him as he draws it, so massive that it’s seen from the world map as it expands, then converges into a beam blasting to the sky and higher, really just sells the epic nature of the moment and the Masamune’s incredible power so much better.  The mountainside being blasted in 2 with a fanfare of explosions and debris is cooler, and the whole scene having Frog’s theme playing louder than in the cutscene is also beneficial.

The anime version does it well!  But it’s completely out of its league on this one.  Point goes hard to the original!

In-Game: 1
Anime: 3


APPROACHING MAGUS

This one is a really tight race.  The anime version does not do much to mess with perfection--the blue flame path lights as Frog gradually approaches Magus, then leaps forward and forms a circle around the summoning chamber in which Magus stands, and the big man himself appears, seen ominously from the back.  It’s pretty much an exact interpretation of the original scene--although I do like that Frog hesitates at the first flames, waiting to see whether this is a danger before proceeding.  A nice detail.

Nonetheless, I’m calling this for the in-game version.  Although virtually identical in theory, the reality of the matter is that the main purpose of this scene is to culminate the unnerving atmosphere of Magus’s castle into a final, overwhelmingly tense approach to the sorcerer, and the simple fact is...it works better when the player has to be a participant in it.  It’s an unusual statement coming from a guy who usually sees the gameplay of an RPG as little more than a hindrance to its narrative, I know.  But it can’t be denied: forcing the player him/herself to be the one taking the steps forward along the sorcery-lighted path in a room of otherwise complete darkness raises the tension better than watching Frog do it in a cinematic, so the original iteration’s gotta take the win here.  I also think that its sound effects and the chanting background, in spite of being cruder, are more effective here, and the exact timing and reverse-fading dark silhouette of Magus coming into focus is also superior.  Those are tiny details--but when atmosphere is the highest priority, it’s the tiny details that count the most.  In-game wins the round.

In-Game: 2
Anime: 3


MOUNTING THE DACTYLS

Like finding Robo, this is essentially a default win for the anime version.  In the original game, upon finding Ayla at the dactyl nest about to embark on a solo mission to save her village and stop the reptites once and for all, Crono and company pledge to help her, she gratefully accepts, some dactyls are called down for them to join her, and the scene fades to black, resuming on the world map with the party flying on the dinosaurs’ backs.  This cutscene is basically showing the actual process of Ayla and company getting on the dactyls and flying off, so I guess its gameplay equivalent is the aforementioned black that was faded to?  Not very hard to determine which is the better contender.  I mean, honestly, it’s really only an okay cutscene (I do like the last moment in which it focuses on the ominous red star, though), and I have to wonder why this particular moment was selected for animation over so many other, more significant moments in the game, but...eh, it’s fine enough, and it’d have to be pretty bad not to be better than its competition of nothing at all.  Point to the anime.

In-Game: 2
Anime: 4


THE EPOCH TAKES OFF

This one’s surprisingly easy for me.  The Epoch isn’t able to fly at this point in the game (remember, it only gains flight because Dalton was an avid watcher of Pimp My Ride), so seeing it hover in the air and take off annoys me.  That may be nitpicky, but it’s not like there’s all that much in the anime cutscene that I’m unfairly disregarding.  Crono eagerly gets into the pilot seat, flips some switches (I guess it must be the exact same design as the car he races against Johnny, because otherwise I don’t know how exactly a kid from the 1000 AD suburbs knows this much about driving a time machine), and takes off.  Functional, but unremarkable, so the lore inconsistency is enough to put me off.  Also, with the anime version, the scene’s music and movement are clearly intended to get you excited for this moment, which...I mean, it’s not a bad thing, because the Epoch is very cool, but at the same time, having you already be hyped up is going to make the impact of the next moment in-game, seeing the inferno of the time-scape as the Epoch crosses through it, less impressive.  The quieter, almost reverent atmosphere of boarding the Epoch in-game creates a greater contrast to what’s to come, allowing the latter to be all the more impressive for it.  Point to the original.

