Maybe you didn’t know it had an anime but you know about the game! And yes, it is a similar situation to stuff such as Monster Hunter Stories or Sands of Destruction. It has a game and later it was “adapted” to an anime. In this case, I think the game is way more famous than the anime.
There is a good reason why in this case it’s most likely that you know about the game but not about the anime. Blue Dragon is a jrpg developed by Mistwalker, Artoon, and Microsoft for the Xbox 360. Mistwalker is a company founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the guy who created the Final Fantasy series. And this is the main reason! His name alone made you take notice of this game since his company was behind it, so everyone was hoping for it to be the “next” final fantasy. Plus, it has artwork made by Akira Toriyama! And when you add in the factor that the game was released for Xbox 360, a videogame that had very few jrpgs released for it...yeah, it’s no wonder that game was quite famous back in the day!
The game got two sequels but I never played any of them so I really don’t know the exact relationship they have to each other. For the purposes of this review, the anime has two seasons and season 1 is...loosely based on the first game only. I still need to watch season 2 and see if it’s even related to the other games or not. Monster Hunter Stories’s anime second season is 100% original since it has a plot that didn’t even exist in the game. Maybe it’s the same thing here. Since I didn’t play the game it’s hard to compare it with the anime but from what I researched...oh boy. It’s quite different! I will start by talking about the anime and later compare what I know of the game to it.
From wiki, about the first episode: "A young boy named Shu highly dreams of becoming a Knight Master after hearing one that has appeared in his village. Shu goes in search only to find out it was two travelers named Zola and Jiro. Both Shu and Jiro butt into each other's head, until Zola interrupts. Glamoured by her presence, Shu believes her to the Knight Master only to deny in response and asks Shu back, "What will you do when you gain power?"
The travelers investigate the nearby ruins in the village outskirts until the village gets attacked by Gran Kingdom soldiers and starts abducting children. Zola quickly refuses Shu's request for help, leaving for Shu to fend the soldiers off to no avail. But Zola returns to help and the battle escalates when the commander summons a Shadow. Zola summons her own shadow, a winged, purple-furred monster called Killer Bat. When one of the attacks was about to harm the nearby villagers. Shu rushes towards while remembering Zola's words, and inadvertently summons his own Shadow."
His shadow is absurdly strong and clean house and after that, he leaves on a journey with Zola and Jiro since if he stayed his village would always be the target of an attack by the Gran Kingdom empire. We can divide the first season into three parts. Here, in the first one, we see the cast meeting the other Shadow Wielders. And yes, they became our main cast. And yes, the Shadows are like those Personas or Stands (for the Jojo fans out there...like me!) the characters have and they use it to fight against each other.
So we got:
Shu (and his Shadow, Blue Dragon). He's the very typical shounen protagonist. So a brash and stubborn boy who can jump into trouble if needed and he's also the one who won't stop at anything to protect his friends and do what he considers the right thing. Since he just woke to his shadow power, he can barely use Blue Dragon until...the anime suddenly decides he can despite clearly not being experienced with it as Jiro which is one of the issues with Blue Dragon, the power level never makes sense but more on that later.
Blue Dragon is the strongest of the shadows and he's as arrogant as he is powerful. In the beginning, he doesn't give a crap about others including Shu but that changes as the series progresses and he starts to respect the boy and care a little bit about the rest of the group.
Jiro (and his Shadow, Minotaur). Maybe it's because he's the only survivor of the village where he also lost his entire family thanks to Nene's attack on it, he tends to be quite hot-headed and unable to control his rage when fighting. And also is quite cold to everyone in the group except Zola which makes sense since she saved his life and also apparently taught him how to summon his shadow.
Minotaur: quite the chill and wise Shadow, will scold Jiro if he fucks up! They really made sure that he was the opposite of Jiro personality-wise xD.
Kluke: Shu's childhood friend decided to go with Zola and the boys on a whim lol. And good thing that she did since she's a genius about mechanic stuff and that helped in their journey. There's a big issue about her though which I will comment more in the spoiler bit.
Marumaro (and his Shadow, Saber Tiger): a member of the Deeve Clan, a race of bat-like creatures that has no wings. He's a massive pervert, obsessed with girls so Kluke and Bouquet always have to watch out or he will try to spy on their panties or do worse than that. Still a nice guy though...at least according to the anime.
Saber Tiger cares a lot about Marumaro and it's also quite the chill shadow which makes it weird how he didn't seem to care about how much of a pervert Marumaro is. He never talked about it not even once. He isn't a pervert like him though and he's so close to Marumaro that he can help him in the bath!
