However, there was a brilliantly shining light in the Saturn's ill-advised early launch, as within that six-game launch lineup there was Panzer Dragoon.
The first game developed by Sega's Team Andromeda, Panzer Dragoon was the creation of Yukio Futatsugi, who conceived an on-rails shooter where you played as a man who rode a regal-looking dragon across a post-apocalyptic fantasy world heavily inspired by the works of Jean "Moebius" Girard (who even agreed to draw the cover for the Japanese release!). Compared to shoddy-looking ports of arcade hits Virtua Fighter & Daytona USA, or sports simulators Worldwide Soccer & Pebble Beach Golf Links, Panzer Dragoon felt like a revelation; even Sega AM7's fun platformer Clockwork Knight kind of paled in comparison. Unsurprisingly, Futatsugi's game was a hit, which resulted in two sequels up through 1998, a Game Gear "Mini" spin-off, and even a fourth entry for the original Xbox, once Sega moved over to being just a software company; fittingly, third game Panzer Dragoon Saga (a full-on RPG) was one of the last Saturn games released in North America. However, I'm not writing about the games & how cool they are, though you should at least play Orta on Xbox One; the PC port of the first game is included as a bonus. No, I've decided to remind people of what is easily the lowest point of the entire Panzer Dragoon franchise... The anime adaptation (though one can certainly argue that the R-Zone game may be worse).
I swear, the fact that this year is the 25th Anniversary of Panzer Dragoon is a total coincidence.
Following the release of Panzer Dragoon II Zwei in early 1996, Sega decided to produce an anime adaptation of the first game. Around the same time Zwei came out, the two-episode OVA adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog (known internationally as Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie) had finished up in Japan, so Sega decided to work with the same two companies that produced that OVA, Taki Corporation & General Entertainment. Hiring Production I.G. to make the animation itself, the Panzer Dragoon OVA came out on VHS & LD in Japan on October 25, 1996, where it actually made history by being the first anime ever fully produced digitally; it even advertised itself as "Full Digital Animation". In 1998, possibly due to Saga's release that same year, ADV Films licensed & released the OVA on VHS, though only as a dubbed release, which almost never happened with ADV; in fact, the original Japanese audio was only uncovered relatively recently through a VHS rip. Of course, ADV would then just create some confusion when it later licensed & released the 1997 OVA Ryuki Denshou as simply Dragoon in 1999; I bet this was done on purpose, like how Makai Tensho became Ninja Resurrection because of Ninja Scroll. Anyway, today the Panzer Dragoon OVA is often cited as one of the all-time worst anime adaptations of a video game, and since both languages are now out there online, let's see why it has that reputation, and if the original Japanese is truly any better.
Keil and his blind girlfriend Alita are out hunting with their friend Demitok when they see what looks to be two dragons, one black & the other blue, fighting each other in the sky above them. The battle threatens the safety of Keil & his friends, so they run into a cave to hide, only for the dragons to wind up going there as well, seemingly in chase of Alita. The black dragon kills the rider on the blue dragon, only to then capture Alita & seemingly fuse her into its back. Demitok tries to protect Keil, only to be killed instantly by the black dragon's energy blast, followed by Alita being taken away. Keil then teams with the now-riderless blue dragon, named Blau, to go after the black dragon & stop it, as it wants to use Alita's seeming psychic prowess to reactivate the Tower, an ancient ruin that can bring destruction to the land.
In theory, adapting the original Panzer Dragoon (unofficially known to fans as "Ein", to go with the sequel's numbering) into a half-hour OVA shouldn't be difficult, since the game's story is pretty barebones. In it, a man named Keil Fluge (left unnamed outside Japan) comes a cross a battle between dragons after noticing airships belonging to the Empire (who are actually searching for Blau, unbeknownst to Keil) & is forced into a ruins-filled cave by other creatures. When Blau's rider is mortally wounded he makes a psychic link with Keil, telling him to help Blau in preventing the black dragon from reaching the mysterious Tower. Adding in completely superfluous elements & characters for the OVA doesn't help things, because all they do is literally prevent the anime from actually adapting the game itself. Alita contributes nothing more than a personal stake in Keil's journey with Blau, and since the story makes no attempt to actually explain why she was needed to activate the Tower in the first place, or even why she seemingly has ESP (possibly a call back to Blau's rider in the game?), she is nothing more than a generic damsel in distress... Though even that isn't done well, as she's either unconscious or under the black dragon's control, so she's literally never shown in any actual distress. Demitok is even more pointless, as he's killed just over six minutes in, giving the viewer no reason to care even a little bit over his death. In fact, him being eradicated by the black dragon is where the tagline for this review comes from, as I fully believe that, in those last nanoseconds of life while being blasted into nothingness, Demitok regrets everything he just did; Keil wasn't worth defending.
