Blue Dragon

So having gone into Christmas break, I decided I would try and be brave and take on a larger anime series. In the hopes that I would be able to finish 51 episodes in 7 days it turned out that I bit off a little more than I could chew. All my wishful thinking was not a complete loss though. Blue Dragon turned out to be a worthwhile anime to watch.

So far I have managed to make it through 32 of the 51 episodes as of this post. The premise behind the whole story is that Shu and his friends are trying to recover the extra 7 pages from the Book of the Beginning that was stolen by General Logi, a member of Lord Nene's army. Shu and his companions turn out to be shadow wielders who are descendants of the legendary Heroes of Light. They possess real shadows, where the members of Lord Nene's army use synthetic shadows created by Lord Nene. The entire story is a quest to recover and decipher these extra 7 pages to understand how to maximize the potential of their shadows.

On the surface, the story doesn't seem too robust. After getting into the story though, there is a great deal of intertwining between many of the story elements, making it more complex and entertaining. Each episode is tied into the next much like many of the Bleach or Naruto episodes are. I did like the fact that there was little to no filler in this series. Although you do need to watch all of the episodes to make sense of what is happening, each episode tended to have an ending. Very rarely did a sequence such as a battle extend beyond two episodes tops. I found that this allowed the story to progress a little quicker and not lose my attention. Although the first couple of episodes were a little dry, it was worth sticking them out because the series really picks up after that point.

  

The animation in the show is phenomenal. It is very clear that the character designer has influence from Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Quest, and Chrono Trigger. Not only the physical design of the characters represents characters from these other series but also their mannerisms and personality traits. Two striking examples are General Logi and his resemblance to Vegeta in terms of appearance; the second is Kluke and character likeness to Bulma.

The music in the show is fairly repetitive. There is the same motivational battle music right when things are looking tough and the heroes have to dig deep and pull through. This is also one series where I can say I was not crazy about the intro theme or the ending theme either. The background tracks were decent but the intro and ending lost it for me.

As a whole Blue Dragon is a good show and definitely worth taking the time to watch. Be patient with the first couple of episodes because the story does need them to get itself started. After watching this series, I will be pulling the game off my shelf for XBox 360 and giving it a run through. Stay tuned for the review on the original Blue Dragon game as well.