How's this for an anime's beginnings: Star Ocean Ex started as a Playstation game, was adapted into a manga, before finally being turned into a six-volume series from Geneon.

If only the path Star Ocean Ex's story takes was as interesting.

This first volume, The Inception, starts with young Claude on his father's space ship, which is investigating an unexplored planet. Somehow, the ship wanders into an asteroid field, and the crew narrowly escapes. Claude, dad and a few crewmen go down to the planet, investigate a strange ship, and then suddenly Claude is mystically zapped to another world.

This all happens in the first five minutes of the first episode.

Now, this is no way to start a new anime series. Already the audience has little vested in Claude's relationship with his father, though it's constantly referred to in most of these first five episodes. And the ship Claude arrived in – very nifty looking CG, I will say – is up front and center in the opening animation, but got all of two minutes actual screen time.

Basically, an entire episode could (should?) have been devoted to Claude's back-story and arrival to this new world. It would have made us care more for his character and his troubles. Instead, while Claude is our focal point in this series, there's little intriguing or interesting about him. The start of Star Ocean Ex feels too much like, well, a poorly thought-out video game script. Dump him somewhere new, send him off on an adventure, but forget about the why, and let's make the how quick. And the where has problems too.

Once Claude is on this new world, Expel, it becomes obvious very quickly that little time was spent during the conceptual process on what this new world should be like. It sure looks like Earth. It sure sounds like Earth. Everyone seems like an Earthling, other than the Vulcan ears on some characters. Hey, is that a cross on that steeple? Gotta be Earth.

But it's not, and it's sad that it's not, because it would have made for an interesting twist. Star Ocean Ex could use some interesting twists.

Claude saves a young girl, Rena, in a forest from a beast of some sort, and Rena quickly becomes convinced Claude is the Warrior of Light prophesized to come and save Expel from the evil Sorcery Globe.

Claude decides to seek out the stone, Rena in tow, and hopes to link back up with his father with the globe's help. He meets more interesting characters along the way who join him in his quest. He has a destiny to fulfill. Sound familiar yet? Claude and cast are all dressed colorfully with matching eye and hair color, while most everyone else is a grungy villager. You've heard this one before, right? Rena has magical healing powers. Still doesn't sound like two dozen other anime or video games?

Star Ocean Ex is a very solid looking anime, but it suffers considerably in the story department. There's some fast-paced moments and decent battle scenes, but two of these episodes slow down the pace of the entire show, with long, drawn out stretches of unproductive slapstick, which differed too much from the theme laid out to us in the beginning.

I'll be back for another volume of this, because there's a chance Star Ocean Ex isn't as bad as its opening act. But right now, I feel lost in a Legend of Zelda world without the pointy hat.

There are good things about Star Ocean Ex, and tops among them is the animation. While a bit saturated at times, the colors are deep and vibrant, and come through well on the full screen presentation. No noticeable flaws I could see.

The music is spread out lightly and evenly in the modest Dolby Digital Japanese and English stereo options. The dialogue is nearly full-frontal. It's a simple soundstage production, nothing bad, nothing special.

Slim extras, with simple character profiles, Geneon previews, textless and Japanese opening animation. I would have liked to see more information about the entire path this anime project took, maybe throw some Geneon executive in front of a camera and have him or her talk about the process Star Ocean EX went through. It's not too late; there's five more volumes coming. And you can't go wrong with English voice actor commentaries.

Star Ocean Ex looked great, sounded good, but didn't muster up anything close to an original thought. It gets a Rent It, for decent visuals and the hope that things get better in March 2005 with volume two.