In-Game: 3
Anime: 4


CRONO’s DEATH

Original version wins.  Not even a question.  Look, the anime cutscene is fine enough, but it completely lacks the power of seeing Crono’s death play out in-game.  There’s too many distractions, first of all--as great as it is to get to see something of Magus besides his back, doing a close-up of him watching Crono standing against Lavos is dumb, interrupting our view of the kid’s last stand.  Toriyama has a terrible habit of being utterly incapable of showing any important scene of conflict without constantly interrupting it to check in with the spectators...I should probably just be thankful that it didn’t go full Dragon Ball and have Magus and Vegeta start up a 10-minute play-by-play conversation to explain why what we’re ostensibly watching is so amazing.  The sudden flashback to Janus’s prediction that 1 of the party would perish is likewise an unnecessary distraction, and too damn heavy-handed to boot.  We don’t need to be reminded of it, guys, we’re watching it happen.

Maybe most importantly, though, the timing and act of Crono’s undoing is just far, far more moving and impactful in the original.  The anime only has a close-up of his face just kinda bwoosh outward, suddenly and with sound.  The original version, though...okay, the whole thing of Crono raising his arms up to the heavens might be more than was needed, but you see him disintegrate.  The screen is white and void of all but him and those he’s dying to protect, and after the keening windup sound effect of Lavos’s beam, the game goes utterly silent, allowing nothing, nothing, to distract us from the fact that we are watching him reduced to ash, a particle silhouette of Crono that dissolves before our eyes with cruel simplicity.  The silence, the intensity, the weight...this is a moment that is Chrono Trigger’s and Chrono Trigger’s alone, singular and uniquely powerful.  By contrast, the cutscene just shows an anime guy dying in an anime way.  Easy victory for the original version here.

In-Game: 4
Anime: 4


ENDING

So, this is a bit tricky to judge, because much like the opening, this isn’t so much 2 versions of the same scene as 2 different things accomplishing the same purpose.  Also, tough to really say what we should count as the in-game version.  I think it’s fairest that for the purposes of our comparison, the in-game version will be the ending starting with the fireworks being set off by Taban, since that’s the point at which the final sequence is fully out of the player’s hands.  Also, we are absolutely not gonna count the stupid bullshit crappy thing in the anime cutscenes where Guardia falls because even that far back Square was conducting experiments on how to cheapen and destroy the things their audience love.  It’s not part of the ending, it’s not a thing in Chrono Trigger, it doesn’t exist in the narrative or timeline, I will not be accepting questions at this time.

Alright, so, first of all, let’s talk about the anime cutscene.  We start with Crono and Marle’s marriage, which is...I mean, it’s nice, but while I am and always have been a Crono x Marle shipper, and the game itself certainly does imply that Marle romantically likes Crono, it seems a bit weird to just jump to showing them outright getting married.  Implications or not, CT simply doesn’t contain a love story for Crono and Marle, so this really would’ve been a lot better as, I dunno, them on a picnic date, or doing a holding-hands-and-looking-affectionately-at-each-other thing while they hung out with Lucca, or something.

Better than that is the next scene of Ayla and her tribe having a feast, in which Ayla casually shows what a fucking queen she is by out of nowhere jamming a ring on Kino’s finger, then tossing him a second ring (a substantially better one, I can’t help but notice, but then, it should be), and expectantly holding her hand to him with the disaffected expectance of a mob boss who’s also royalty.  Kino gets the idea and secures his status as Number 1 Bottom in Ayla’s inevitable harem as he slips the ring on, and everyone cheers.  

Following this, we get a scene of Glenn, curse-free, getting knighted by the King of Guardia, who looks...really, really old.  Is he supposed to be that old in the game?  I thought this guy had yet to father Leene’s daughter; the whole thing about Marle disappearing was that Leene dying at that time would erase her bloodline because a successor hadn’t been born yet.  Then again, let’s face it, there’s...pretty good odds that Glenn is Marle’s ancestor, not this guy.  Anyway, it’s a nice celebration of Frog’s chivalrous honor as he exits to a salute by the kingdom’s knights.  Then we’re back at Crono and Marle’s wedding in time to see King Kai Melchior, for...some reason, and they finish the aisle walk, and there’s balloons and a thrown bouquet, and it’s all nice and happy.

