Anime: Blue Dragon

I stumbled upon this series at random, as I was just looking for some Shounen anime simple enough to be watchable on my limited Japanese. I was very possibly surprised and had hard time tearing myself away from the screen. I wasn't aware that there is a game around, so this review is based solely on the series as a stand alone work. I was really surprised this series is rated so low, and so I decided to write this review.

Synopsis:

Blue Dragon is a Shounen anime, i.e. aimed for boys around 6 to 12 year olds, the storie starts as Shuu our typical boy in search of an adventure meets Jiiro and Zora two mysterious travelling shadow users, these shadows are a bit like pokemon, basicly they fight for their masters, later more people join up until we have the seven legendary shadow users gathered to stop Nene an evil dictator set out to conquer the world.

Art & Animation:8

The first thing most people will probably notice is the influence of Akira Toriyama, the artwork is very reminiscent of the Dragon Quest series of video games and to a lesser extent Dragon Ball, I wasn't a fan of the artwork earlier, but during the series it kind of grew on me and now I love it.

For such a long series the animation stays quite stable with a couple of fillers thrown in the mix, overall very well animated series, there is some reusing of frames e.g. in battle sequences, but not enough for it to become a bother, the colours on the series are fantastic and it all looks kind of like a old j-rpg, but in a smooth, slick manner, if you've ever played Dragon Quest VII you'll be right at home.

Sound: 7

The voice acting is good, but apart from the first opening tune most music in the series is nothing to write home about, the background music does it work, but that's it. There is also some hilarious "Igirisu" with broken syntax on the second ending theme. Now were I to review the voice acting apart from the music I would give this series a solid 8 maybe even a 9, the voice acting is very well done, I especially liked Zora's and Rogi's seiyuus (voice actors).

Story: 9

Yes that is a nine, I am reviewing this as a shounen series, for what it is the story is really good, yes we have cliches but very well done cliches, the suspense is kept on throughout most of the series extremely well, the first 40 so episodes form one story arc which is more lighthearted while the last 12 or so episodes form a different darker arc. There are many plot twists in the story which I won't spoil, but which really left me gaping as I was watching the series, think "oh this is shounen, no way the can do that" "wait..they just did :smile: "
As most shounen series this one too is full of heart warming moral teachings such as "Kindness will become your strength" "I will fight to protect everyone", some darker teachings can be read from in between the lines and some fanservice content in the series tells us that the animators were aware of the older otaku who would also be watching the series. There is some character growth during the series, and motivations of most characters felt very real and relateable, I was actually moved to tears a couple of times during the series, not something just any shounen can do for me. Now that being said there is one main character who's motivations weren't really explored to the level they should have been in my opinion, but I'll overlook that major flaw as overall it is a very enjoyable series.

Enjoyment: 9

It's a great shounen. If you like shounen, or dragon quest style j-rpgs you'll love it, if you go in waiting for something else you probably won't. Also if your japanese is on N5-N4 level this is a great series to practice, as that's roughly my level and I was able to follow 95% of the dialogue without any problems.