Over at the main site for the anime, you can find a second online exhibition link.

This one is titled “cave” whereas the last one was “house” and took place in the MC’s house. so naturally this one takes place in the Mekiv Caverns.

You can walk down the entrance of the cavern, checking out some scenery settings and some character art, and eventually you end up in a big room with a life sized Du’Cate.
I tried crawling around in the edges of the cave to look for secrets, but got bored and decided to update the episodes page instead.
Let me know if you find anything!

Back at it again, Super Groupies has some more limited time Mana Merch on the way. This time, there are nine items spread across three characters for Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal. The deadline to order is December 19th. Edit: As of December 7th, they are sold out.

Shiloh

Shiloh’s gear has a brown, light blue, and red accented theme going to it, reminiscent of his character design. The watch in particular is the big winner here, though I’m not sure why it only has nine artifacts on it. They’re all the lands related to Jumi Quests of course (and Madora for some reason? the anime I guess), but I feel it’s an odd choice regardless. The interior of the bag and wallet have a very cute design going on, I’d love a set of sheets made from it. Also, fans of the Jumi arc will notice a certain phrase on it, “Tadaima” or “I’m back”, that is sure to pull at your heart strings. Final note, the Li’l cactus charm on the bag and wallet is great.

Links: Watch – Bag – Wallet

Elazul

Elazul’s gear goes for black and dark blue, with just tiny highlights of green and red on it. I feel they missed the mark here a bit, I would not associate black with his character design. The watch does look rather striking, with that little hat thing on it, but the bag and the wallet really don’t say Elazul to me. The interior patterns are just a handful of shattered gems, none even in his color. The wallet shows off the core and green color a bit more, while the bag keeps the core tucked away hidden and has a darker version of the green on the sides.

Links: Watch – Bag – Wallet

Pearl

Pearl’s gear is almost completely black and white with a slight tinge of nacre, or mother-of-pearl. The watch has the pattern from the bottom of her dress on it, but is otherwise very plain. The bag and wallet have the same design across them, but now in plain white rather than nacre. The bag in particular has a big boxy feel, which doesn’t match Pearl’s character to me. The interior of the bags are ocean themed, showing off Blackpearl’s conch hammer and some pearls and shells, which is cute but very understated. Finally, a her white pearl core appears on the both the bag and wallet.

Links: Watch – Bag – Wallet

I gotta say, I feel Pearl got the short end of the stick here, but overall these are lacking compared to the Super Groupies Secret of Mana Merch I posted about last month.
What do you think?

At GoodSmile‘s new product exhibition gallery “WonHobby Gallery 2022 AUTUMN” two Legend of Mana Nendoroids were revealed.
They provided an image of a Painted Shiloh and a Prototype Serafina.

They look pretty nice! I hope we get more characters as well, and also maybe some more proportional figures/statues later on.

EDIT: Turns out they’re one step ahead of me. Here are some Pop Up Parade statues that were posted on Twitter.

We’ve got another note from Sandra in the latest episode? Can you read what it says?

It’s a bit small, but you should be able to make it out using the key:

I’ve got the answer after the break:

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a small note, here on the main page where it’s more visible.
Every week I update the Episodes and Gallery for Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal. It seems they put new episode information out pretty early, so be warned the images/descriptions likely include spoilers!
I also included translations of Li’l Cactus’s diary entries for the episodes. I may tweak them here and there, as it’s pretty punishing to puzzle out precisely what the potted poet is purporting to pen.

Another small thing, I rearranged the site menu on the right side. Legend of Mana seemed to be large enough to support its own listing.

Oh no! Sandra left a secret message, and we have to decode it to figure out what is going on!

Luckily, Li’l Cactus here has the key!

Hey, that’s not a key! That’s the silver pendant from the World of Mana campaign that Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana released under. 
The Mana Sword looks absolutely tarnished, though! It practically turned back into the Rusty Sword at this point.
Take better care of your stuff, Li’l Cactus!

Oh, you have a nice clean one too. That’s cool I guess.
But what does this have to do with Sandra’s note?

