Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (2020)

A long time ago, there was a valiant swordsman who came to be known simply as "the hero." There was a demon who has caused people suffering. The hero and his companions arrived to challenge the demon to a battle and by combining their powers, the battle was brought swift conclusion. With no one around to cause trouble, the island became a quiet place where everyone could live together in peace.

Several years later, the demon is revived. Our present-day protagonist, Dai, lives on a remote island in the southern seas and dreams of becoming a great hero. When he hears about the demon's revival, Dai and his friends take it upon themselves to stop him and the evil force that revived him. Along the way, Dai discovers the identity of "the hero," the truth behind the evil force who revived the demon, and Dai's own hidden powers that surface in times of peril.

(Source: MU, edited)

Popp Main

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Dai Main

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Hyunckel Main

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Maam Main

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Leona Main

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Baran Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Hadlar Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

De Zinuar III, Avan Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Crocodine Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Vearn Supporting

Hashi, Takaya Japanese

Nara, Hatsuo Producer

Takayanagi, Momoko Assistant Producer

Karasawa, Kazuya Director

Kakudou, Hiroyuki Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 21, 2022

Septeus7

Recommended

I consider this an underrated master piece. People criticize the story for being "basic" but that is a mistake. Dai is a Classical Redemptive Hero. Nowadays almost every story is subversive fiction and morally "complex" and that's not actually good because we've culturally forgotten what a true hero is supposed to look and be because every hero has tragic, the villains are present of antiheroes and everything subverts the idea of the Hero. Dai no Daibouken does not use any of these devices. Dai is presented exactly as what a Hero should be at every critical moment and he doesn't fail. He is faithful, truthful, ... honest, kind to a fault but does not fail in his duty including the giving ultimate justice to the Dark Lord who refuses to change or stop. I know this a children story but it is one that NEEDS to be told without classic Heroic Tales like Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Legend of Kind Author, etc.... there no is ability to create genuinely good stories that are superversive.

We NEED stories that don't subvert culture but challenge us with these redemptive and aspirational stories with genuinely good heroes and classically tragic and evil villains. The ability to do this and create interesting and compelling within this "simple" framework is the strength of the show.
Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken is THE Japanese standard for classic RPG fantasy and I hope as time goes on that come appreciate this story that actually well written, genuinely good and good for the soul of the viewer. Dai's action save the world, they save his friend, the invite repentance and offer forgiveness and acceptance to the villains who demonstrate remorse and actually repent. All this done a way that flows and the use of foreshadowing a how minor good deeds come back to Dai and this band at the most critical moments teach us that every good deed does build a better no matter how hard it is to make the right decision doing so will save you in the end. It is beautiful in way it always remains true to this ideal and how it it isn't cheap or insincere but absolutely honest about it's heroism and it this story believes in heroes and this is SO refreshing and necessary.

I strongly recommend this show for young boys because unlike most things it will actually be good for them and there's something truly special and beautiful about a work of fantasy that is so truthful and good that it can carry over to this world and make it even if slightly a better world. Dai is the Legendary Hero and it isn't a cheap cliché but God's honest truth a straight up badass righteous dude.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Oct 22, 2022

giorgos_PRIVATE

Recommended

Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken will remain in my heart as one of the best stories I've ever had the chance to experience.
The adventure of Dai was a story of a young boy starting from nothing in order to become the hero who saves the world along with a cast of really memorable characters.
With training and character development we see these characters grow over the course of the show, forming a sense of responsibility and overcoming their personal fears and desires.
Their goal is to stop the commander of demon army Hadlar along with his lieutenants. We're introduced to this conflict really early on ... in the story and we come to see it expanding and reaching its climax in an EPIC final arc. All the villains are memorable with their own personalities and developments and a few well-placed plot twists, that you won't see coming, keep the action going and viewer investment to the maximum.
The world is vastly expanded and helps the viewer immerse themselves in this fantasy setting.
It also helps that the power system is really well balanced, completely devoid of plot-holes, as all characters feel just as strong as they need to be and all of the power-ups make sense and are mostly achieved through training. It never throws the power scaling off the window for the sake of a fight being more spectacular than it needs to.
The Dragon Quest manga was one of the first shonen manga, establishing and solidifying the tropes we all know and love to see in today's modern shonen.
It is an underrated classic gem that everyone needs to experience once in their life in anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 20, 2021

DiabloMask

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (15/100 eps)

This show is both a reboot, a manga adaptation, and a videogame adaptation at the same time, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken (2020) is a reboot of an anime that was cancelled decades ago and was adapted from a long running manga, why's that important? Because since it's been animated before the people working on this project won't bother putting any effort into re-animating the same thing, so it was expected that they were gonna rush the pacing.

