Dropped: Blue Dragon (TV)

Running time: half hour
Number of episodes: 51
Vintage: 2007-04-07
Age rating: ???
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Supernatural
Animation Production: Studio Pierrot

Source: Anime News Network

The Good: Music by Nobuo Uematsu and character designs by Akira Toriyama.
The Bad: Everything else.

Status: Dropped

My impressions and review:

Wow. It’s been a while since I last blogged so I have my old backlog to sweep through plus the ton of stuff that just piled on top of it. If anyone’s been expecting posts for a while I’m sorry (yeah, I’m talking to you — the two people that still read this blog )

Getting back on topic, Blue Dragon is a pretty big well-funded project with a lot of motives behind it. Sure I could complain about why Microsoft funding it for marketing, or the merits of the game by the same name, but I’ll just stick to the anime. The plain and absolute truth is the anime is complete and utter crap. The first episode is the best part of the show, mainly because it opens up just like an old school RPG would. This is cool, especially with the Uematsu music giving it the right flavor. However, from that point on it just goes into a downhill spiral of cliche and boredom.

For a show with music by Nobuo Uematsu and nostalgic character designs by Akira Toriyama, I expected a lot more. Uematsu’s music superb, but even the great music can’t save this atrocity. Toriyama’s art is fine, it’s the same stuff we’ve seen since forever, but it’s not enough. Besides the two aforementioned bullet points, the anime is a complete failure and never quite delivers enough to be satisfying on any level of enjoyment. I hardly need to sound off on this show since it has little staying power and many others feel the same way or worse about it. It’s a late but meaningful warning. Stay away from this one folks, it’s not worth the effort.