Dragon Quest: Your Story

I have not played the game that this is based on which is DQ V. And I heard that people were angry they did not used the original Akira animation style. Considering that, I still find the animation very nice. I like the artstyle and the animation is FF7 Advent Children caliber. Very far from the likes of the new Berserk or Kingdom. The plot twist at the end, although im not sure if its a spoiler, but to be on the safe side, i will consider it a plot twist to avoid spoilers, is very nice eventhough this plottwist element is something i have grown to hate lately as its been used as the main element of most animes. Overall, I enjoyed the anime very much. I am abit curious though if my opinion would differ if id have played the game.

As someone who has very warm memories of playing this game on the DS back in the day, I was really looking forward to this movie. Dragon Quest games never had the deepest stories, but they're always engaging, and DQV is arguably the game with the best story in the franchise, so it was very exciting to hear that the choose this specific game to adapt into a movie. However, that also leads to one of the biggest obstacles this movie has to face; it choose the game that would be the hardest to live up to. The main problem with this movie is that itoften doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. On the one hand it seems to base itself almost entirely off nostalgia, meaning that if you don't have fond memories of the game and remember it's story fairly well, you'll probably be at a loss for what the hell is going on most of the time. On the other hand, barely anything that happens in this movie is done as it is in the game, with a lot of characters never even appearing, and the ones that do often acting totally different from how they are in the game. Visually the movie also clearly does it's own thing, which isn't necessarily negative as it's visually quite solid for the most part,but for nostalgic fans (which again, this movie clearly tries to pander to) it may be a bit weird to see these characters look totally different from their original designs by Akira Toriyama. The entire movie also has an incredibly rushed pace throughout it's runtime, which makes it hard to get attached to the characters, as they're always rushing off to the next goal without ever giving us any breathing room to get to know them better. This means major events like Pankraz's death or the hero's return home after ten years as a slave aren't given enough time to leave any impact on the viewer. There's also the twist of the movie, which I won't spoil here, but it's fair to say it's a twist most people will either love or hate. I'm guessing most viewers will lean towards the latter. It's not a dumb twist per say, but it IS a confusing one, as it doesn't really add anything to the movie other than a weird, almost cultish, message that encourages escapism to an unhealthy degree. As someone who really adored the game when I first played it, and still occasionally play it to this day, the message didn't resonate with me in the slightest, and I'd honestly be a bit concerned for the people who do. These games are awesome, but in the end they're still games, and should be treated as such. Sound-wise this movie has a solid soundtrack, but the voice acting is a bit more of a mixed bag, especially if you watch in english. I watched the movie with the English dub, and though the voice actors all do a solid job with what they're given, it's hard to get invested when the script gives them very little to work with. Nearly every line is phrased awkwardly, using wording that sounds either stilted or just plain unnatural, which really took me out of the experience. It also doesn't help that the English lip-syncing is rather poorly done. I watched the movie again in Japanese, and the difference in quality is noticeable enough that I would definitely claim the Japanese dub as superior. Still, kudos to the English voice actors who clearly did their best with what they had. Overall, this movie clearly tries hard in a lot of areas, but sadly doesn't really live up to any of its many ambitions. It looks and sounds great, but the plot is all over the place with a pace that's so rushed it's hard to ever really care what's happening. It expects you to know the game's story before even watching it, yet at the same time it ignores and glosses over so many major plot events it leaves me wondering who they even made this movie for in the first place. It's not a movie for newcomers, and it's not a movie for nostalgic fans either... It's not really a movie for anyone.

I really enjoyed this movie, especially the creative twist. Throughout the runtime I was always invested in the characters and plot and captivated by the fight scenes and beautiful art and animation. While the characters are likable, they aren’t very nuanced and leave a little bit to be desired. The score is decent, if a little repetitive and the sub had very good voice acting for the most part while the dub left much to be desired. While the world was believable, it didn’t really seem that livens in or fleshed out. Ultimately, this movie suffers from pacing that just feels to fast and, likea lot of anime movies, it just feels like it would’ve been better as a series so it could have better plot progression and world building. While there is room for improvement, I wasn’t disappointed by this movie at all.

The whole time while watching this I thought that this was a decent, albeit mediocre recap story of Dragon Quest V. I wasn't really on board with the character design since I thought they didn't really recreate Toriyama's style all that well but I liked how the world and monsters looked. The soundtrack is also fantastic, from what I could tell they just re-used the soundtrack from the game but it worked really well and added a nice bit of nostalgia. The story itself is pretty much a rushed version of the original RPG, with some minor details being changed. They erased some characters like Deborah(which is fine by me) and Hero's daughter (which is very questionable) and skipped over some story beats. The whole movie feels somewhat rushed but I thought they did a decent job retelling the story in a way that makes sense for people who don't know the game. It's a bit sad they skipped over the childhood part with Bianca in an 8-bit sequence, but I understand why they did this. So, of course this isn't the best way to experience the story of DQV at all. If you have the slightest interest playing the game, skip this movie and play it first, it would be a waste to spoil yourself on all the twists since the story of DQ V in particular is really great. If you don't have any interest whatsoever then you can easily watch and understand this. I think it works that way too. But I feel like this movie was aimed specifically at people who already played Dragon Quest V. The ending in particular really reinforces that idea. I don't want to spoil it, but the twist towards the end is something a lot of people watching the movie utterly HATED and while I think I understand why, I totally disagree. It was a nice message for fans of the franchise and elevated the movie from a simplistic recap movie to something more.

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