Review: Netflix's DRAGON QUEST: YOUR STORY Doesn't Feel Much Like Your Story
Dragon Quest has been transporting its players to fantastical lands for more than thirty years. That is a long time to have such a prominent franchise be a part of your life. With a movie coming out on Netflix, it had to be daunting to try and make a story and experience that players and fans will enjoy. While the movie looks pretty good and takes some odd/amazing risks, it ultimately falls short of its reach.
This movie takes the audience through an adaptation of the story from Dragon Quest V. The characters and main story follow pretty well in general, but everything is so rushed that this would have for sure made a better three-part series or short anime adaptation with three seasons. Video games live in a special world where stories can span years, eras, and different protagonists or antagonists at times, but this doesn’t translate to the movie format well. Often reunions, choices, big life events, and big storylines are just brushed over in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
The animation is beautiful for the most part, with a lot of good, crisp textures and lighting. But the actual movements and animation can feel a little cheap or rushed, as if a person owned a large opera house, but hired a high school production group. They’ll get the job done, and look good doing it, but there is a lack of professional polish at times. The style looks just like you’d expect from a modern adaptation, but the lack of strong flair or personal dynamic style in the battles especially makes it feel only a bit better than mediocre. To go along with the look, the voice acting is both great and terrible. Japanese voice acting is good and feels natural enough, but because of the 3D format, the English dub looks far worse even though they are matching the timing of the mouths well. It just doesn’t work, especially with some of the English dialogue and voice work.
Overall, this movie is a nice try and an all right showcase of the franchise, Dragon Quest V and what great movie adaptations could possibly be. However, the jumbled story, odd ending, and cheesy relation it makes with the audience make the film’s ambitions feel more like pandering and calculated fanservice instead of deep, meaningful storytelling and production.