Still, to be fair, the anime does capture the general feel & idea behind the game's intro in those first eight minutes; it's everything after this that completely fails. As an adaptation, you'd think that the OVA would then move straight into the first stage, where Keil & Blau fly over the ruins of an ancient city flooded over by the sea, right? Well, the OVA does get to that iconic scene... Roughly 16 minutes in, or at about the 2/3 mark; also, it only lasts half of an entire minute in the anime. So what was so important to add in between the intro & the first stage that it needed the entire middle third of the OVA? A completely pointless section involving an Imperial Captain (who is never named) & his fleet being attacked, first by the black dragon & then by Blau (against Keil's orders), followed by Keil trying to rescue the Captain from the wreckage, only to then have to kill the Captain anyway when he goes crazy & tries to kill the man who saved him. Yes, the Empire did have some involvement in the game's story, but there really was no need to include them in any way outside of the opening scene, which establishes that the Tower holds a power that not even the Empire can fully control. The only worthwhile moment during this middle third is a flashback, when Keil sneaks a kiss onto Alita when she asks him to describe what the color red looks & feels like, so he makes her blush, which honestly is a well done scene to establish the pair as a couple for the viewer; that being said, it could have still been included while removing everything with the Captain. The final eight minutes has the game rush things like hell to get to the final battle at the Tower, followed by the finale, which are both accurate to the game's plot on a general level, but the emotional farewell between Keil & Blau doesn't feel the least bit earned or natural.
So you might be wondering, "Who the hell wrote an adaptation this poorly handled?", and if you know anime writers you might be surprised by the answer: Yousuke Kuroda. For those unfamiliar, Kuroda is a highly regarded anime writer, having been the man behind the pen of beloved series like Trigun, Gungrave, Gundam Build Fighters, Big Windup!, Jormungand, My Hero Academia, s-CRY-ed, & Ring ni Kakero 1; it's my blog, so I can toss that last one in. However, this OVA didn't get THAT Yousuke Kuroda, the Kobe Award-winning writer. Instead, the OVA had 28-year old Yousuke Kuroda, who had only been in the industry for barely two years & had just one solo writing credit to his name at that point, which was the Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem OVA from earlier that same year; at least that one was an RPG, which gave him more to work with. This was a Kuroda who was still only really starting out, not having the experience that would make him into the celebrated writer (& adapter) that he would turn into, so I can't really fault him for anything more than simply being a young & fresh writer; ask any author, & they'll tell you that their earliest works likely suck extremely hard. In fact, I think I even kind of understand what Kuroda was likely going for here, in terms of his additions. In the game, Keil could be a blank slate since he was the player's avatar, but for an anime he'd need to be fleshed out more. Therefore, Kuroda likely added Alita in to give Keil a personal reason to help Blau, included Demitok to give Keil someone to bounce off of at the beginning to give the viewer an fast look into Keil's personality, & shoved in the stuff with the Imperial Captain in order to show that Keil values life & hates killing; it's only when Alita is rescued from the black dragon that Keil wants to personally finish things off. I'm not saying that any of it was actually handled well, because it sure as hell wasn't (there's a literally a flashback that just shows what would have happened next in sequence, making the use of a flashback pointless), but I can certainly see the good intentions Kuroda likely had behind them.