Bouquet (and her shadow, Hippopotamus): She's a character that only exists in the anime! As a member of the Ra Clan, she can turn invisible but only her body so she needs to get naked for it to work. And despite being only like 11 years old in the first season, she has big boobs which Marumaro loves to squeeze when he can. Uh...maybe she was only created for fan service purposes? Oh, she's quite ditzy which can be annoying and she loves Shu but he only kinda loves Kluke...maybe?
Maybe it's because he's the only Shadow that can't fight but Hippopotamus is quite the coward. He is kind though and cares about Bouquet a lot. Plus, even if he can't fight he has a unique power. He can merge with Bouquet so that they can shapeshift into any person, object, or animal they have seen once.
Zola (and her Shadow, Killer Bat): anything I say about Zola is a big spoiler. But she is the one who tells Shu and Kluke that "natural" Shadow Wielders like her, Jiro, and Shu are descendants of the Seven Soldiers of Light and she wants to find the others since only with their power can Nene be defeated as he is using technology that can create artificial Shadow Wielders (Like he did with General Logi). Nene wants to use that power to take over the world and she wants to stop that from happening. Her goal aside she's a big mystery...
Killer Bat: Anime shows that IN THEORY only the Shadows of the descendants of the Seven Soldiers of Light can talk and have their personality. But Killer Bat is the only Shadow that never talks. It's like they were hinting at something...
In the first part of the anime, we see Shu, Kluke, Jiro, and Zola on their journey where they search for another "natural" Shadow Wielder like Marumaro that joins their quest so they can take the fight to Nene, the leader of the Gran Kingdom. He's evil and wants to take over the world so yeah very typical bad-guy stuff.
Despite some filler here and there, this part is about them meeting those Shadow Wielders and fighting against Nene's minions during their journey, making new allies and stuff until they invade Nene's castle to take him down. It's probably the best part of the anime but it's still a very "okaish" shounen thing. In part, this is because the biggest difference between this and other shounen adventure anime things is the Shadows.
They have their own personalities and such and they do tend to show up a lot even if they only come out when they are called by their human partners. This means that we have over 6 main characters and that's not counting the side characters and other baddies like General Logi, Nene's right-hand man. They don't feel like their pets or something but their partners that fight side by side against their enemies which is good stuff. And, as Digimon Adventure Reboot shows us, it can be very fucking hard to handle so many different characters at the same time as your main cast but for the most part, Blue Dragon did it well.
The issue is that the plot is just not that good. It's very okaish shounen stuff at best with them meeting and fighting the enemy of the week or doing something so they can continue with their quest to go to Nene's castle and at worst, it doesn't make sense. Like with the power level of the Shadows. Shu started barely being able to use Blue Dragon and despite everyone telling him he needed a lot of time training his body to control it, after a few episodes he kinda just did it anyway thanks to the power of his will or some bs.
The power levels might be the worst thing of BD since they're all over the place, it's kinda messed up like how Dragon Ball Z also suffers from the same issue after the Freeza saga. And it gets worse in the second part.
SMALL SPOILERS here since I will talk about the second part, with massive spoilers about the third (and last) part of the anime and the ending after it.
As a typical shounen adventure setting anime, Blue Dragon follows many tropes. One of them happens here. They meet Nene but he's too powerful for them and they lose. The only reason they didn't die is because Kluke is revealed to also be a descendent of the Seven Soldiers of Light and her Shadow, Phoenix, saves them all. And this means now only one descendent left since we have six now.
Now, out of nowhere despite it not being mentioned before as part of the plan Zola says they need to power up to be able to defeat Nene and they need to look for a book called Book of Beginning that should have that sort of information in the so-called "Extra seven" pages. Those pages were stolen by a woman called Delphinium though would take a while for the heroes to find out about that and be able to read the stolen pages from the book. And then our characters started to literally get powered up as they are able to decipher each page and do the stuff mentioned in them.
This is where the anime started to go downhill. Not only do they go on another journey that is less fun than before but they shouldn't need to go in the first place since they should have gone after those pages to get that forced power-up before meeting Nene which would have made more sense. And in theory, there is a reason for that but it makes everyone except Zola stupid.
