This Week in Anime

Why You Shouldn't Sleep on Dragon Quest

Jean-Karlo
DA-TATA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TAAAAAAAAAAA~

Don't you just love that old Dragon Quest title screen? Almost makes you forget the composer is a massive twit. Anyway, my luck turned up doubles again, so we not only get to talk about something I love (again), but it's Dragon Quest—specifically, The Adventure of Dai, a remake of an older Dragon Quest anime.

Much like Yamibo, Dragon Quest means a lot to me. I cut my teeth on the old GameBoy Dragon Warrior 1&2 games. Imagine how I felt when the Mass Age and Dragon Effect guys huffed and puffed about how JRPGs weren't "real" RPGs.
But yeah, Dragon Quest is only the biggest JRPG franchise ever (it did for RPGs what Golden Eye and Halo did for FPS games and showed you could put them on consoles), and it stands to reason that there would be a manga and an anime. So in 1991, The Adventure of Dai came out (fun fact: it also came out in Latin America!). It was made by [checks notes]... "the people that went on to make Beet the Vandel Buster."

I'm getting ahead of myself, but how do you make Shonen Jump Valium after, uh, this? 'Cuz ignoring how much the sight of slimes warms my soul, The Adventure of Dai is what is known in scientific circles as "pretty fun".

The Adventure of Dai works because it can take hoary old shonen archetypes but use them in a fun way. Let's introduce you to the archetypes. So, like, there was a Dark Lord and a Hero cut him down, yeah? And when the Dark Lord died, all the marketable monsters working under him were freed and left for an island named Dermline Island. One day, an orphan shows up, and a Lump Shaman named Brass takes him in, names him "Dai", and tries to raise him to be a mage. But Dai can't use magic to save his life.

I could talk about how the Magic Cylinders predate Pokémon and are a call-back to Ultraseven's Capsule Monsters, but I think I angered enough people with the Bioware crack earlier. What I do wanna say is that that first episode was such a triumph because it Did The Thing™️. Like, anyone who doesn't play Dragon Quest is gonna look at a cylinder of Slimes and think, "Oh hey, it was a dud." But the real ones knew what was coming.

Good thing, too, because The Adventure of Dai takes pains to point out that in the absence of a Dark Lord, lots of scumbags traipse around as Heroes in the hopes of slaughtering innocent monsters for quick cash and fame. And it happens that Dai's buddy Gomuchan is a rare Golden Metal Slime. (addendum: why isn't this a real Dragon Quest monster?!), which a sleazy Hero and his party are hunting.

It all ties back into how well The Adventure of Dai handles the shonen trappings. You've seen this stuff before (or are too young to have done so), so it cuts the fat and doesn't pretend it's super-smart for having underhanded Heroes that should do better but don't, or scheming Sages who in reality are just in it for themselves.
That's where Saori Hayami comes in as Princess Leona.

Yeah, even Dragon Quest (institution that it is) hasn't escaped The Horny-ening, what with characters like Jessica Albert or Jade. And while I did make sure to get the Jessica ending in DQ8 and possibly put a lot of work into expanding her wardrobe, it's refreshing to watch The Adventure of Dai and see a kid just... be friends with a girl. I mean, he has to earn her respect first, but he does so by showing kindness and resourcefulness in dealing with a sleeping monster. It takes most Isekai protagonists a whole season to learn that level of socialization!

Having seen what even low-level monsters can do to you when you're not ready in a Dragon Quest, I'm sure growing up with monsters left Dai perfectly capable of dealing with sharp implements. And he even dealt with a giant Evil Scorpion!

It's cool, see, Dai can go Super Saiyan use magic when... I dunno, his Tension reaches 100 or something. And he uses his magic (and good old Shonen Resourcefulness) to fight off a Sage in a Killing Machine, which I assure you is a big deal for such a tiny squirt.

Hey, Dragon Ball is has and always will be drawn by Toriyama. Applying the Dragon Ball formula to a Dragon Quest adaptation is a no-brainer. I mean, right after Dai saves the princess, we have the resurrection of a Dark Lord and this weirdo comes in for a Training Arc™️.

This is Avan, a trainer. With his mage pupil, Popp, he comes to Dermline, helps keep the monsters from falling under the Dark Lord's influence, and promises to make a man out of Dai in just a week. And, I gotta be honest—it's here that The Adventure of Dai kinda started losing me.

