Legend of the Dragon Kings Vol. #6

By Chris Beveridge     May 22, 2004
Release Date: May 11, 2004



What They Say
Throughout his family?s adventures, Hajime has always been the leader, the strong older brother, and the dragon with the greatest superpowers. Now he is the prisoner of the secret agent known as Lady L. As his young brothers scramble to outwit her army, they are shaken by premonitions. Ancient prophecies are coming to fruition, and Lady L?s mad plot is the key to unlocking their supernatural destiny! Episodes 11&12.

The Review!
Reaching its climax, Dragon Kings actually turns interesting for awhile.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this disc in its original language of Japanese. Being a somewhat older show, it's no surprise that even though it's a stereo soundtrack it sounds primarily mono with most everything coming through the center channel. Music sounded decent if a bit flat while dialogue was clean and clear with no noticeable dropouts.

Video:
While many OVA series from the early 90's sport some high production values, Dragon Kings has a bit more of a smaller budget based on its looks. Or if you prefer, it's more real world in its design and coloring, giving it a less vibrant feel. Colors are nice and solid and there's a small bit of grain throughout the presentation. Some cross-coloration shows up in some of the more tightly animated areas but are otherwise pretty negligible. The shows look just isn't one that just shines in how its made.

Packaging:
Bringing all four of the brothers into the picture in their heavenly armor as actual Dragon Kings, the cover this time looks a fair bit better than most of the past covers with the brighter colors and the layout in general. This series just hasn't had the best of luck when it comes to cover artwork however. The back cover provides a couple of small shots from the show and a decent summary of what to expect. The discs features are nice and clearly listed here as well. The reverse side of this cover has the chapter marks for the two episodes and the English only voice actor credits with a note that the Japanese credits are unavailable.

Menu:
The menu layout for this volume is very simple with animation from the show playing full screen with a layer of blue fire playing over it to give it a more exciting feel. On top of that is the series logo and the menu selections, all of which gives things a fairly active look and feel but is pretty simple all told. Access times are nice and fast and the layout is standard for CPM releases and is easy to navigate.

Extras:
The only extra included in this release is a brief video art gallery.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While I tend to watch a lot of series, there are not a lot of them that I actually crave the end of. Dragon Kings has been one of those since the second volume as the show has barely been able to keep my attention while it's playing, never mind in the months and months between releases.

With the final two OVA episodes, the show moves fairly quickly towards the climax, something that was dragging in previous volumes. The deal that's been struck between the Four Sisters and the various governments, particularly the United States, is causing all sorts of shifts across the balance of power. The Four Sisters are also getting more directly involved with things these days as they've got control of one of the brothers, Hajime. But he's reached his limit of dealing with things as he has in the past, something that manages to time out well to when he's realized how to change himself into his dragon form.

His brothers are also reaching that point where they're realizing that something larger than what they've believed has been going on is moving them along the course of history. They take a leap of faith into the wide blue yonder and transform into their dragon selves as well, something that helps them feel freer about themselves and their decisions. It's also got the added bonus of allowing them to talk with Hajime, who is now just outside of Washington with the pride of the US navy, the Dynasty aircraft carrier. His actions provide some great drama with the President as he's freaking out over the fact that a nuclear powered and equipped ship is about to be dropped on the White House. He can't even evacuate to NORAD since the other three brothers, on their journey to meet up with Hajime, wiped it out.

The show takes an eerie twist though when the four dragons end up in New York City and find themselves wrapped around some of the taller buildings there as they decide what to do next. Their fates are planned though as the Shiryu, the one of the competing clan that's been trying to take over for millennia is active once more and threatens down upon the city. The four brothers head into the cloud that it controls and from there we see just how long and deep the history of conflict between these two sides really is. It's interesting throughout parts of it, but the tension and excitement gets dulled by some really poor animation for a number of the scenes. The epic feel that's supposed to be given here does work, but only just barely.

In Summary:
In the end, Dragon Kings was a series that at first looked like it had some potential but then got wrapped up in stories that didn't seem to really progress the overall plot well. Much of what we got in these last few episodes was barely hinted at in the previous volumes and only really started recently, mostly once the Four Sisters really got going with things. The characters themselves were hard to keep an interest in for the length of the series, something that was made even worse by the gaps in the release schedule at times. While I'm sure there are fans of this show and this release is a gem in their collection, for me it's turned out to be one of the more uninteresting series I've seen in the last fifteen years.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Art Gallery


Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Panasonic RP-82 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.