As for the animation itself, it does have to be judged with the lens of when it came out. Computer generated imagery in anime was still only an occasionally seen thing by this point, and at least Sega, Taki Corporation, & General Entertainment brought on a studio that had some experience with the medium. Yes, while Production I.G. handled the character animation, all of the backgrounds & Empire aiships were done by IKIF+, which is still around to this day & got its start by handling the CG seen in 1989's Patlabor the Movie; the Panzer Dragoon OVA was the studio's third project. In terms of each individually, I.G.'s work looks perfectly fine, with fluid character movement & solid color use & shading; it's nothing amazing, but I.G. has never been known to half-ass this stuff. As for IKIF+'s work, it's definitely aged after 24 years, with rather flat-looking environments helped only by some basic texture mapping (if even that), but it honestly doesn't look any worse than something like Beast Wars: Transformers or ReBoot, which were both running on American TV by the time this OVA first came out in Japan. No, the main problem is that the fusion of the two doesn't work well. This is mitigated a bit by watching from a VHS source, as the medium pretty much blurs things together due to being a lower-quality video source, but when seeing from a higher-quality source (like from the "trailer" that's on Amazon Japan's streaming option... Yes, this OVA is legally streamable in Japan) it becomes obvious that the traditionally animated characters are kind of just plopped on top of the CG environments; dark places, like the cave or inside the Tower, mask the illusion better, of course. Honestly, can't really fault the people involved here, not even newbie director Shinji Takagi (SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next), because they likely did the best they could with the technology of the time; the producing companies wanted the first "Full Digital Animation", and that's what they got, warts & all.
At least the music is a bit of a highlight, if only because the OVA brought back Yoshitaka Azuma, who composed the memorably outstanding soundtrack for the original game. In fact, Azuma apparently created an entire 10-song soundtrack for the OVA, which includes a vocal song sung by Yuri Shiratori, but almost none of it wound up actually being used. Instead, you constantly hear the game's "Opening Theme" at various points throughout (it's over six minutes long, so they had plenty of sections to use), with only short bits of two other songs included in the first & last thirds, which are likely some of the originals Azuma made for the OVA itself. Considering that the official soundtrack is 48 minutes long, 1.5x the length of the anime, I wonder if this was originally planned to be two episodes long, just like the Sonic the Hedgehog OVA, & just got cut in half. It would certainly explain the superfluous aspects, lack of any real relevant pacing, ignorance of actually adapting the game itself (outside of the beginning & end), & reliance on a single song from the game for the majority of the music heard; it's an excellent song, but is definitely overused.
All that being said, the other big reason for this OVA's infamy is because of the English dub ADV produced... Because, boy, is it memorably terrible. Directed by Tristan MacAvery (New Cutie Honey, Dirty Pair OVAs, Gendo in ADV's Evangelion), who has since called it an example of "polishing a turd" & was only given it because Matt Greenfield didn't want to do it himself, this dub is a perfect example of the idea of "so bad, it's good", and it's pretty much all because of the late Randy Sparks' (Ushio in Ushio & Tora OVAs, Kenji Sasaki in A.D. Police [TV]) performance as Keil (or "Kyle", as ADV translated it). Simply put, Sparks sounds absolutely ridiculous for almost the entire OVA, preferring to shout most of his lines & not even pretending to have an ounce of subtlety. He also has a habit of either over-pronouncing words, like always saying "DRA-GON!" or "A-LI-TAAH!", or even under-pronouncing them; Sparks' "Blau" always sounds more like "Blah". The most annoying thing is that, during the flashback scene that I honestly like, Sparks' performance is more subdued & calm, showing that he could have delivered a decent performance, at the very least. Of course, Sparks wasn't helped by the dub script, which replaced quiet, subtle moments with Keil having to monologue for no reason, or seemingly giving Sparks more lines to shout out at the top of his lungs, when not necessary. MacAvery also decided to have Keil refer to Alita as "My Lady" as often as his says her actual name, even straight to Alita's face, which Sparks (naturally) overdoes in his delivery. In comparison, Kimberly Roberson (a.k.a. Kim Sevier, Yui Ikari in ADV's Evangelion) honestly puts in a much better performance, which while overdone in some ways at least sounds like she's putting in an honest effort to show reasonable emotion. The dub is rounded out by Don'l Johnson as Blau (who the script also gives a few too many extra lines to), Orvis Melvin as Demitok (I'm sorry, "Devidok"), & the late Rick Peeples as the Captain.
