Blue Dragon: Awaken the Power Within!

‘Long ago, a great battle raged between the forces of Light and Darkness, with each side possessing great strengths, the mightiest of all being the power of Shadow. During the battle, the Seven Soldiers of Light managed to defeat the forces of Darkness and sealed the power of Shadow away. However the power lived on, passing from generation to generation of Shadow Masters, never revealing itself. Until now…’

Young Shu dreams of becoming a Knight Master. But when the evil King Nene of Grankingdom sends his troops to attack Shu’s village, Shu discovers that he has the innate ability to summon the Blue Dragon, a legendary powerful (but singularly self-willed) Shadow. He helps blue-haired female warrior Zola and her uptight boy apprentice Jiro to drive Nene’s forces away. Thus begins Shu’s quest to learn how to master his Shadow and to drive the evil forces of Nene from his land. For it seems that Nene has been harnessing the power of Shadow with his own infernal machines in a plan to take over the world. 

Along the way, Shu gathers various friends and hangers-on, some with Shadows, some without: the irritating (or cute?) Marumaro, a furry warrior with pervy habits; Bouquet, a ditsy waitress with a pneumatic figure and Legolas, a Mr Satan bluff-alike, complete with Afro and facial hair (who is so not Tolkien’s noble elf warrior, although, confusingly, at least a couple of other characters, Conrad L. Lawrence and General Logi, could be.) So far, so typical generic fantasy quest.

It’s a risky business, creating a genuinely engaging, fun-to-watch anime from a computer game. I’ve never played the original game (an rpg for the Xbox 360) so I can only judge this series as a TV anime. And it makes a decent enough afternoon show for children (good v. evil in the ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ vein.) What a pity, therefore, that, as with the recent UK edition of ‘Megaman Starforce’ the BBFC have given it a 12. But wait – why have they given it a 12? I can only assume that it’s because of the unnecessary and tedious harping on about Bouquet’s boobs. Oh – and the amazingly irritating Marumaro’s tendency to try to feel up any girl he sees (interspecies sex, hm?)

Hands up who fell in love with anime after seeing their first ‘Dragonball Z’ episode? Well, that would be me, for one. And that’s what makes ‘Blue Dragon’ so frustrating to watch. The characters – designed by Akira Toriyama are attractive and distinctive – but they look as if they’ve wandered in from the later episodes of DBZ, creating the expectation that they’ll behave like Toriyama’s creations. But there’s none of Toriyama’s off-beat humour or imagination to be found here, although there are pale echoes of DBZ throughout, from Nene (King Piccolo?) to pink-haired Kluke, another talented girl engineer in the Bulma vein; even Marumaro’s pervy tendencies bring Oolong and Master Roshi to mind.

But for those who aren’t familiar with ‘Dragonball Z,’ ‘Blue Dragon’ will provide some watchable fantasy battles. And at the end of episode 8, comes a hint of treachery as something of immense significance disappears from the beleaguered kingdom of Djibril (already under attack by Nene’s forces.) So maybe in later episodes, the action will become less predictable…

The English dub works well, with stalwarts such as Yuri Lowenthal as Shu, Lex Lang as the recalcitrant Blue Dragon, and David Lodge (better known to us as Jiraiya in ‘Naruto’ as the evil Nene. The music (Megumi Oohashi and Nobue Uematsu) goes into full fantasy mode for the battles (strong echoes of Toshihiko Sahashi’s fine score for ‘Gundam Seed’) – but is irritatingly jaunty in other parts.

In Summary
The sight of character designs by Akira Toriyama raises hopes that ‘Blue Dragon’ might be a chip off the old ‘Dragonball’ block… but on the strength of these first eight episodes, those hopes have proved to be pretty vain. This should have been a fun one for the kids… if only the makers had thought more clearly about their target audience. Or am I missing something here? .