Dragon Warrior | Summer RPG Anime Festival

[00:00:02] Role Playing Video Games, Japanese Animation, It's a Match Made in Heaven! Or is it? Join us as we take a journey through RPG Animes of Yesteryear. TV Shows, OVAs, Movies, Teddies, we're doing it all.

[00:00:24] So join us right here, right now, at the Summer RPG Anime Festival! Hello, anime people. It's your boy Dre, and I'm here with Catgirl Steve. Yeah? Don't you mean nyan-nyan, or whatever they say?

[00:00:54] Well, just because I'm PokePals with some furries doesn't mean, you know, I've adapted all their mannerisms. Okay, well you have to ask them about Catgirls later. Hello, everybody! We are here to talk about the animes all summer with you here on Fine Time, because why not? We like anime, we like RPGs, why not watch RPG Animes? Like Japanese Animes! Oh wait, that's something else.

[00:01:22] Do you think there's any boomer out there who still says Japanimation? I don't know, but I just remember one store that used to be a Sam Goody out here, that doesn't exist anymore. Then it became an FYE that definitely had a Japanimation section, and that's what they called it for- Oh boy. Until they closed, and I'm like, oh boy. Even back then, I was like, hmm, I don't know you guys.

[00:01:51] Yeah, I don't like that word. We had Sam Goody out here, we did not have FYE. Did y'all have Tower Records? No? Yeah, there might still be the one in Manhattan, I don't know, I gotta look that up later. They all closed, the whole thing went down like 20 years ago, yeah. Oh, then never the fuck mind, there was that one that was Floors and Floors. Yeah, it was literally Tower Records.

[00:02:18] But that's where I went to go buy anime VHS tapes if I didn't order them directly from AD Vision catalogs back in the day, or MangaCore. This is how we know Andre is older than I. No, I'm just kidding. I saw those catalogs too, because I got magazines and cross-promotion, I guess, and they figured, hey, he'll buy stuff from us.

[00:02:44] I didn't have a credit card. I didn't buy anything from those catalogs. I didn't have a credit card either, so I ordered that shit from AD Vision, COD, for the UPS. Remember that shit? Yeah, no. Hey, hey, hey, Mike, how many of those do you get a week? No, I used to do that. That's how I got the animes. Anyways, but yeah, enough about me. We'll talk about me in some later episodes.

[00:03:13] But yeah, over, I guess, probably what's going to be six episodes every other week here, starting now. We're just going to cover some RPG anime, most of which we haven't seen before, some of which we have, and we'll get to those in due time. But Steve, this is something neither of us have seen before. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I knew this existed. If I ever did, I certainly forgot about it until you suggested it for this. And I'm like, oh, okay, sure.

[00:03:41] We watched Dragon Warrior, or how they would call it overseas. Dragon Quest, The Legend of the Hero Abel. Yeah, I think they just called it Dragon Quest. And then when it was DVD time, oh, no, we got to separate this from other projects we're doing. So Legend of the Hero Abel. Yeah, that'll do. That's the ticket. Yeah, I think that's what happened. That's a later DVD Blu-ray subtitle they added or streaming.

[00:04:11] Small secret for everybody at home. We're doing this in U.S. release order. So this came out in Japan in 1989. Wow. Yeah. What were you doing in 1989, Andre? I was still shitting myself a little bit, probably. 1989, I was playing. What was I playing? Ninja Gaiden, maybe? Uh, you know, this is still, this is like late NES era. What else was I doing? Mario 3 wasn't out yet. I was probably playing a lot of Mega Man 2. You know?

[00:04:41] Good stuff. Arcade stuff, too. It was a good time. I was seven years old, I believe. Great stuff. I was probably just now learning how to beat Metroid. Yeah. So you're doing that. I'm just being a dumb toddler. And from that time until 1991, there's 43 episodes of Dragon Quest. And Saban Entertainment, yes, that Saban Entertainment decided to dub 13 of these and call it Dragon Warrior.

