Why Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai is One of the Greatest Shonen Anime

The landscape of shonen anime has changed a lot over the years, and largely for the better. In the past, anime adaptations of hallmark shonen titles like Naruto or Bleach were notorious for suffering from slow pacing, inconsistent animation quality, and, of course, long stretches of filler that took away from the main plot.

While the issue of pacing has never completely gone away due to how many of these series are made from manga inherently designed to go for as long as possible, they have improved a lot when it comes to animation quality and minimizing filler, and between the lavish productions of series like My Hero Academia, Fire Force and Demon Slayer, fans of battle shonen have been eating pretty well for the last few years. Of course, the flip side to having so many strong offerings is that they all eventually end up competing for attention.

While most of these series have managed to garner a lot of recognition, there are a couple that have managed to remain comparatively obscure (at least within the English-speaking anime fandom), whether it be due to a lack of promotion or coming out around the same time as a bigger title that managed to overshadow it. The 2020 remake of Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai is one such series, and it’s a huge shame because it easily stands as one of the best modern examples of how to do a battle shonen anime right.

The story follows a young boy named Dai who lives peacefully on an island of monsters and dreams of becoming like the great hero who defeats the Dark Lord Hadlar and saves the world. He seemingly gets his chance when he gets to train under a warrior named Avan alongside another boy named Popp, but before they can complete their training, they soon discover that Hadlar has been resurrected and is now serving under a new master, the Dark King Vearn. When Avan sacrifices himself to protect the boys from Hadlar, Dai and Popp set off on a journey to avenge their master and defeat Hadlar and Vearn once and for all. It’s a pretty straightforward setup for a hero’s journey, and one that you’ve doubtlessly heard before, but the series has quite a bit more to offer than you’d expect from something so simple.

But before I talk about what makes Dai so great, I should probably talk a bit about its history. The original manga by writer Riku Sanjō and artist Kōji Inada ran in Shonen Jump from 1989 to 1996, with a total of 37 volumes. It was a manga spinoff of the Dragon Quest video game franchise, which is the foundation of JRPGs as we know them today. While that might give the impression of this being a cheap video game tie-in, it’s a hot-blooded battle shonen manga through and through, and ran alongside Shonen Jump classics like Yu-Yu Hakusho, Saint Seiya, and Dragon Ball, the last of which it shares a lot of DNA with (Hadlar as a character is just “Vegeta but green”) when it comes to style.

That influence is pretty fitting because the Dragon Quest franchise itself owes a lot to Dragon Ball author Akira Toriyama, as he contributed a lot to the look and tone of the Dragon Quest games, as well as creating its iconic monster designs. While Dragon Ball is undoubtedly the more iconic and influential of the two manga, this series managed to be pretty influential in its own right, as every modern isekai anime with a hero’s party is just ripping from Dragon Quest in one way or another, and every iteration of “whiny guy who sucks at the start, but gets better later on” that has been featured in shonen manga over the last couple of decades, like Zenitsu from Demon Slayer, owes a debt of gratitude to Popp for laying the foundation of that archetype.

It’s also probably worth noting that the series did previously receive an anime adaptation from Toei in 1991 that covered the first ten volumes or so of the manga but ended up getting cut short after 46 episodes. That makes the 2020 remake the more complete version as it covers the entire manga throughout 100 episodes.

However, unlike Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which rushed through the early parts of the manga that the 2003 FMA anime already covered, or the 2011 version of Hunter x Hunter, which didn’t fully come into its own as an adaptation until around the Yorknew City arc, the 2020 version of Dai isn’t burdened with the need to distinguish itself from the first anime, and that does a lot to elevate it’s quality both as an adaptation and an actual TV show.

While the first five episodes function as a prologue of sorts (not unlike the JRPGs it’s based on), once the show gets going, it never stops. While the show having 100 episodes might seem intimidating, it’s pretty short when compared to the current 138 episodes of My Hero Academia or the 700+ of the Naruto franchise. And since this series has the advantage of being adapted from a long-completed manga, the show is free to move entirely at its own pace. Where similar battle shonen anime often tend to drag their heels, even when having minimal filler, DQ Dai is extremely good at not wasting your time and moves at a pretty brisk pace while simultaneously never feeling like it’s trying to rush anything despite its abundance of source material. I can honestly say that across the show’s entire runtime, there were, at best, maybe two or three episodes where I ever felt myself getting anywhere close to bored, and for a series with that much time investment, that’s a pretty impressive feat.

