What the hell did I just watch?

I know Gonzo has a habit of pulling some really stupid stuff, especially when it comes to their endings, case and point, I couldn’t stand to watch more than two episodes of Dragonaut. But this time I’m just confused, it’s sorta like the feeling you get just after you’ve been Rickrolled, but decide to watch the entire thing anyway. The opening episode of The Tower of Druaga was a parody of various adventure cliches with some MMORPG thrown in for good measure. I’ll admit I enjoyed the humor behind it, but for a series that only has 13 episodes to tackle a story of seemingly epic proportions, does Gonzo really have time to spare on stuff like this?

The Tower of Druaga follows a band of heroes on their journey to reach the uppermost floors of, you guessed it, the Tower of Druaga. Right from the outset we’re thrown into the fray as our heroes are flinging arrows, swinging swords and axes and blasting off magic attacks. As a large group of approximately 20 strong enemies head their way, Jil, who I guess you could call our main protagonist, tentatively, stands his ground firmly, planting his shield and brandishing his sword, showing no fear as the mass of enemies approaches. As the horde clashes into Jil’s shield, they are effortlessly reduced to a pile of defeat and the party lavishes the hero with praise.

Jil then graces us with a recounting of the story thus far. The Tower of Druaga was built by the Dark Lord Druaga, rebuilt would be a more accurate term, as the great hero Gilgamesh (KING OF HEROES, DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH SWORDS? Sorry, couldn’t resist) destroyed it nearly 60 years ago. One day, Jil was named the Chosen One by the goddess Ishtar, as the one who would once again bring down the Tower of Druaga. After personally being bestowed with Gilgamesh’s sword and gathering a group of adventurers, their journey to defeat the Dark Lord began.

I can’t even summarize further as the whole thing breaks down into your typical cookie cutter quest against evil that can be read off the back box of any JRPG or standard MMORPG like Ragnarok Online. Complete with cliches like the midboss who is defeated by Jil only to have his life spared so he can come back and heroically sacrifice himself as repayment down the road. The series further pokes fun of itself with scenes like Neeba’s challenge to Jil and the incomprehensible “If you want to fight me you’ll have to defeat me first!” line or the ever popular “I’ll hold them off here, go on without me!”. Then it just descended into a full on joke episode with the whole “I am your father” speech and Jil’s dual marriage proposal. Not to mention Jil’s final charge with the spirits of his fallen comrades behind him, which I first saw done in Sailor Moon when I was like…seven years old.

Add typical character templates like mage, thief, archer, knight, along with stereotypical slime/dragon/orc baddies and you’ve pretty much got every RPG and associated adaptation all rolled up into a bundle of fail.

But luckily, it was nothing more than Gonzo toying with us, as the real story begins at the end of the episode where it’s revealed that the entire sequence was nothing more than a dream and Jil is really a lvl 10 novice and just got them cornered because of his stupidity.

I’m rather curious as to where the series will go from here, whether they’ll continue with the RPG parodies or actually head towards a coherent adventure anime plot. The former is destined to fail because no matter how much you love the parodies, they’re going to get old really quickly. The latter would be nice to see, but with Gonzo at the helm, I’m worried how it’ll turn out, specifically with regards to the ending, and if that was the case anyways, why did they bother wasting their first episode?

Technically, the Tower of Druaga was passable, nothing amazing, but it fit the tone of the series well enough so far. Not that we know what the overall tone of the series will be just yet, which was exemplified by the rapid changes in animation style. Everything from your typical bland adventure style drawings, to OVER 9000 key-frame animation with exaggerated shading and lens flare (a la GL), even some cheesy chibi-esque facial expressions.

Music wise…meh. Bgm was largely forgettable and didn’t add much to feel. The OP was extremely out of place, in terms of both music and animation, felt like something that belonged in a school love comedy, rather than an adventure epic. Though it did make me wonder, maybe the entire series is actually these kids PLAYING an RPG, in which case I’d orz so hard. I didn’t watch the ED because I was kinda bored at that point, but I’d expect it to be just as mediocre.

All in all, I’m not exactly brimming with excitement over this, but it has the potential to not be a complete failure, so I’ll keep watching for now. Doubt I’ll be blogging it though, barring an absolutely amazing second episode.

Oh, and I guess I should mention the bit on how Gonzo is streaming this series for free (with subs!) on Crunchy Roll. Interesting concept, a lot of people seem to use the site, although I find that watching anime off streaming sites is the same as stamping a huge “I fail at the internets” sign on your forehead. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to use torrent or irc (hell, there are even ddl sites out there). Not to mention that video quality is raped in the conversion to flv. I’m still waiting on subbed HD episode releases which come out parallel to Japanese air times. Yeah, yeah, picky pirate is picky, but sacrificing speed for quality is not a justified trade off in my eyes.

Triple strafe? H4X! Someone call a GM for b&

~ Shirukii ~