[00:05:11] Because that's what we did back then. We couldn't go on a Dragon Quest. Someone else owned the title to that back then. So Dragon Warrior makes it manly. Dragon Warrior. Well, I would assume that's why it was called Dragon Warrior here on NES in the first place, right? Dragon Quest doesn't really hit the same way or at the time anyway. And also, so I'm always a little weak on R4 NES Dragon Warriors here. Did we have the first one yet?

[00:05:40] Surely we did. I think they released it, but then it didn't sell so well. Like another two years afterward would be when Nintendo was like, we're giving away a game. And that game was Dragon Warrior with Nintendo Power subscriptions. Right, right, right. But I just wasn't like, I guess that's how it got some notoriety here. I just wasn't sure about its original release here. That's all. In other words, I don't think they got the name Dragon Warrior from nowhere.

[00:06:10] I'm pretty sure it was already called that here, I guess. Yeah. I am. We haven't called it Dragon Warrior in a long time, but that's another podcast, isn't it? Yeah, it sure is. We all know Saban Entertainment. At least people our age would kind of know them more for partnering with Marvel early on, for making early X-Men. Remember, they weren't a big name at the time. They were kind of, well, that's sucking out loud, but you know, they were just Marvel Comics. They weren't exactly, you know, making movies at the time.

[00:06:40] They were making a, you know, X-Men cartoon everyone liked. Later on, they'd strike gold with adapting Super Sentai to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I could only presume they chose to produce a double of this because, hey, there's this Dragon Quest that's popular in Japan. And I know Nintendo thought that would be the case here, too. And I know it had fans because they did translate those first four here. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:07:09] I'm surprised it even got as far as four. I mean, honestly, after the first one, I'm surprised I even bothered with the others. The fact that we had so many Dragon Warriors here before things became Dragon Quest here is kind of a miracle. But they kept trying. To their credit, they kept trying. Yeah. So, you know, you get airing this on syndicated television and, you know, it's a story as old as syndicated television.

[00:07:36] They weren't given any ideal time slots anywhere. I'm sure you didn't know this was on any place. Never saw it. Again, I don't think I ever knew this ever existed. Not at the time or even, like I said, until a few months ago when we started rounding up things to talk about here. I really don't think I ever heard of this. So, no. There's no home video version of this. Like I mentioned at the top, there is a DVD you can buy in Japan.

[00:08:03] But that's in Japan where there's a complete series here. It's we're going to try dubbing this for a bit. We had to borrow this off of YouTube thanks to some incredibly devoted fans who pieced 13 episodes from whatever VHS they taped it off of at the time. Because I know if I was taping this, trying to watch this at the time. Oh, boy. I want to watch the next Dragon Warrior. And I tried to follow it up on the next day or time. It would not have been there. No.

[00:08:32] Like, it's there. There was stuff that aired on weekends in syndication. Like, you know, Hercules and Xena. And like, you know, whatever is popular in syndication. Right. That was usually weekend fair. And there was cartoons as well, of course. But this would be something that would if it ever aired in San Diego, it probably would have been like, you know, 530 a.m. Or some like I probably would have never seen this.

[00:09:00] I'm just remembering more of my time. I was a bit of an older kid that wasn't shitting himself with Ruby Spears is Mega Man. And that was being in circulation at the time. And man, if I just happened to flip on the WB at 2 p.m. What would normally be a school day, but I was off that day. I might have found a Mega Man, the fighting robot. Oh, boy.

[00:09:30] The fighting robot. Well, that's when I'm going off on the sock. I know. I know. But it's just like funny. I would get home. See, that's the thing. The thing of the 2 p.m. time slot, I would never really get to watch. I would only get to catch like half of it because I get home from school at like 2.15 or something, maybe 2.20. So like I always used to catch like the last 10 minutes of Boxmaster or Samurai Pizza Cats or something like that. I would never get to like actually watch it.

[00:09:59] But one of these was on especially early because the recording of Episode 6 had a voiceover advertising an upcoming Regis and Kathy Lee where Dennis Weaver was coming on as a guest. I'm like, oh, man, maybe we can narrow on when this particular one was aired. I'm like trying to figure it out, but I'm like, oh, he was the Weaver was on all the fucking time. That's not helpful at all. He was on like he was on at least three times when this would have aired.