I've made a comparison between the two versions, and so far this reboot managed to fit 30 episodes worth of ... content into 15 episodes, at first it doesn't seem so bad as the first 4 episodes managed to set things up properly, but then it starts to become apparent when you see the big progress Dai (the MC) has made by training off screen, which doesn't feel earned at all.
If that wasn't bad enough, there's a scene where the two protagonists, Dai and Pop, depart on a boat, and suddenly it cuts to them in the middle of a forest running to save a little girl, it's like the director isn't even trying, you can tell there's a lot of content that's been left out between those two scenes.

Now to be fair the story isn't deep or anything, so rushing the pacing might be better than spending more time than needed on each arc, however, there's a limit to how much you can rush a story before it feels amateurish.
Imagine playing an RPG where the dungeons are too short you get from one boss to another in like five minutes, there's no build up or time to grind, but defeating regular enemies gives you too much EXP that it's easy to over-level.
You get to the point where nothing feels earned or satisfying, you're only playing to get things over with, that's the feeling I get from this show.

Speaking of videogames, you're probably wondering if there was actually a Dai no Daibouken game, well don't ask me, I don't play Dragon Quest, but I know the franchise and I know the manga was inspired from it but has an original story, so technically it's not a videogame adaptation, but it does take place in the same universe I guess. Why's that important? Because CGI.

The use of CGI in this anime is weird, it doesn't look cheap but doesn't work well either, because ironically the art style is too 2D (if that makes sense), so the CG effects don't look like they fit, when a fire ball is shot for example it doesn't feel like the characters can touch or interact with it, it looks so odd and out of place.
And doesn't help that there's a fight scene animated in CGI, it looked like they randomly slapped a scene from the videogames.

Speaking of animation, the people in Toei Animation are probably the most talented at faking good animation, most people look at the bright colors and call it "great animation", but what I see when I'm watching this show is still images, lots of them, combined with the CGI I talked about, they use those effects to make it look like things are moving, there are even times when they use the classic method at faking animation used in sword fights, where a still image of the character moves closer to the camera and then it cuts to both characters standing still implying that the slashing already happened, not to mention the many times they close up on a character's face and move only their mouth, so yeah the animation may look good at first but if you pay attention you'll see that it's actually cheaply made most of the time.

The atmosphere of the show screams Toei Animation, to be fair it fits with the Dragon Quest franchise, but it gets annoying when the violence and overall feel of it is toned down compared to the manga and the old adaptation, some scenes don't look as dark because of the bright colors, it might be a personal preference, but it was a problem I couldn't ignore.

The music is nothing special, there aren't many tracks made yet, only a few that keep playing in every episode, there wasn't a single scene that stood out because of the music, the show will probably get better music when it gets to the part where the old adaptation left off, but for now it's just mediocre.
The opening and ending too are, in my opinion, pretty forgettable, even though I listened to them more than once to give them a chance I can't remember them at all.

With the production stuff out of the way let's get into the story and characters.
The story is nothing original, there's a demon lord with an army almost ruling the world, the protagonist who lived his entire life on an island raised by monsters, is visited by princess Leona, he saves her life when she gets attacked, so she sends him a tutor who trains him to become a proper hero and go fight the demon lord army, a pretty generic story that has nothing more to it aside from Dai's tutor Avan having a bunch of other disciples that Dai gets to meet along the way.

The characters on the other hand are probably the strongest point of this series.
The main characters are pretty much the same stereotypes you'd expect from a typical shounen series, Dai is the brave good-natured hero who never gives up, Pop is the coward who grows a pair when things get serious, and Maam is the reliable strong female who, despite not being strong at battles, is very good at supporting the group and making crucial decisions, the three are nothing special individually but they work very well together and have good chemistry.

What I consider the best part of the series though is the antagonists, being a demon lord army that wants to rule the world you'd expect them to be one dimensional villains, and although some of them are, but most of the ones introduced so far are surprisingly more than that, they each have their own unique personalities and actually care about things such as honor and glory, they don't just fight for the sake of being evil, there was even a time when it's shown that some of the soldiers from the Demon Lord army are good people (or good monsters, to be more accurate).
You might say not being one dimensional doesn't necessarily mean they're deep and interesting, which is a fair point to make, but it does make you care about both sides during a fight and that makes them more fun to watch, not to mention some of those antagonists go through some interesting development.

So overall how do I describe this adaptation? Is it bad just because the old version was better? This reminds me of two popular shounen series that got rebooted, Fullmetal Alchemist and Hunter x Hunter, both started off rushed and toned down, but got better as they diverted from their old counterparts, so although those were made by entirely different people, I can say Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken has a lot of potential and I'm having high expectations from it in the future.
As for right now I can't give the show more than 6/10, which is a decent rating because I did enjoy watching it after all, but nostalgia played a big part of it.
If you want my advice, keep the show under your radar but wait for another 15 episodes or so, it's hard to tell if it's gonna be worth your time right now, or you can watch the old version (if you can find it that is) and then get onto this adaptation, since there aren't many differences aside form the deleted content.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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