I think it's because here the story shifts from Dragon Quest stuff to more Hunter x Hunter-style 'grand feats of strength from weird-looking people'. And it's still fun and breezy, but like... who cares about the Avan Strash when Dai could be learning Gigaslash?

Yeah, this is where they got me again. Anyone that can use a Puff spell is a guy I love.

I'm being That Guy, but back in the Dragon Warrior days, these spells had edgy names like FireBane or Evil Slash—and Puff was "BeDragon". Dragon Quest's translations go with the conceit that spell names are simple onomatopoeia. I'm willing to bet that they call it "Puff" because they wanted people to see the cute mage-girl learn it and think, "Ooh, do I finally get to see a Puff-Puff massage?", only to unleash fiery death upon hapless monsters.
But yes, let's go with Puff the Magic Dragon.

Much like with the techniques, this mid-boss's character designs are where The Adventure of Dai really starts departing from Toriyama's established character design tropes. I mean, look at him—no bug-armor, no weird grin... Oh yeah, and it turns out Avan was the hero who beat the Dark Lord Hadlar in the first place. So, uh. I guess he gets to be as OC-doughnut-steal as he wants.

This is also where the stakes start getting higher. Dai hasn't even finished his training, but it turns out there's an even bigger, darker, lord-ier Final Boss after Hadlar.

It's here that I can start to see how the people that made such light, breezy fun with The Adventure of Dai could maybe make the wholly-forgettable-no-really-you-don't-even-know Beet the Vandel Buster because it's just such a boilerplate decision to take out the mentor before anyone is "ready". And it's a good scene with lots of tension—the heroes are turned to metal with Kaclang and can only watch Avan give his final words before he faces his doom.

I give them credit for this, it's kinda like Dragon Quest V where you the player have to watch your father get utterly slaughtered by Slon and Kon and you can only watch while held captive.
But also... eh, I guess.

"Hey guys, remember the King Piccolo face? I can draw that too!"
At any rate, don't take my disillusionment with dislike, because as you say it's all really well-handled. Avan goes out with that one spell that used to be called "Kamikazee" (gee, I wonder why they renamed it "Megante"), and our heroes can only watch as his one last-ditch effort doesn't even work. Boilerplate as this is, if you have to have a last-stand, raise the stakes, and show the threat the heroes have to face, this? This is textbook execution.

I like Popp. We skipped over him a lot, but the show does a good job establishing him as a guy who was simply a student under Avan. Maybe he was a little jealous of Dai getting special privileges, but he did care. He's like Leorio: he's this comparatively-normal dude who isn't as flashy as everyone else, but his emotions are still valid and when he bares his heart it reminds you, "Oh yeah, these are people." This is one of those things I like about anime: other than anime Doing The Thing™️, they earn the big emotional moments. And Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai succeeds at both.

OH GOD YES
Like, the opening shots of all the monsters running from the screen had them all in 3D, and it was good 3D! It helps that Toriyama's monster designs are meant to be simple enough to communicate easily, be it in tiny 8-bit pixels or simple 3D models, but look at this!

Come back! I need to hug all of you!

There isn't a person working in Japanese animation who would dare mess with Dragon Quest's monster designs. Who knows, maybe it's the raw nostalgia for those endless nights trying to get the Golden Claw out from the pyramid in Dragon Quest III, maybe it's because they saw what other attempts at rendering the Dragon Quest monsters in 3D were like...

Times are tough, especially for Dragon Quest fans reconciling with the fact that Koichi Sugiyama is a tremendous nozzle. But The Adventure of Dai is a fantastic shonen adventure that really does do Dragon Quest justice (and it doesn't use Sugiyama's music, which I consider a plus). The emotional hits are earned, the references to the source material are well-utilized, and Toei is clearly spending their Big Money to keep the animation on the higher end of the scale. I don't know where the series will go from here, but the real mark of quality of this is that it's really giving me the itch to go play another Dragon Quest.

That's also how I look when I see another think-piece about some flash-in-the-pan game that's "reinventing" JRPGs. For now, though, I'm feeling feisty. That's two TWIA columns and it's going swimmingly. One weirdo show, one good adaptation, both works I care and appreciate from the depths of my weeb-y... tell me, Nick, when do we fight a boss? When are you tossing some real anime at me? I think I've grinded up enough.