[00:10:26] Yeah, I don't even I don't even remember when Regis Regis and Kathy Lee came on to be. But yeah, OK, I guess we will just talk about our general impressions. We're not really going to break down every episode, all 13 episodes. We just again to reiterate, we just watched the 13 episodes that were dubbed here. We didn't watch the entire Japanese series because God forbid.

[00:10:49] But yeah, so this is a very interesting production from the get go because Steve, you know how it was here when anime came here in the 90s. It was always very Americanized and also very censored, which we will talk about as we go along here. But I could tell from the get go that they're treating this material with respect, which I mean, you just never saw that back then.

[00:11:20] I mean, I don't know if it was being treated with respect so much as there wasn't a budget because I don't know, there was some choices they made. I mean, it was being still treated as, you know, kids entertainment. But, you know, what they chose to do and what they chose to leave in was like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there is I mean, they left it a lot. I mean, look, I haven't like gone down the rabbit hole of what exactly they cut.

[00:11:48] Not that I compared it to the Japanese version or anything like that. But it seems like they left a lot of stuff in. They left a lot of stuff in that like Dragon Ball Z, like original airings of Dragon Ball wouldn't have even sniffed. There's no way they would have done that. Well, the mage that joins the group, how do they find him?

[00:12:08] He's in a hot spring with monsters getting drunk out of his mind on alcohol, not juice or milk or soy sauce. He's drinking. Yeah, he is out here drinking. Oh, and just the dialogue of stuff like that priest is like, I heard if you drink the dragon's blood, you'll live forever. You'll become immortal.

[00:12:34] And I'm like, whoa, is there a cartoon out there that would let anyone talk about drinking blood in 1990? Like, I don't think so. Like a lot of the just a little things in the dialogue, too, that they would usually clean up for us. I feel like they just left. Let that shit fly. Well, maybe the PG-13 version of Black Cauldre would have let that. So I'm just kidding.

[00:12:57] But I think they did do some cutting because they're in the port town and there was this salacious lady offering able tickets to the bullfights. And I don't think she was really offering able tickets to the bullfights. If you catch my interest. No, she sure wasn't. She sure as hell wasn't. Especially given his reaction. He was embarrassed. Oh, yeah.

[00:13:24] She was offering him the puff puff for sure. He was like, I don't like bulls. Oh, my God. That definitely read to me as like, okay. It was like the same thing as like, you know, any like a lot of Super Nintendo RPGs. Like you could tell it's a bar, but in our version, it's a cafe, right? I think even Uncharted Waters New Horizons did that, didn't they? Yes.

[00:13:53] That's a cafe there, too. Yeah. It's a cafe. It's like, okay, sure. Lots of juice and coffee. Yep. Juice and coffee. That's all you drink at the cafe. Getting drunk on my cappuccino. Did you think it was kind of unusual that Dragon Warrior just had a theme song with no lyrics? This was an era where like every cartoon on the planet had a had a like a dumb, catchy lyrics to it. Right.

[00:14:22] And Dragon Quest just didn't do that. It just had a song. So I'm of two minds here. I because usually Hori was paying attention to all this stuff even back then. And yet they somehow didn't realize playing the overture wasn't it because I listen. Well, listening is kind of an overstatement. I looked at one Japanese episode, the opening, just to see what the heck they did. And all they did was play the first few bars of the overture.

[00:14:52] And then they just launch into the episode. Really? So our song is like kind of... We have a real theme song. Yeah. Okay. On the other hand, I'm just kind of imagining like some guy. I don't know what they'd really do other than what they did because ours is definitely a late 80s, early 90s cartoon theme song with a helicopter sound effect for when Mr. Mage Man is flying by for some reason. But on the other hand, I'm just trying to imagine like Mr. Saban, Mr. Saban, I got it.

[00:15:24] Go, go, Dragon Warriors. You're fucking fired. Wouldn't that be great if like the Power Rangers theme song was derived from something from this that didn't make it? That'd be funny. You know, also like a lot of the violence didn't seem to be cut. He slits the goddamn dragon's throat like in the intro for our shit.

