Dragon Quest: Your Story—Video Game Animated Adaptations

On February 13th Netflix released Dragon Quest: Your Story, a film adaptation of Dragon Quest V. I sat down yesterday to watch the film (in the original Japanese with English subtitles) and gave myself 24 hours to collect my thoughts and put them to words.

Allow me to preface that I’m writing this article as a huge fan of the Dragon Quest series. Of all of the entries I’ve played, if I were only to count V, VIII, and XI, I have spent well over 200 hours in these stories. I’m someone who believes Dragon Quest V is one of the best stories ever written in games. To see the world of Dragon Quest brought into this world of animation was certainly a treat. I will say that if you’re not a fan of the series, or of JRPGs as a genre, the film may not be as appealing of an experience, but I think it still has a lot to offer in the realm of entertainment.

Compared to other reviews, I’ll try to keep it focused. This isn’t really an experience you have to spend money on, or one which takes very long (just the length of the movie) or more effort than pressing the play button. Because of this I don’t want to do too much of a breakdown. Especially because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I believe the honest work of a critic is to relate to someone whether or not they should experience something for themselves.

I’ll only go over the visuals and stories, and because it’s such a short experience I’ll refrain from any spoilers. Let’s begin.

Visuals

Many took issue with the westernized animation style, myself included. However, during the course of the film I came to terms with it. I believe, now, that the way this film is animated is a compromise, a theme which is present throughout the entire film’s production.

Let’s face it, the primary reason any of us are watching this movie is not to revolutionize our sensibilities to animation or to challenge our fundamental beliefs, we’re just tuning in for the entertainment of seeing a world we’ve loved turned into a film, or maybe just to dip our toes into the Dragon Quest water.

Before anyone gets out pitchforks over the choice in animation style, we shouldn’t disregard the fact that Dragon Quest has never had one singular mode of expression. While it has always used designs and artwork by the great Akira Toriyama, the games themselves have always moved through different visual expressions. At first in pixels and eventually in polygons that increased in count as time went on. In this regard, Dragon Quest has never been driven by its graphics, but by its stories. Though utilizing contemporary graphic capabilities has never been treated as unimportant, an emphasis on graphics has never been at the forefront of the games. In fact, we only need look at the move from console to handheld from VIII to IX. The developers chose an underpowered handheld for Dragon Quest IX and it certainly wasn’t because of its graphic capabilities.

So, to anyone who had trepidation because of this sudden change in style, I understand you, I was you. However, I think you’ll find that past an initial period of adjustment, your worries will dissipate.

The animation in the movie does lean on western sensibilities, especially in the animation of character’s facial expressions and body language (I’m reminded of Disney-Pixar’s “Tangled”). However, characters like Prince Harry (Henry in Japan) or the evil Bishop Ladja still look undeniably taken from a world of Japanese animation. Additionally, there is a welcomed lack of musical numbers which make the film seem less like it’s catering to western audiences and sensibilities and more like it’s choosing to reskin Dragon Quest to make it stand apart from the games. In this manner, they make the animation feel like a good compromise, which I think is important.

Beyond this, things like monsters and spells look gorgeous and faithful to the spirit of their original designs. I’m happy they didn’t just take assets or designs from DQXI and plop them into the film, it would have felt visually jarring and disjointed. I think their choices are a carefully balanced act meant to appeal newcomers and please long-time fans. Let’s not forget, DQV is one of the most beloved games in Japan.

Overall the visuals of the movie certainly add to it and do not detract from the story.

Story

This is the big thing everyone wants to know about. Does the script do the original story justice?

Well yes. . .and no. I certainly don’t want to spoil anything, so let me dance around the spoilers a bit.

When the trailer for this movie first came out, I was unmoved, because at that time I had never played Dragon Quest V. I decided, early last year, that I would play V before playing XI on the Switch. I got my hands on a copy of the DS remaster and was simply blown away. The story in that game is the basis for one of the most emotional experiences I have had with gaming as a whole. The game made me laugh, made me cry, reminded me of my very real human frailties and fears, it even made me think about my metaphysical existence as a statue watching the days of the world go by helplessly paralyzed. . .okay let me reel that in a sec. What I mean to say is: Dragon Quest V changed my life. I played through it. As someone who spent years of my life studying works of literary writing, I thought to myself, “how could someone write this?” I don’t say that in a negative way, I say it with shock that someone can write something so richly meaningful in such an accessible way.

Accessibility is one of the most difficult tasks when making. . .anything. It is equal parts craft, design, and art. You can simplify it, albeit it almost too much, to the idea of sugar coating the truth. How much sugar do you add before it’s a lie and you’ve betrayed your ideals? You don’t want to add too little or the bitterness of truth will be spit right out.

So, when I talk about a good story, for me, a good story must be trying to say something with the honest intention of making the world, maybe, just a little better. It could be about us and the way we live, how we feel, how we remember, how we cope, how we love, etc.

The original story for the game is one such story. It interrogates our narratives of heroes and games. Remember, also, that this game came out in 1992, the kind of story it tells is rare even today, but back then it was a seminal work and has influenced countless games to date.

The reason the Iliad and Odyssey have been so widely taught isn’t merely because they’re canonical texts. They’re canonical texts because they’ve been referenced by innumerable works throughout the ages, have inspired countless other stories. I believe Dragon Quest V speaks to the same elements of human tragedy and it did so at a nascent moment in games. I don’t say this lightly, but I do believe it is gaming’s The Odyssey, or at least it is for JRPGs.

Suffice it to say I had high expectations.

When I sat down yesterday to watch the movie, I decided I’d first play the trailer. The same trailer I’d previously seen. Suddenly my spirits rose, and I was elated with real nostalgia, not the kind created by decades of misremembering, but the kind created by an exceptional experience. I felt like I was about to step into a nostalgia machine that just scratched every itch I didn’t even know I had. However, this wasn’t the case. The movie gleaned over much of what I felt made the game story so impactful. I wondered where they were going with this. I thought, for a second “man, this is going to suck” and then I was wrong.

Again, I don’t want to spoil anything.

I started enjoying the mash-up rearrangement of the story which felt almost like a highlight reel or montage and let go of my desire for a play-by-play remake of the original story. I let myself take a break from trying to understand its approach and let the film work on me until I realized why it was the way it was. I took a mental note and thought to myself: “If they had made this exactly like the game, why would someone who hadn’t played it feel compelled to play it?” Halfway through the movie I realized they could never have made this movie faithful, it would mean betraying one artform for the other. Instead, the movie aims to satisfy both longtime fans and at once draw in new fans, but more importantly, it leaves gamers everywhere with a message we all know “games are more than games”. In a weird way this is an adaptation which deeply respects the source material, so much that it outright recognizes a silent truth other film studios adapting games to movies may never speak of in an effort to not compromise box office sales: “We could never do it justice, we could never do your story justice.” This movie offers itself humbly and without hubris. In this sense it does our stories justice.

I enjoyed this movie thoroughly; I hope you may too.