As for the nearly-unknown original Japanese voice cast, I must first state that it sadly is indeed done in Japanese, and not the in-universe language of "Panzerese"; definitely would have been an interesting thing to see done, though. Other than that, it's similarly as limited as ADV's later dub, & in fact is slightly more limited, as one seiyuu does handle double-duty. Leading everyone is Masaya Onosaka (Leeron in Gurren Lagann, Vash in Trigun) as Keil, who certainly has his own moments of hamming it up, similar to Sparks, but balances things out by knowing to make sure emotion is key in the delivery; he doesn't simply scream out his lines, but rather puts in at least some actual passion. Alita is voiced by Yuri Shiratori (Mokona in Magic Knight Rayearth, Yukina in Yu Yu Hakusho), who doesn't get a lot to work with, but does fine with what she's given; it's nothing special, but it's not terrible, either. Demitok is voiced by Kiyoyuki Yanada (Zabine in Gundam F91, Akagi in Slam Dunk), who similarly has next-to-nothing to work with but isn't horrible. Finally, we Akio Ohtsuka voicing both the Imperial Captain & Blau, which accidentally winds up being kind of thematically interesting, since the Captain had horrible memories of the black dragon when it destroyed the fleet he was with in the OVA's opening sequence, which took place a few decades earlier. Therefore, having him also voice Blau makes Ohtsuka both a victim of the black dragon & also it's very doom. In reality, Ohtsuka was likely just used for Blau because he was already there, & Blau has barely any lines, but it's just an amusing coincidence, in terms of what little story we're actually given in this OVA.
What makes the Panzer Dragoon OVA such an annoying disappointment mainly comes down to the fact that this is a series that honestly had potential to work in anime form. What Yukio Futatsugi had created with the first game opened the imagination, and its sequel did more of the same but on a slightly grander scale. Unfortunately, the end product for the OVA is flawed heavily from both sides, as the plot never really gets past first gear (& may have been forced to be half the length as intended, if the OST's runtime indicates anything), while the focus on making this the first "full digital" production results in it looking infinitely worse than had Production I.G. just been allowed to do everything on their own. Combine all of that with an embarrassingly terrible English dub by ADV, complete with Randy Sparks turning in a performance that Tommy Wiseau would be proud of, and it really is as bad as its reputation precedes it. All that being said, however, the Panzer Dragoon OVA isn't the worst anime out there, as I can name a bunch that are much, much worse; it definitely is one of the most disappointing, though.
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On a blog-related note, this was actually originally intended to be Review #250, but instead it is now #249. Why did I move it? That's because I felt I had a better choice for the next milestone, one that is part of an iconic franchise, has some infamy of its own (multiple instances, in fact), and is an anime that I have some short-lived past with, as a child.
It's time to "Go, Go, Go!" & see what "X" factor Tatsunoko brought in while rebooting one of its most iconic series during the 90s.
I swear, the fact that this year is the 25th Anniversary of Panzer Dragoon is a total coincidence.
Following the release of Panzer Dragoon II Zwei in early 1996, Sega decided to produce an anime adaptation of the first game. Around the same time Zwei came out, the two-episode OVA adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog (known internationally as Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie) had finished up in Japan, so Sega decided to work with the same two companies that produced that OVA, Taki Corporation & General Entertainment. Hiring Production I.G. to make the animation itself, the Panzer Dragoon OVA came out on VHS & LD in Japan on October 25, 1996, where it actually made history by being the first anime ever fully produced digitally; it even advertised itself as "Full Digital Animation". In 1998, possibly due to Saga's release that same year, ADV Films licensed & released the OVA on VHS, though only as a dubbed release, which almost never happened with ADV; in fact, the original Japanese audio was only uncovered relatively recently through a VHS rip. Of course, ADV would then just create some confusion when it later licensed & released the 1997 OVA Ryuki Denshou as simply Dragoon in 1999; I bet this was done on purpose, like how Makai Tensho became Ninja Resurrection because of Ninja Scroll. Anyway, today the Panzer Dragoon OVA is often cited as one of the all-time worst anime adaptations of a video game, and since both languages are now out there online, let's see why it has that reputation, and if the original Japanese is truly any better.