[00:15:51] Like, I mean, it's not like a bunch of blood or anything, but is that white slash? Flash, right? Like that was like, whoa, we don't usually do that in the American cartoons here on TV. So, yeah, I guess the point is there really was a lot of stuff in here that made it through with very minimal edits. And I don't know how much pressure they had from other sources. I don't know, like, if people were breathing down their neck so you can't show this or that.

[00:16:19] But I mean, evidently not. Because they got away with it. I think being syndicated had a lot to do with it. I think even if they were on cable, they probably would have had some problems. I mean, yeah, because like obviously at this time, nothing like a tsunami or anything like that existed where it's like here are the cool teens cartoons, you know? And I think but that's the thing about Dragon Warrior, right? I think it would have been too quote unquote kiddie for that. Right.

[00:16:48] To stand up to like air after like even compared to something like Sailor Moon, I would say. I think this was a bit more harsh than Sailor Moon. Oh, sure. I'm just saying that like Sailor Moon had much more appeal to like teenagers and stuff. I mean, kids could watch Sailor Moon as well. But like Dragon Warrior felt a little more like I guess kiddie is the wrong word. But I think you know what I mean. One thing I thought was cute that I don't want to forget to say.

[00:17:15] I like that it was instead of episode one, episode two, et cetera. It was level one, level two, level three. I love that. The Japanese version does that, too. And I love that they retain that. That's usually something that like usually gets lost in translation because it's like the if brought over here are localizers. If they never played the game or don't even play video games, which was often the case, they wouldn't even know why it was called level one, two, three, four, five, et cetera.

[00:17:45] They probably figured all levels like a video game, but same way, same way it works. I guess so. I'm not going to give them that much credit. So I'm being cynical today. Well, one thing people have been cynical about since the beginning of time is Akira Toriyama's character designs. Rest in peace. But as you well know, to me, he was the best.

[00:18:14] He was my absolute favorite and he will never be topped. Like he will always remain my favorite monster designer and character artist of all time. I'm that dude. I've always been right at eye for Toriyama. But, you know, the criticism. Everyone knows their criticism. Oh, everyone plays Toriyama bingo. Oh, this just looks like Vegeta with a different haircut.

[00:18:40] Oh, this just looks like, you know, Lucas, just Bulba with a different hat, you know, and a hammer. Right. We all we all heard the bullshit. And guess what? You can do that with Dragon Warrior. This anime as well. I forget caveman guys named Moko. He's he's just muscle bound Yaji Robe from Dragon Ball Z. Right. Or like the main girl who gets kidnapped.

[00:19:06] She's just cut from the same cloth as any of his other South Asian looking kind of female characters. And you know what? The man simply doesn't miss. They're all great. And I think that's significant because this anime could have easily been phoned in. He could have easily been like, oh, whatever, because he's too busy working on the games or at this point still Dragon Ball Z. And it's not.

[00:19:33] These character designs are just as good as anything else he's done. I mean, he provided the character designs, but they had to actually be adapted by someone else at studio comment Hiroshi Kanazawa. And again, you wouldn't have to you couldn't know that without actually looking it up. You I would have figured he supervised all that every step of the way. I guess I guess not everyone has time for all for everything. I mean, we all do. Oh, you know what?

[00:20:02] I think it was the second episode. Do you remember? OK, well, OK, maybe I should say this first. This anime plays out exactly like a game, exactly like an RPG of the time. Like you go to the king. He tells he expositions you to death. Oh, you need to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to meet blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, go do that.

[00:20:26] And then like when our hero Abel teams up with Moko and the girl gets kidnapped and he's like, what do we do now? Abel's like, we start our quest. I was like, are you? Was that on purpose? I mean, it had to have been.

[00:20:50] Even if that wasn't, there's all the other episodes are scenarios that played out in JRPGs of the moment. Oh, no. The village has been beset by monsters. Get rid of them. But the village elder dies after using an item in battle. There's a town full of old people and they hand them relics that Abel and friends need to deduce how to solve the puzzle left behind just to get a clue on how to move forward.