And then Lucca has to walk up with Mini Proto-Robo and find baby Kid and ruin everything by reminding us that Square erroneously believes that Chrono Cross is canon.

Yeah, uh, look, this is overall nice and all, and Ayla and Frog’s parts are really good, but...it’s not an impressive ending.  First of all, it doesn’t show Robo at all, and while there was a concern during their final goodbyes of whether Robo would still exist in the future, the game’s original ending (see below) confirms this to be the case, so I really don’t know why the anime ending stiffs him.  Second, Magus is likewise completely absent--yes, he COULD be dead in this ending if the player decided to off him in 1200 BC, but surely it wouldn’t be impossible to have a separate ending cutscene bit for Magus that could play or not play determined by that decision?

Third, even if you discount the sin of forcing Chrono Cross lore upon this defenseless game, Lucca’s part of the ending is kinda just bad--the scene clearly just isn’t meant to be about her, Lucca the character.  The damn baby she finds is the star of the scene, Lucca merely a vehicle for its introduction.  More is said about Lucca’s future life by the stumbling little proto-Robo than anything she herself is doing.  And fourth, I’m sorry, but even if you inexplicably DO like Chrono Cross, there’s still no reason to clumsily scotch-tape it onto Chrono Trigger like this.  The original game never contained any such hints of its (shitty, shouldn’t-be-considered-canon) sequel, and that sequel unfortunately tied itself to CT without any such help.  If you’re gonna end this game, end THIS game, let it stand as a testament to itself; don’t just exploit it as an advertisement for the later product.  And if you’re gonna make a “where are they now” ending about the characters, actually DO it for ALL the characters in the main cast!

The anime ending is serviceable to be sure, but it’s definitely and substantially flawed nonetheless.  The original, on the other hand...well, it’s basically perfection.  Whether it’s Crono and friends in the Epoch or Crono and Marle floating along with a bunch of balloons, you see the heroes carried across the world they’ve saved, the night-darkened ground illuminated by the lights of people’s homes, to a gentle, joyful tune.  In the case of the Epoch, eventually you get to see a simple scene for each of the rest of the party--Robo and Atropos sitting peacefully on the side of a notably non-ruined mountain in the future (happily confirming that Robo does, indeed, live in the saved future), Ayla and Kino riding dactyls through the sky, Frog leading a royal procession along Zenan Bridge with the king and queen behind him, and Magus, well, doing his grumpy solo act.**  In the case of the balloons, we transition to watching Crono and Marle from below as they climb higher into the heavens.  In each version, we finally begin to zoom out, to view this precious planet that we’ve put so much work into preserving, as a beautiful whole.  The credits finish rolling, and a shooting star tells us that all is done.  The Epoch version of this is quite simply the greatest RPG ending I’ve seen, and the balloon version is not significantly lesser.  Even discounting the shortcomings of the anime version, it’s hard to conceive how it could compete with this.  The tiebreaker goes to the original.

In-Game: 5
Anime: 4



Huh!  I wasn’t expecting it to be such a close score, but it looks like the final tally has the original, in-game scenes edging out the later anime additions 5 to 4.  While there’s a lot of merits to the cinematics and plenty of times that they’re a valuable addition to Chrono Trigger, the game in its pure, untouched form is still the better experience more often than not.  Neat.  I have no idea what that proves or why I felt the need to make the comparison to begin with, but I had fun and it’s always a joy to talk about Chrono Trigger.  Hopefully you enjoyed it to some degree, too.  Until next time!


















* Weirdly, the fight against Zombor is shown in both openings, and each time it’s portrayed incorrectly, with the original misrepresenting the beginning of the fight with him, and the anime implying that Frog can be involved in the battle.  Why Zombor was so important as to warrant representation in both openings, yet not important enough to show him correctly either time, is a mystery to me.


** Admittedly, you aren’t seeing the “ending” for Crono, Marle, and Lucca, so you COULD say that this is incomplete as the anime version is, in terms of displaying the game’s characters.  But I would argue that this ending is more definitively about the game and adventure as a whole, whereas the cinematic was clearly focused specifically on the cast, and also, Crono and Marle and Lucca’s ending IS that they’re out there, seeing the times they’ve saved and the people they’ve befriended, on a new quest.