There are more fights and things are now quite serious after this point which is both good and bad. Good since there are some good moments for sure, especially between the characters but bad since the plot holes either start to show or get worse than before and this still isn't a good plot to be taken seriously anyway. Many of the fights are better than before but because of the power-up and how the Shadows can just decide when they're stronger than before it can be hard to also take some of those fights seriously. It's annoying as well how the anime can't decide if the Shadows of the natural Wielders are stronger or not than fake artificial Shadows like Valkyrie which Logi uses. A good example of that is how Logi easily defeats the whole party by himself when they fight but the next time they meet Shu can fight him and hold on to his own by himself. And this was before he got the plot power-up! And it's not like he "trained" to get so strong for that or something.
Anyway, they got their power-ups now, and once again they went to fight Nene, and this time they defeated him. And this is where the last and worst part of Blue Dragon begins, in the last arc.
Now I will talk about my issues with the anime's last arc. If you want to avoid spoilers and want to see what this anime offers for furries which is the main point of my review, then please scroll down to the "KEMONO SCALE JUDGEMENT" section!
MASSIVE SPOILERS ABOUT THE LAST ARC OF THE ANIME
So they fight Nene a second time after everyone gets their power-ups and this time they win...though only before the fight did Zola reveal that Nene is one of the descendants of the Soldiers of Light too! But in the end that didn't matter anyway. The final boss is defeated, and peace returns to the world.
But then we have this "twist villain" trope thing with Zola tricking the party into going with her to this place called Sealed Ground despite insisting they will know why when they get there and somehow she's able to either predict or trick Logi and Delphinium going there as well. And that was part of her plan since once they all gather there, this gem thing shows up and she tricks Shu into destroying it...which unleashes "the darkness" into the world.
By this point, there are lots of things I have a problem with both the plot and the characters. And they really brought the whole anime down imo.
- Zola herself. She was always this cool, mysterious woman character whose past we barely see. All we knew about her is what she told us. Later, we barely found out that most of the information was a lie. They went so deep into making her mysterious that some things about her just don't make sense. And one of them is directly tied up with Killer Bat, or Darkness itself. Or, at least, that's how I understand?
It's quite convoluted for something that was barely addressed but after Zola (when she was a kid), her father and his team went to excavate some ruins somewhere there was a cave-in and they all died with her father dying to protect her. And...somehow this made Killer Bat aka darkness show up within herself? And she now believes that she should return the world to the state it was before, to the darkness with monsters like Blue Dragon roaming around? Wtf was that??
Even if her way of thinking made sense and we pretend that somehow a little girl made her way alone from that cave-in all the way back to Gran Kingdom by herself with the power of a Shadow or not, there was no way that Killer Bat should be able to manifest itself like this since darkness was supposed to be sealed in the Sealed Ground for years. If they showed the seal was starting to get weak or something maybe it would make sense but as it is...it feels completely random. Unless the anime wants us to believe Zola is the only kid that faced such a trauma as she did with losing her father like that in the world ever since Darkness was sealed and somehow this is enough for Darkness to just ignore the seal and be able to manifest itself in her as her Shadow.
And no, it's not because Zola is special or something since we also found out that she lied about being one of the descendants of the Seven Soldiers of Light. This just makes it even harder to believe that she was able to find the other descendants. And it also creates this weird plot hole.
First, if she isn't even one of them how the fuck she was able to find say Jiro? Or Kluke for that matter? Now that we know her plan was to gather all of those descendants to not only defeat Nene but to open the seal, how on Earth did she know who they were? The only ones she would be sure of would be Shu and Marumaro and that's it. Did she just....came to check on Jiro's village and was lucky as fuck that the boy she helped was one of those she was looking for? We are never told that Killer Bat could sense those things or something. And the whole thing with Kluke was dumb as fuck!
Before we knew this dumb plot twist, we assumed based on what Zola said that she believed they were strong and could outnumber Nene with the Shadow Wielders they got. But now we see and the anime kinda confirms it as well that Zola's plan was to put the party in peril to force Kluke to awaken to her Shadow. Even if that was so risky they just barely got out alive. And even if that somehow made sense it would only work if she knew 100% sure that Kluke was also one of the decedents that she was looking for. So how? How did she know? And given how easy was for Shu to awaken did she really need to almost kill everyone including herself just to try and awaken Kluke's Shadow too by forcing them all into a fight she knew they couldn't win?
"And, if I speak in philosophical terms of good and bad, I may not even be your ally." Zola says this to Shu in the first episode when they met and the anime has the balls to reference that way later after her betrayal. This is the writers patting themselves on their backs for putting out this "amazing foreshadowing"...shame it falls too flat given the character became terrible with those twists and it also hurts the lore of the anime.