[00:21:19] And they don't have a hint book, so they have to really like talk it out amongst each other to figure out what the hell they're supposed to do. And that's the whole episode. Yeah. I love it. It's great. It's really great. Yeah. It's like they're speed running an actual RPG. It's like they're speed running Dragon Quest six or something, which I know didn't exist yet. But I'm just saying that, like, it works because the action is really good. Every episode, you get some shit.

[00:21:49] Even that episode where they're trying to figure out the puzzle the whole time. Even there, you get some cool visuals. You get some nice Toriyama. Like, I don't know, man. Every episode gives you something. It really brings the sauce. There's no episodes where I'm like, ah, they didn't really do anything. All 13 of these episodes, like, kind of cooked. We were just doing stuff. And it works because the dub is also charming.

[00:22:16] And I know, like, 90s dubs, especially very early 90s dubs like this one is. It's going to be what it is. I know some people think they're really cheesy or stupid. I know others will insist on watching the Japanese voice track or anything from this era. And quite frankly, I understand why. I don't think they're wrong to feel that way.

[00:22:38] Me and you, Steve, though, we seek out dubs of old anime because we really appreciate this shit for some for some reason. I don't even know if I can necessarily quantify why. But we really, really like hearing these people at this time in a medium that wasn't popular here really trying their best. There was a certain art to the whole thing, too.

[00:23:02] Like, if there was something they didn't understand on the production side of it, they tried to adapt it and make it their own, too. Or they just, I don't know, for love of the game, I guess, you have Doa Donga. He's the fiend that's looking after kidnapped village girl. And he's just the Yeti from Looney Tunes that's already the stand-in for Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Oh, I always wanted a village girl of my very own. I will call her George and I will hug her and pet her and squeeze her.

[00:23:31] And he was like that, actually. You're right. Please do not hurt Doa Donga. He was. I mean, but like that kind of like kind hearted, kind of sweet character needs that kind of voice, you know? And I'm not saying we can't do that nowadays. I'm just saying that, like, back then we didn't really like dub a whole lot of stuff. Like, dubs to us was like old Godzilla movies that were like super cheesy, right? I don't watch a lot of dubs now.

[00:24:02] Well, mostly because Crunchyroll is cheap for a long time and that was all subs and I'm used to it now. But also, I feel like whenever I watch a dub now, it's like almost clinical. Mm-hmm. And I guess it's fine that we've come that far of a way that, okay, it's fine that way. But I miss a bit of the cheesiness of the old ways. I do too. And that's why, again, that's why we choose to watch him this way, if at all possible.

[00:24:31] Because, man, it's nice. It's charming. There's a certain charm to it. And we really like that stuff. I would personally recommend any Dragon Quest fan. Say, I'm already fucking myself up. Any Dragon Quest fan to watch Dragon Warrior, even though it's only 13 episodes.

[00:24:55] And even after the 13th episode, the voiceover comes on and he's like, now Abel has reached level 13. They're going to take a break. This is the end of our story here. But who knows what the future holds? The future would hold nothing because that's why they did that voiceover. This is – they knew they weren't going to get any more episodes. So they kind of just like, well, that's the end, even though it definitely was not the end and it was a continuing story.

[00:25:21] Maybe that's where I want to go next, Steve. The fact that this did not stand a chance on TV here. Not a single fucking chance, right? Because it's just way too different compared to every other cartoon on TV at this time. Like, you can't – like, we may enjoy Koichi Sugiyama's music in an anime. But, like, to the general cartoon watcher, I bet that was really jarring.

[00:25:50] I bet that was like, what – this is not cartoon music, right? We had a certain expectation and that was not it. Well, I guess I'm being a bit of a nerd because I was brought up on the Disney tapes and there was real-ass orchestra music piped in there. I think if I actually saw a Dragon Warrior episode on my TV, I would have been about it. But, you know, I'm a nerd doing a podcast with you. Exactly.

