DRAGON QUEST/DRAGON WARRIOR (1989-91)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

I'm indebted to this YT channel for providing fansubs for the Japanese anime series DRAGON QUEST, based on a popular 1980s video game that received distribution in the US and other countries. In 1989, 13 of the anime's 43 original episodes were dubbed and released to American TV under the title DRAGON WARRIOR. I presume that the translation company hoped that 13 episodes would "prime the pump" and create viewer demand to see the entire series in English. But this did not occur, and I presume that only fansubbed editions are available for non-Japanese speakers.

As a viewer who was frustrated in the Day to see only a small number of episodes, I'm happy to have some closure. That said, I was never under any delusion that QUEST was any hidden mythopoeic treasure. Even in 1989 I was pretty sure the anime was just a very basic fantasy RPG, in which noble, sword-swinging stalwarts went on quests to defeat evil demons and/or sorcerers. I later learned that there had been a manga prior to the anime, and that the two are only loosely related to either the video game or to one another, though I'm unclear as to when the anime started using different names for the main characters.  There are only a few minor myth-kernels in the TV show at most.

The screenshot above shows the five main heroes. In the foreground is the hero Abel, while his girlfriend Tiala clings to him. At left is the lady warrior Daisy, while to the right, the floating fellow is the magician Yanack and the fellow with the skull-helmet is Abel's pudgy buddy Mokomoko, who provide much of the comedy relief. The setup is that Tiala is the hereditary protector of a magical stone capable of releasing a powerful dragon from its slumber. The devilish-looking Baramos abducts Tiala from her village in order to gain control of the dragon, whose blood can confer immortality. Abel and Mokomoko arm themselves and seek to rescue Tiala. On their way they pick up the aid of the good sorcerer Yanack and the woman-warrior Daisy. Yanack has no real backstory, but Daisy became a warrior in order to seek her lost brother. She originally joins Abel and Mokomoko because she thinks there's profit in their quest, but naturally she bonds with the guys and becomes a hero dedicated to defeating the various minions of Baramos. She also falls in unrequited love with Abel and also must bear the indignity of being ogled by the dirty old magician Yanack.      

I don't remember exactly why the quest becomes a matter not of just rescuing Tiala but also about finding holy objects that will make it possible to resurrect the dragon. Appropriately the objects are a Holy Sword and a Holy Grail, mirroring (if only unintentionally) the sexual propensities of Abel and Tiala, who are implicitly a holy couple whose unison can redeem the fallen world. Baramos is just a dime-a-dozen magical menace, but the scenes of the heroes, as well as their encounters with ordinary folks, allow for much better character interactions than one sees in most American-made animated TV shows. A couple of storylines involve Baramos corrupting or controlling the relatives of the heroes and causing Daisy to fight her lost brother and Abel to battle his father. So far as I can tell, it's not recounted as to how Baramos was far-sighted enough to suborn these characters. This is particularly true of Daisy's brother, who's actually raised from childhood by a villainous minion, long before Baramos could possibly have known that Daisy was going to be one of the heroes who opposed him. Still, QUEST also isn't afraid to knock off some of the lovable side-characters, such as a "nice monster" who befriends Tiala.

Still, good design triumphs over limited TV animation, and QUEST always feels action-packed. And one extra benefit of the American dub is that the translation company produced what I consider a superior theme-song, complete with quick cuts from the episodes, that I still find stimulating thirty-plus years later.