Still, none of what I’ve said here would matter if the source material itself wasn’t any good, and if I had to sum up the appeal of DQ Dai in a few words, it would simply be that it’s relentlessly charming. Much like the Dragon Quest games themselves, the series has an old-school action cartoon kind of energy that it proudly displays. Dai and his companions loudly proclaim to fight for love and justice; many spells featured throughout the series have silly names like “Woosh” or “Kaboom,” and the bad guys are called the Dark Army. But also like the Dragon Quest games, it understands that there’s an appeal to that kind of simplicity, and what it lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in execution.

The overall themes of the show are pretty straightforward and essentially center around things like the Dark Army’s “might makes right” mentality versus Dai and his friends using their strength to help others or the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, those themes have stuck around in shonen manga for a reason, and DQ Dai delves into those ideals wholeheartedly. Even at its most cliche, the show never stops being sincere, and that allows it to deliver on its story beats so effectively that even its most cliche moments are done dramatically enough to circle back around to being genuinely compelling. While the show isn’t completely free from feeling dated in a couple of areas, the story’s age never stops it from simply being a good story that feels timeless, even nearly 30 years later.

That timeless quality also extends to the show’s cast, who are probably the most significant component in what makes this show work. Dai is a pretty standard kid hero in terms of personality, but because he is a kid, his desire to become a proper hero comes off as genuinely endearing. Much of his character arc centers around him having to grow into that title and whether or not he can live up to people’s expectations of him. His companions, like Maam, a warrior priest who is the most outspoken about her beliefs in justice and is compassionate even towards her enemies, or Hyunckel, a former student of Avan who initially sides with the Dark Army and struggles to atone for his past, are also pretty compelling and do a great job of rounding out the main cast.

Even the members of the Dark Army have some pretty strong characterization, with Zaborera or Killvearn being delightfully evil in their antics. In contrast, others like Baran or Mystvearn are motivated by a sense of genuine loyalty or grievances with humanity, making all of their clashes with Dai’s party memorable.

The real standout of the show’s cast, though, is Popp, whose growth from a coward who would abandon his friends at the first sign of danger to a stalwart companion ready to put himself on the line for the people he cares about is easily the biggest highlight of the entire show. In many respects, the story is almost more about him than Dai. By the time it wraps up, he makes a pretty good case for being up there with the likes of Kuwabara from Yu-Yu Hakusho and Vegeta from Dragon Ball for being one of the best written supporting characters to ever come from the realm of shonen manga.

Of course, if you’re not concerned too much with themes or characters and want some cool anime fights, the show’s also got you covered.

Series director Kazuya Karasawa was also one of the assistant directors on the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie from 2018, and several of the animators from that film also lent their talents to this show, with the results nothing short of spectacular. The show looks great both in and out of fight scenes, and while the continuous two-year production means that it can’t quite deliver on the same levels of consistent highs as seasonal shonen anime like Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon Slayer, it comes pretty close.

Dai has some real showstopper fights of its own. It also keeps said fights relatively simple and operates closer to Dragon Ball than modern shonen regarding battle mechanics, with most special attacks being easy-to-understand spells or simple magic weapons. While that might be a letdown to people who enjoy the more complex power systems of stuff like Nen from Hunter x Hunter or Cursed Techniques in Jujutsu Kaisen, the plus is that it allows the fights in this show to move like a breeze, and the action is always very easy to follow. The only real knock I can make against it on the action front is that, like the Broly movie, the show occasionally integrates some 3D CG for some of its more complex action shots, with mixed results. But the quality of the hand-drawn action always more than makes up for it, and as a whole, it is easily one of the best-looking TV anime productions that Toei Animation has ever put out.

If I have any gripes with this show, they have less to do with its quality and more to do with its level of visibility. While the series was simulcasted on Crunchyroll for its entire run, neither they nor Toei gave it much in the way of promotion, and it languished in relative obscurity compared to the other shonen heavy hitters.

Thankfully, things have improved slightly with the dub (which does an excellent job of leaning into the show’s 90s action cartoon sensibilities and is and is the most appropriate way they could have handled it) finally being made available. It started streaming on Netflix just this month, which should hopefully help the show get more attention since it otherwise has all the hallmarks of an exemplary gateway anime. Still, it could use a lot more love in the West than what it’s currently gotten, so if anything I’ve said here sounds up your alley, I would recommend giving the show a shot. This series got remade for a reason, and while it might be a little simple by modern standards, it has just as much to offer as its modern shonen contemporaries.