[00:26:20] See, we would be about it, about it. But I don't think the general audience would have been. I don't know. I think music matters a lot because, like, Dragon Ball Z famously has its own American soundtrack, which is just as good, by the way. It's different from the – obviously different from the Japanese in tone. But it's also good in its own right. But, like, I feel like Dragon Warrior, as constituted, would have never been a hit here no matter what.

[00:26:51] Honestly, even if it did have a better following, even if it was a hit, I just think the odds of it getting a complete dub were remarkably low. So, it's just the way things were at the time. We didn't do ongoing storylines in cartoons, like, at all, anywhere. Like, if something had a part one to part two – oh, shit, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't X-Men sometimes do a couple – two parts or three parts occasionally? Occasionally. Yeah.

[00:27:21] But, you know, the business model of cartoons at the time here was centered around making the toy ads and other related ads for kids. And you can't do that if you can't sell sizable packages of cartoon shows to syndicates. Yep. And if Dragon Warrior ends in 43 episodes and you got other mainstays, like Teenage Hood Ninja Turtles or even Deke's output, I mean, we give them shit.

[00:27:50] But Inspector Gadget and the variants of Super Mario Brothers and Sonic made the rounds on a lot of different channels in different slots for years. Sure did. I mean, if those are my choices, I know what I'd buy as an executive to just air for the children next to the action figure ads. But, you know, don't feel too bad for Saban. Like I said, they figured out Power Rangers and they figured it out. Yeah.

[00:28:18] I just keep thinking of myself at that time. If I had seen this in syndication, I would have probably loved it. I probably would have really, really liked this. You and me both. Yeah. When it's airing right before Regis and Kathy Lee, you know, sometimes. I was living vicariously through the YouTube comments on each episode for the few people who did actually get to watch this as it aired. And it's like, oh, shit, I used to get up at whatever.

[00:28:46] Oh, maybe that's some environmental storytelling. We need to dig through the YouTube comments and see when people watch this. What time that came on? 3.30 a.m. Right after this broadcast day has ended. Remember that shit? Wow. We used to actually go off the air. Impossible.

[00:29:13] Because, yeah, you could tell the stations were cheap when they wouldn't even air the infomercials all night. It's like, at least put those on. But no. They're just going to air the snow instead. Yeah, man. It's I really enjoyed this. Like I said, if you're a Dragon Quest person out there, you're listening to this. Definitely watch this. You will. You will have a ball. It is a treat. It is a treat from another time that is still sweet. Sweet treat.

[00:29:43] Just don't go into expecting too much puff puff. Yeah. I mean, maybe there could have been more. But is that it? Do we have that? I have. Oh, you know what? I do want to say one more thing before we go, because I think this is important. I mentioned Sugiyama's music earlier. Correct me if I'm wrong, but up to this point in time, I don't think there is any other representation of Dragon Quest music outside of the games. Right?

[00:30:13] So this Dragon Warrior anime might be the first time anyone has heard those like chiptune compositions and like real instruments. I don't know when Dragon Quest Symphonic would have started, but either way, this would have been the first time we heard that. Right. I just think that's a real treat, though, if it is the first time, because that would that would have blown my mind.

[00:30:37] I'm thinking back to shit, Steve, even like the Mario three and Super Mario World cartoons and shit where they have like the occasional song from the game. Yeah, I thought that was a real treat when I used to hear that, like in the oh, they're playing that song, right? Get to hear a quote unquote real arrangement of it. I think definitely people would have felt that way about Dragon Quest as well. Well, in Japan, sure. Here, what's a Dragon Warrior? Yeah, of course.

[00:31:06] I'm just saying, well, I mean, even more so, right? Because like if you were one of the few saps who did have Dragon Warrior on NES and then you did see this cartoon, you would have been like, oh, shit. Right. I definitely didn't have Dragon Warrior. So, you know me, I didn't get my NES to wait later. So, yeah. All right. But yeah, anything else you want to hit on before we say bye? Maybe it's time we say bye. OK. All right.

[00:31:35] What are we watching next time on Summer RPG Anime Festival? Steve looks like something called Fire Emblem Mystery of the Emblem. Did you just say emblem twice? Peace. Let's get out of here. See you next time.