Shelf Life

Dragon Age

This box set picks up with an obvious season finale from the previous set. The first few episodes have the feel of a much older series for young boys. Every few minutes, something happens that would amuse a gradeschooler. Helpfully, the wonderful book Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga enumerates exactly what kids want to see in comics aimed at them: "Bugs, crap, fire, butts, weenies, animals, cars, boobies, monsters, gum, gummy bears, and trucks." Here's my list of kid-appeal things in Dragonball: Ninjas, guns, animals, monkeys, baby monkeys, a giant snow cone, dragons, robots, a Terminator, tanks, peeing, fights, butt jokes, mazes, Frankenstein, pirate treasure, volcanoes, and submarines.

Not only are there weenies (well, just Goku's), there is a lot of monster fighting. It's no wonder Shonen Jump had a circulation of 6.53 million in 1995. My dream is to go back in time to 1987 and transfer my 2nd grade childhood self to Japan, where I could learn fluent Japanese, read Weekly Shonen Jump in its heyday, and then return to the U.S. before the economic bubble bursts.

Episodes 32-35 are a freewheeling good time, but the Muscle Tower arc (36-41) was really boring. An "invincible" pink gooey monster in episode 40 gave me flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Majin Boo. Episodes 42-49 are amusing enough, but the search for pirate treasure in episodes 50-54 was horribly dull. I had seen 55-57 on Cartoon Network before I had heard of Dr. Slump, and if you don't know it's a crossover, it's pretty trippy.

I had never seen episodes 58-61 before, but those episodes were really played to the strength of the series. Tao Pai Pai is an amusing badass, and in case you forget, "Kill You" is written on the back of his outfit. Korin, the ancient monk-cat, is now my favorite Dragonball character. I'm asking for some Korin plushies for Christmas.

I suspect Tao Pai Pai and Korin are great because Toriyama has gone to such great lengths to show us how the limits of Goku's invincibility. Bullets just bounce off his chest! After 58 episodes, it seems like it'd be difficult to invent ever-tougher characters, but Toriyama pulls it off with comic genius. Tao Pai Pai kills a man using only a strike from his tongue, and, in another awesome sequence, he stops a would-be assassin's bullet with his shoe without breaking his stride. It's a brilliant mix of comedy and martial arts.

At the end of the set, I was desperate to find out what happens next. I asked my husband, but he'd seen it raw at the Denver Anime International club in like 1992 (video evidence at 3:22 as we pan past his face) . "You have to remember what happened 17 years ago!" I said, too lazy to read Wikipedia. That's the magic of Dragonball; it creates a need in the viewer to find out what happens next. Watching the dub with subs on reveals a lot of the too-racy-for-American-TV jokes about homosexuality, alcohol, and even the prospect of Bulma getting raped by soldiers. In English, there are a lot of additional jokes, as if the folks at CN were worried it wouldn't be funny enough for their network. The dub is OK, but then you're missing Shenron the dragon's cool theme song.

This set comes with a color booklet of character profiles and episode descriptions, but not much else in the way of extras. Also, Marathon Mode is great, but it should really skip the episode recaps and jump right to the title screen.

I'm glad to have seen this in Japanese, but I'll probably never watch it again. The whole time I felt like I ought to be reading the manga instead - that's why for me, this is a rental.[TOP]

"Trogdor was a man!
I mean, he was a dragon man.
Or maybe he was just a dragon.
But he was still Trogdor!"

In the relatively near future, some aliens have destroyed Pluto (jerks!) and are threatening the Earth. Our best hope for protection comes from a government agency developing things called dragons, who are more or less hot-bodied young people who turn into mech-like dragons. Jin, our protagonist (with a most unfortunate haircut), gets involved with the dragon-developing scientists after he loses his family in a shuttlecraft explosion.

Here are some things I liked about Dragonaut:

• There are no elementary school student panty flashes. (Wait, how old is Sieglinde?)
• Dragonaut is an equal opportunity fan service provider, with both very large breasted women and hot shirtless guys. Even the crusty old butler is surprisingly built.
• There are dragons in it. I like dragons.
• The production values are surprisingly high for such a crappy show.
• This set ends with a line similar to Hauser's from Total Recall: "Get your ass to Mars!"

Here are some things I didn't like:

• Characters have laughably bad titles/names, like "The Album" and "Howling Star". What is this, Soul Eater?
• There isn't enough dragon action. The dragons spend way too much time in human form.
• The dragons are more or less mechs, and the mechs are not as cool as Seto Kaiba's dragon jet in the first Yu-Gi-Oh! movie. (If I were the richest kid on Earth, I might also commission a dragon jet.)

Episode four in particular ends on a high note, as Jin rides a dragon into space towards the moon. That's really cool! I like the moon. Too bad it's just covered with boring suburbs. The hot springs episode on the moon is hard to believe, but surprisingly amusing as far as hot springs episodes go. It's a nice mix of action and comedy.

After the hot springs episode, the series utterly failed to hold my attention. I couldn't care less for large breasted evil sergeants and some weird government conspiracy and a generic-sounding plot about capturing "The Album" who happens to be Jin's mate-for-life dragon girlfriend Toa.

Jin and Toa are separated, and spend several episodes trying to reunite. It gave me some flashbacks to Fushigi Yûgi: "Tamahome!!" "Miaka!!"

It's hard to take Toa's role as the extremely powerful "Album" seriously, in part because she wears hot pants, and her butt is drawn with different levels of shiny highlights. As someone who owns Plastic Little, I don't have much room to complain, but at least Plastic Little kept things short (it's a 45 minute OVA). Dragonaut is 25 episodes. I can't imagine anyone so compelled by the first half that they'd also watch the second half. Maybe you'd buy it just to be a completist, but are you really going to watch the second half? Shouldn't you spend that money on something more important, like paying off that credit card?

Sometimes the dub is a bit tongue-in-cheek, which is totally appropriate for this series. There are no stand-out performances, but this is a high quality dub.

Funimation played a humorous trailer for this series at anime conventions over the past year. I don't think that particular cut of the trailer is included on any actual DVDs. It cross-cut between Machina and her enormous breasts jumping rope with dragons fighting, and then back to jumping rope, with some captions advertising fan service, fighting, and more fan service. This trailer was much better than the show itself. That said, I was lead to believe there would be more fighting.

Dragonaut gets a rental because it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting in terms of quality or misogyny, and the dub is quite good. [TOP]