Keil and his blind girlfriend Alita are out hunting with their friend Demitok when they see what looks to be two dragons, one black & the other blue, fighting each other in the sky above them. The battle threatens the safety of Keil & his friends, so they run into a cave to hide, only for the dragons to wind up going there as well, seemingly in chase of Alita. The black dragon kills the rider on the blue dragon, only to then capture Alita & seemingly fuse her into its back. Demitok tries to protect Keil, only to be killed instantly by the black dragon's energy blast, followed by Alita being taken away. Keil then teams with the now-riderless blue dragon, named Blau, to go after the black dragon & stop it, as it wants to use Alita's seeming psychic prowess to reactivate the Tower, an ancient ruin that can bring destruction to the land.
In theory, adapting the original Panzer Dragoon (unofficially known to fans as "Ein", to go with the sequel's numbering) into a half-hour OVA shouldn't be difficult, since the game's story is pretty barebones. In it, a man named Keil Fluge (left unnamed outside Japan) comes a cross a battle between dragons after noticing airships belonging to the Empire (who are actually searching for Blau, unbeknownst to Keil) & is forced into a ruins-filled cave by other creatures. When Blau's rider is mortally wounded he makes a psychic link with Keil, telling him to help Blau in preventing the black dragon from reaching the mysterious Tower. Adding in completely superfluous elements & characters for the OVA doesn't help things, because all they do is literally prevent the anime from actually adapting the game itself. Alita contributes nothing more than a personal stake in Keil's journey with Blau, and since the story makes no attempt to actually explain why she was needed to activate the Tower in the first place, or even why she seemingly has ESP (possibly a call back to Blau's rider in the game?), she is nothing more than a generic damsel in distress... Though even that isn't done well, as she's either unconscious or under the black dragon's control, so she's literally never shown in any actual distress. Demitok is even more pointless, as he's killed just over six minutes in, giving the viewer no reason to care even a little bit over his death. In fact, him being eradicated by the black dragon is where the tagline for this review comes from, as I fully believe that, in those last nanoseconds of life while being blasted into nothingness, Demitok regrets everything he just did; Keil wasn't worth defending.
Still, to be fair, the anime does capture the general feel & idea behind the game's intro in those first eight minutes; it's everything after this that completely fails. As an adaptation, you'd think that the OVA would then move straight into the first stage, where Keil & Blau fly over the ruins of an ancient city flooded over by the sea, right? Well, the OVA does get to that iconic scene... Roughly 16 minutes in, or at about the 2/3 mark; also, it only lasts half of an entire minute in the anime. So what was so important to add in between the intro & the first stage that it needed the entire middle third of the OVA? A completely pointless section involving an Imperial Captain (who is never named) & his fleet being attacked, first by the black dragon & then by Blau (against Keil's orders), followed by Keil trying to rescue the Captain from the wreckage, only to then have to kill the Captain anyway when he goes crazy & tries to kill the man who saved him. Yes, the Empire did have some involvement in the game's story, but there really was no need to include them in any way outside of the opening scene, which establishes that the Tower holds a power that not even the Empire can fully control. The only worthwhile moment during this middle third is a flashback, when Keil sneaks a kiss onto Alita when she asks him to describe what the color red looks & feels like, so he makes her blush, which honestly is a well done scene to establish the pair as a couple for the viewer; that being said, it could have still been included while removing everything with the Captain. The final eight minutes has the game rush things like hell to get to the final battle at the Tower, followed by the finale, which are both accurate to the game's plot on a general level, but the emotional farewell between Keil & Blau doesn't feel the least bit earned or natural.