- Zola's dumb plan. This isn't about Zola herself but her plan and how stupid it is. First, she shouldn't need to lie about being a descendant at all. It just put her identity at risk. With so many fake Shadow Wielders she could have just pretended to be another one. She was lucky as fuck that until the very end, nobody called that lie into question, especially when they should when they reached the point they all needed to get their power-ups.
Later this became a real problem for her since she knew she needed all of the decedents to go to the Sealed Ground to destroy the seal. And that meant that she needed to make Logi and Deathroy go there as well.
It was a miracle that she was able to convince all of the previous guys to go with her all the way to the Sealed Ground despite giving NO reason at all to. At least Jiro, now that he got his revenge after Nene's defeat, should have tried to be against it but nope. None of them did. It just made all the characters act like very fucking morons. And the only one that should be a moron of this kind is Shu. This is exactly why Zola was like "Trust me bro" and that was enough to make Shu destroy the seal and unleash darkness. And even then that moron still believed Zola, until the very end even when she made clear that nah she really wanted Darkness to take over.
Logi was even worse because he was supposed to be this very smart guy who also had plans of his own. And yet...despite knowing at some point he was one of the decedents and ONLY telling this to the party when it was too late (we don't even know when he found out about that) he still went to the Sealed Ground anyway despite that being the last thing he should do.
And the stuff with Deathroy was even worse. So, Deathroy is that little demon thing that was always with Nene. His existence makes zero sense since we only see humans, Marumaro's tribe and that's it. We never see other "race" of smart humanoids so wtf is Deathroy? And yet he is the last descendent, not Nene! He can't summon his Shadow on his own though so he has to partner with someone which is what he did for Nene. And now he's dead.
So, based on stuff we saw in the later episodes we saw what Zola did and it's just the most nonsensical thing of the entire anime. SOMEHOW, right after the battle with Nene ended she captured Deathroy in this capsule thing. And not only none of the other characters saw that, Zola wasn't carrying anything all the time we saw her and the others escaping the castle until they were safe so we have to conclude she hide the capsule inside of her ass lol.
And even if we pretend this made sense, the rest of the plan is just ridiculous. She literally was like "I will be right back" and went on her way alone to the Sealed Ground, buried the capsule with Deathroy there (we presume without food and water), and came back all the way to where the rest of the party was celebrating Nene's defeat and then she was like "Hey, we aren't done yet. We need to go to that place, don't ask why" and they go there.
When they get there, right as they are fighting against Logi who shows up but Delphinium. She's all butthurt that Nene was killed but apparently, she knew about who Deathroy was and that he was buried there in the Sealed Ground SOMEHOW since she just showed up out of nowhere and dug up his capsule and freed him. How on Earth did she even know he was there and the exact spot to dig up? How did Deathroy survive all this time inside the capsule? How did Logi know about who he was but not Deathroy? How Zola know that Kluke, who was kidnapped by Logi before this mess, would not only escape but be able to get there right in time? There are too many questions and flaws with her crazy plan.
- General Logi. The anime seems to be unable to decide if he's a smart or dumb guy, general or not. How many times did he need to let the party escape when he could have ended things right then and there? No way his plan from the beginning was to take advantage of them to let them kill Nene so he could take over (which is what happened) since he didn't even know about those guys until the anime started. And what he was going to do if his plan failed?
And there is the issue with his shadow...or should I say shadows? He started with Valkyrie who can talk and have her own personality and all just like the other main character's shadows. And then when she fails to defeat Blue Dragon she just kinda kills herself so Logi can summon his "true" shadow, Odin. WTF was that? Why on Earth you would be hiding your much more powerful shadow from the beginning if you had no reason to?!
There was nothing that he could have done only with Valkyrie! It really felt they did that just to hide the fact that Logi was also a descendant and so he would have his own shadow from the beginning. This only proves that not only it was dumb to have this fake weak shadow but if he knew from the beginning who he was and that Zola was lying about why the heck he didn't take advantage of that from the beginning?
And speaking of Valkyrie being able to talk...
- Shadows don't make sense in their lore. The way the anime presents the Shadows, it seems that only the "natural Shadows can talk and have their own personality. So much so that it is considered a plot twist that Killer Bat never talks as Shu himself pointed out later after finding out who Killer Bat is "That's why he never talked".
And yet...we have not only Valkyrie but a complete humanoid Shadow that looks like a normal human that only showed up in a filler episode that also talks and has their personality. So their mere existence just contradicts that "fact". This shouldn't be important and it wouldn't be if the anime itself didn't make a big deal out of it with that line from Shu so I wonder if they forgot about Valkyrie and that filler Shadow lol.
