Before I start, I would like to say that I have never played any of the Dragon Quest games, therefore I won’t make any parallels between them and the manga that I’m reviewing. Born from the partnership between Koji Inada (art) and Riku Sanjo (story), Dragon Quest – Dai no Daibouken can be initially seen as just propaganda to increase the games sale. And indeed that was probably the idea when they first started developing it, seeing how it was supposed to be a 2-chapter story, which led to another 3-chapter arc, and consequent serialization. This increasing popularity only comes to show that even a money-makerseries can be of quality.

The basic plot is pretty standard in both anime and RPG: a small boy with mysterious powers goes on a journey where he makes friends, grows stronger and defeats evil. It might sound cliché (and it is), but fortunately the author managed to give the old formula a new feel, keeping it exciting until the end. In order to achieve such feat, he used (actually overused) plot twists. In fact, that is the main problem with the story: in order to keep emotion at a maximum, Sanjo constantly had the heroes in desperate and seemingly inescapable situations, only to be saved by a plot device that, even though usually creative and interesting, would occasionally disappoint the reader or get the plot one step back.

Even with Sanjo’s ability to keep the plot fresh and entertaining, the quality of a story rests heavily in its characters, and that is an aspect in which Dai no Daibouken excels. With a charismatic cast of protagonists, a wide range of supporting characters and great chemistry between all of them, it’s impossible not to find at least one to relate to. However, in spite of the tri-dimensionality shown by part of the cast, most of them are somewhat Manichean, justifying their evil/good actions with a “just because”, however this can be relieved when you take in account the audience the authors needed to reach.

As happens with most artists, during the serialization, it’s highly noticeable the evolution in Inada’s drawings. This improvement is more apparent in two aspects: the characters designs and expressions, which start sillier and more comedic, but later develops, becoming more shounen-like; and the overall cleanness of drawings, that seem blurry and dirty at first. As a whole, the art can be considered average, even going by the usual shounen standards.

Overall, it’s safe to say that Dragon Quest – Dai no Daibouken succeeds in presenting an entertaining story, which should be the main goal of all mangas. However, it leaves a little to be desired in crucial aspects, such as character development and plot presentation, making the experience of reading it worthwhile, but not mandatory for fans of the medium.

PS - If you look at my list, you’ll see that I gave this series a 9, while here it’s an 8. The reason is: I tend to give an extra point to series that contain that something else (in this case it was Pop, one of my favorite characters), but as this is a review, I tried to be more impartial and subtracted that point.