Oh, I see! According to the Art of Mana book, the Mana Sword is inscribed with text in the Fa’Diel language. It apparently says “There is love in Mana. There is Mana in love.” very interesting!
Let us take a closer look at that lettering.

Looks like it actually says “Love is in Mana, Mana is in Love”!
We can clearly see the letters A, I, and N repeated a few times within half the phrase. From there, we can make a few assumptions and the letters seem to fall into place nicely.
Say, I wonder if the letters match anything in Sandra’s letter?

We’re getting somewhere! Using what Boyd said, we know she was talking about the Flame of Hope and she must have signed her name, Sandra. Things start to fall into place again!

We’ve got it! How cool is it that they are still using that alphabet over 15 years later?
Keep your eyes open for more text in the anime (Li’l Cactus appears to be using it in the first episode, and Reverend Nouvelle’s book has a lot)!

Here are all the letters we know so far, for your convenience!

And here is Sandra’s note rewritten, just for good measure. Special thanks to Sevon for lending a steady hand for the writing in this post, my chickenscratch would have left us all wondering what was going on.

EDIT:

Mataxia over on The Mana Series Discord reminded me that this was covered in one of the older books! I probably saw this a long time ago, but forgot about it as I don’t have the book on hand anymore. Thanks Mataxia for the image!

Long time Seikens forum member, Kimiko, had a lot of luck figuring out Li’l Cactus’s diary from episode 1 in the comments below!

TODAY I HEARD A
STORY ABOUT TWO
LITTLE SORCERERS
TRYING TO BECOME
THE RULERS OF

Kimiko also found that Nouvelle’s book title appears to just be part of the common “Lorem Ipsum” filler text. I kind of expected that, but it’s good to have confirmation! Thanks Kimiko!

Over in the Legend of Mana section of the site, I started up a subsection for The Teardrop Crystal. I am unsure if I will keep it as a subsection or if it will grow to be its own section, but at the moment that is where it can be found.

Right now there are two pages in that section:

Episodes – Here you can find summaries and some images from the current episodes. For the summaries I just translated the official ones found on the anime website. Later on, I hope to have a subpage for each episode where I can go into details on my thoughts and analyses of scenes and characters while also talking about connections to the game.

Songs and Lyrics – I found the official Japanese lyrics for the OP of the anime, Tear of Will, on YouTube, but I couldn’t find any translations, so I went ahead and got an unofficial fan translation going. In addition to that, I got Sevon (webmaster of Polpota Harbor and Essence of SaGa) to transcribe and translate the ED, Song of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal. There were no official lyrics for this available, and you will find it has all new lyrics compared to the Song of Mana used in the game!

You can color Li’l Cactus if you want.

On the website for the anime, they have Li’l Cactus diary previews for each episode. I’m not going to make a news post for each one. You can check them out here.

Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal has released! I don’t know much about where to watch it, or when I will get around to watching it, but I can’t wait to do so.

That’s about all I have for the anime at the moment, but if you came here for Legend of Mana, consider checking out these Legend of Mana related articles I wrote last year:

Legend of Mana – Aerolite Name Origins
Legend of Mana Merchandise Articles
– Rabites
– Rabite Necklaces
– Zippo Lighters
– Picture Frame
– Lil’ Cactus
– Phone card and Zipper combo ???
– Screwdriver and Battery kit
– Random Remaining Items
– LoM Card Duel

Or maybe head over to the Legend of Mana Card Duel section to learn all about the TCG you may not have known exists!

Linked over at the main site for the anime, you can find this online exhibition link.
It seems to be a 3D interior of the main character’s house you can walk around and look at animation setting drawings, concept art, and storyboarding materials, but I wouldn’t know! My home computer is nearly 12 years old now and it starts to give up on life when I try to look around. I’m running at around 1fps here when I give it a shot.
I’ll take a look at this stuff once I’m back in the office, and report back here about what’s inside.

Ok, my office computer had no problem with visiting the house. It’s worth a quick peek to see the art, but honestly there isn’t much there.
At least there is a special Li’l Cactus worship room, that’s cool I guess.

I tried for a bit, but couldn’t find a way to get the images out of the app, maybe someone else will have more luck than me. If so, let me know!