END OF THE SPOILERS
KEMONO SCALE JUDGEMENT
The game is A LOT different than the anime. There are so many changes I wonder why they even bothered to pretend this is "Blue Dragon" lol. The single fact that in the game the Shadows don't even talk at all is enough to give you guys some idea how different the anime and the game are. So, be careful. Just because you liked the game doesn't mean you will like the anime, they're too different!
That's why I will only judge the kemono in the anime since it's the Blue Dragon that I know. And speaking of which...IT’S KAMIKAZETIME!!!!!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUM8OCBy6Ls
I already explained how this works in my previous journal "It's Kamikazetime for Jin Jin and the Panda Patrol! Review #1" so, please check it out to understand the idea and such about the Kamikaze Scale!
Now, Blue Dragon doesn't have only humans in it and we do have the Shadows as part of the main cast so we're off to a good start!
The anime's lore is weird about the "smart humanoids" that live in it though. We know of at least the humans and the Devee clan but that's really it. That's weird because not only do we see that one of the original Seven Soldiers of Light is a dog beastman or something like that but we have a couple of episodes in which we see those ugly Cyclops mutant guys and that's really it.
The game has at least the Sheep Man and I was shocked that they were nowhere to be found in this season! Maybe in season two, we will have more races like that...but yeah. Aside from the Shadows, that's all we got. There are a few monsters too but Akira really didn't bring his A game to draw those guys. They're like inferior versions of his Dragon Quest monsters at best.
This means that the Shadows are really where the kemono is at, at least for the first season. I was hoping that we would have the main cast fight many hot furry Shadows but unfortunately, this only happened twice. With this Goblin-like Shadow right in the first episode (and so he never showed up again) and Chimera, "Nene"'s Shadow. And that's it. This means the best kemono we get are the Shadows of the main characters.
That isn't a bad number though. Even if we ignore Chimera, we still have Blue Dragon, Minotaur, Killer Bat, Saber Tiger, Hippopotamus, and Phoenix. That's six good kemono right there. And technically Blue Dragon and Killer Bat even have more than one version! Also, as I mentioned before, they all talk and have their own personality and such!
So, with nothing less than six kemono as part of the main cast even if it's not like all six of them are on the screen at the same time all the time or from the first episode, this would be enough to get the show a three and maybe even a four LoF in the Kamikaze Scale.
However, there is a major flaw in Blue Dragon that we can't ignore and it's so big I need to remove one point from the scale automatically. Anybody who watched only one episode already knows what I'm talking about. Unlike Personas or Stands, for some very dumb reason, we NEVER see the Shadows's bodies completely! We always only see them from the chest up at most!
That really sucks. And there's only one exception for this and it's Blue Dragon himself since we finally saw his entire body in one of the last episodes but that's it. Obviously, this also makes it a pain in the ass to commission stuff with those characters you kinda have to use other monsters or something as a reference for the rest of the bodies.
For that reason alone, I think it's fair to give this anime... *points dramatically at the cartoon* A THREE OUT OF FIVE OF LOF IN THE KAMIKAZE SCALE!!! Quite close to a four there but that flaw in hiding the entire body of the main kemono can't be forgiven!!
So, I think I recommend this anime only for fans of jrpgs since if anything the anime does deliver on the "it's about the journey" thing with some good moments here and there and for fans of Akira's designs. It's just not the best Shounen adventure-type anime out there (the best one I watched recently of this kind is probably the remake of Dragon Quest Fly which is really superior to Blue Dragon in everything. Maybe I should make a review of it one day?). Still, it's far from being the worst either. Try watching like five episodes, this should be enough to let you know if it's the kind of anime for you.
Aaaand that’s it for this one! Hope you guys enjoyed reading this review. Please leave your comments and opinions about it and also about Blue Dragon if you happen to have watched it or maybe wanna check it out thanks to this review xD. I want to leave those journals as a place where people can discuss the respective things being reviewed here!
This is where the "good stories" and "brilliant ones" separate. If the team behind the game had taken more care of the story and not had logic inconsistencies, it would have been in much better shape. It's also missing the opportunity to impact the character arcs in any effective or meaningful ways, which is my main problem with these "Akira Toriyama" games. Don't get me wrong, that's nothing against Akira Toriyama himself! He's a brilliant mangaka god and gave us Shu! .. and Dragon Ball I guess xD But yeah, it just feels like a series that they can 'put out there' and it's going to sell enough etc. Good review
This is where the "good stories" and "brilliant ones" separate. If the team behind the game had take