So you might be wondering, "Who the hell wrote an adaptation this poorly handled?", and if you know anime writers you might be surprised by the answer: Yousuke Kuroda. For those unfamiliar, Kuroda is a highly regarded anime writer, having been the man behind the pen of beloved series like Trigun, Gungrave, Gundam Build Fighters, Big Windup!, Jormungand, My Hero Academia, s-CRY-ed, & Ring ni Kakero 1; it's my blog, so I can toss that last one in. However, this OVA didn't get THAT Yousuke Kuroda, the Kobe Award-winning writer. Instead, the OVA had 28-year old Yousuke Kuroda, who had only been in the industry for barely two years & had just one solo writing credit to his name at that point, which was the Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem OVA from earlier that same year; at least that one was an RPG, which gave him more to work with. This was a Kuroda who was still only really starting out, not having the experience that would make him into the celebrated writer (& adapter) that he would turn into, so I can't really fault him for anything more than simply being a young & fresh writer; ask any author, & they'll tell you that their earliest works likely suck extremely hard. In fact, I think I even kind of understand what Kuroda was likely going for here, in terms of his additions. In the game, Keil could be a blank slate since he was the player's avatar, but for an anime he'd need to be fleshed out more. Therefore, Kuroda likely added Alita in to give Keil a personal reason to help Blau, included Demitok to give Keil someone to bounce off of at the beginning to give the viewer an fast look into Keil's personality, & shoved in the stuff with the Imperial Captain in order to show that Keil values life & hates killing; it's only when Alita is rescued from the black dragon that Keil wants to personally finish things off. I'm not saying that any of it was actually handled well, because it sure as hell wasn't (there's a literally a flashback that just shows what would have happened next in sequence, making the use of a flashback pointless), but I can certainly see the good intentions Kuroda likely had behind them.
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| Hey look! This is just like the game, isn't it?! |
As for the animation itself, it does have to be judged with the lens of when it came out. Computer generated imagery in anime was still only an occasionally seen thing by this point, and at least Sega, Taki Corporation, & General Entertainment brought on a studio that had some experience with the medium. Yes, while Production I.G. handled the character animation, all of the backgrounds & Empire aiships were done by IKIF+, which is still around to this day & got its start by handling the CG seen in 1989's Patlabor the Movie; the Panzer Dragoon OVA was the studio's third project. In terms of each individually, I.G.'s work looks perfectly fine, with fluid character movement & solid color use & shading; it's nothing amazing, but I.G. has never been known to half-ass this stuff. As for IKIF+'s work, it's definitely aged after 24 years, with rather flat-looking environments helped only by some basic texture mapping (if even that), but it honestly doesn't look any worse than something like Beast Wars: Transformers or ReBoot, which were both running on American TV by the time this OVA first came out in Japan. No, the main problem is that the fusion of the two doesn't work well. This is mitigated a bit by watching from a VHS source, as the medium pretty much blurs things together due to being a lower-quality video source, but when seeing from a higher-quality source (like from the "trailer" that's on Amazon Japan's streaming option... Yes, this OVA is legally streamable in Japan) it becomes obvious that the traditionally animated characters are kind of just plopped on top of the CG environments; dark places, like the cave or inside the Tower, mask the illusion better, of course. Honestly, can't really fault the people involved here, not even newbie director Shinji Takagi (SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next), because they likely did the best they could with the technology of the time; the producing companies wanted the first "Full Digital Animation", and that's what they got, warts & all.
At least the music is a bit of a highlight, if only because the OVA brought back Yoshitaka Azuma, who composed the memorably outstanding soundtrack for the original game. In fact, Azuma apparently created an entire 10-song soundtrack for the OVA, which includes a vocal song sung by Yuri Shiratori, but almost none of it wound up actually being used. Instead, you constantly hear the game's "Opening Theme" at various points throughout (it's over six minutes long, so they had plenty of sections to use), with only short bits of two other songs included in the first & last thirds, which are likely some of the originals Azuma made for the OVA itself. Considering that the official soundtrack is 48 minutes long, 1.5x the length of the anime, I wonder if this was originally planned to be two episodes long, just like the Sonic the Hedgehog OVA, & just got cut in half. It would certainly explain the superfluous aspects, lack of any real relevant pacing, ignorance of actually adapting the game itself (outside of the beginning & end), & reliance on a single song from the game for the majority of the music heard; it's an excellent song, but is definitely overused.
