Lots and Lots of chibi charachters, Sunrise Inc after the huge success of the gundam serie's that at that point aired from 1979-1988 (char's counterattack was the latest one at the time) found somewhat a new populair direction by creating a more kid friendly serie's in addition/rivalised of Toei Animation's Dragonball serie's wich was gaining hto uge popularity rating in japan, Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru , with a huge pointer to Dragons since that is very important in japanese culture.
The whole serie itself is more a friendly mix between RPG, Action adventure, Mecha's wich sunrise was best in doing and deformed charachters with funny traits to give, even for the villians.
The first wataru storyline goes about a legend that saved the 1st godrealm ( there are i believe 3 realms in total according to the ova' and last serie's storyline) and that hero was named 'wataru', and it seems a 9 year old boy is a descendant or something of that legend and is asked to cleanse the godrealm of darkness and let the rainbow shine.
Animation reallly fits for its time beeing it a kidsshow both the OP & ED to me was likable because some of the singing was stuck in my head together wich the good ol oldskool popmusic, and the models looked drawn very colourfull and funny even for the bad one's with a very positive look at 'chibi'as i said, with every now and then some strange behavior is sometimes a good thing to keep the show going.same for the mini mecha models that is personalised for every charachter wich their own unique powers and abillitie's
Musicwise: Copy, Cut& Paste wich was quite normal at the time and cheaper to do it, how repetitive it became god only knows, it could use some more variation for my account!
The charachters were one of the main things that made the show populair and shows a very strong diffrence in personality's, behaviors, looks ect ect.
but fun nevertheless, wataru himself is not a typical hotheaded ambitious type , more a heroic, helpful boy just to point out, and i like the side chara as well for their part.
I enjoyed it for a big part minus the 2 or 3 fillers every 10-12 episodes but then again it summaries some previous chapters, but the biggest enjoyment of it all was the rpglike action adventure encounters wataru and his friends had, returning all inhabitants to a normal state.
overall i give it a 7/10, good to enjoy for a kids show , could give some more so hopefully the next serie's (minus the ova wich i have seen) give some less repetitive music and some more new encounters with more actionpacked scene's and a more darkerside storyline!