All that being said, the other big reason for this OVA's infamy is because of the English dub ADV produced... Because, boy, is it memorably terrible. Directed by Tristan MacAvery (New Cutie Honey, Dirty Pair OVAs, Gendo in ADV's Evangelion), who has since called it an example of "polishing a turd" & was only given it because Matt Greenfield didn't want to do it himself, this dub is a perfect example of the idea of "so bad, it's good", and it's pretty much all because of the late Randy Sparks' (Ushio in Ushio & Tora OVAs, Kenji Sasaki in A.D. Police [TV]) performance as Keil (or "Kyle", as ADV translated it). Simply put, Sparks sounds absolutely ridiculous for almost the entire OVA, preferring to shout most of his lines & not even pretending to have an ounce of subtlety. He also has a habit of either over-pronouncing words, like always saying "DRA-GON!" or "A-LI-TAAH!", or even under-pronouncing them; Sparks' "Blau" always sounds more like "Blah". The most annoying thing is that, during the flashback scene that I honestly like, Sparks' performance is more subdued & calm, showing that he could have delivered a decent performance, at the very least. Of course, Sparks wasn't helped by the dub script, which replaced quiet, subtle moments with Keil having to monologue for no reason, or seemingly giving Sparks more lines to shout out at the top of his lungs, when not necessary. MacAvery also decided to have Keil refer to Alita as "My Lady" as often as his says her actual name, even straight to Alita's face, which Sparks (naturally) overdoes in his delivery. In comparison, Kimberly Roberson (a.k.a. Kim Sevier, Yui Ikari in ADV's Evangelion) honestly puts in a much better performance, which while overdone in some ways at least sounds like she's putting in an honest effort to show reasonable emotion. The dub is rounded out by Don'l Johnson as Blau (who the script also gives a few too many extra lines to), Orvis Melvin as Demitok (I'm sorry, "Devidok"), & the late Rick Peeples as the Captain.
As for the nearly-unknown original Japanese voice cast, I must first state that it sadly is indeed done in Japanese, and not the in-universe language of "Panzerese"; definitely would have been an interesting thing to see done, though. Other than that, it's similarly as limited as ADV's later dub, & in fact is slightly more limited, as one seiyuu does handle double-duty. Leading everyone is Masaya Onosaka (Leeron in Gurren Lagann, Vash in Trigun) as Keil, who certainly has his own moments of hamming it up, similar to Sparks, but balances things out by knowing to make sure emotion is key in the delivery; he doesn't simply scream out his lines, but rather puts in at least some actual passion. Alita is voiced by Yuri Shiratori (Mokona in Magic Knight Rayearth, Yukina in Yu Yu Hakusho), who doesn't get a lot to work with, but does fine with what she's given; it's nothing special, but it's not terrible, either. Demitok is voiced by Kiyoyuki Yanada (Zabine in Gundam F91, Akagi in Slam Dunk), who similarly has next-to-nothing to work with but isn't horrible. Finally, we Akio Ohtsuka voicing both the Imperial Captain & Blau, which accidentally winds up being kind of thematically interesting, since the Captain had horrible memories of the black dragon when it destroyed the fleet he was with in the OVA's opening sequence, which took place a few decades earlier. Therefore, having him also voice Blau makes Ohtsuka both a victim of the black dragon & also it's very doom. In reality, Ohtsuka was likely just used for Blau because he was already there, & Blau has barely any lines, but it's just an amusing coincidence, in terms of what little story we're actually given in this OVA.
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| Going with the Japanese LD cover, because it's tons better than ADV's VHS cover. |
What makes the Panzer Dragoon OVA such an annoying disappointment mainly comes down to the fact that this is a series that honestly had potential to work in anime form. What Yukio Futatsugi had created with the first game opened the imagination, and its sequel did more of the same but on a slightly grander scale. Unfortunately, the end product for the OVA is flawed heavily from both sides, as the plot never really gets past first gear (& may have been forced to be half the length as intended, if the OST's runtime indicates anything), while the focus on making this the first "full digital" production results in it looking infinitely worse than had Production I.G. just been allowed to do everything on their own. Combine all of that with an embarrassingly terrible English dub by ADV, complete with Randy Sparks turning in a performance that Tommy Wiseau would be proud of, and it really is as bad as its reputation precedes it. All that being said, however, the Panzer Dragoon OVA isn't the worst anime out there, as I can name a bunch that are much, much worse; it definitely is one of the most disappointing, though.
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On a blog-related note, this was actually originally intended to be Review #250, but instead it is now #249. Why did I move it? That's because I felt I had a better choice for the next milestone, one that is part of an iconic franchise, has some infamy of its own (multiple instances, in fact), and is an anime that I have some short-lived past with, as a child.
It's time to "Go, Go, Go!" & see what "X" factor Tatsunoko brought in while rebooting one of its most iconic series during the 90s.
Anime © Sega Enterprises, Ltd. 1995, 1996
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