The Tower of DRUAGA - the Aegis of URUK - Episode 03 (of 13)

By: Chris Beveridge
Review Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Release Date: Friday, April 18, 2008



What They Say
Jil barely escapes from the scene of the King's assassination thanks to the quick-wit of Neeba. The next day, the review of troops by the King goes on as scheduled. At the ceremony, Jil is dumbstruck; before him is none other than King Gilgamesh who he saw murdered the night before! Meanwhile in the city of Meskia, a giant slime that suddenly appeared was causing much havoc. A young girl named Coopa is embodied by the slime but is quickly rescued by Ahmey. When Coopa learns that Jil and the others are "Climbers", she insists on allowing herself and her master, a mage named Melt, to joint their party.

The Review!
Witnessing the assassination of the great King Gilgamesh, Jil's life seems like it's headed for nothing but disaster.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As The Tower of DRUAGA - the Aegis of URUK - moves forward, the series is finding its way rather nicely and in some ways has been the most engaging of Gonzo's series that I can recall in some time. While some shows like Pumpkin Scissors has a certain basic competency about it and is enjoyable or other shows like Speedgrapher go for a mixture of style and substance, Druaga seems to be progressing more like a standard role playing game in the classic sense more than anything else now that we have two non comedy episodes out of the way.

The third episodes storyline is one of that kind of progression as party building and basic world building is still very much under way. While we did get a lot of background during that first comedy oriented episode, there's a matter of separating Jil's romanticized view of the world from reality. This episode puts us right into the thick of things as Jil has just witnessed the murder of King Gilgamesh only to be swept away by the sudden arrival of Neeba in the chambers. To Jil's surprise, along with Kaaya and Ahmey, the city hasn't gone on full alert about it nor are there soldiers running about frantically trying to ensure order amid what should be full blown chaos. Instead, everything moves along as normal and the trio even sees King Gilgamesh at a function the next morning.

There's a good bit of intrigue brought into play during all of this as those with King Gilagmesh are both surprised by what's going on and not. His faked death is something that seems to mark some greater importance that only a select few are aware of and it appears that Neeba is knee deep in all of it by the way they head off quickly to the Tower afterwards to ferret out the real mystery. In an interesting twist, it's revealed that Kaaya has far more knowledge than she lets on, which isn't a surprise, but it is a surprise that she knows Gilgamesh personally and the two appear to have quite a familiar relationship going by their discussion and body language. Much of it is kept to mystery right now but there is a sense of importance to all of it and a lengthy relationship is certainly implied. Kaaya's mysterious nature has been one of the more interesting parts of the show since her introduction in the second episode and this only ups the ante.


While we do get a bit more of the world building through all of that, the party building aspect is worked on as well much to my enjoyment. When a Slime monster attacks the city, Jil amusing tries to not only beat it off with a stick, he attempts to use reason with the creature that has no ears and no real sentience to it. Within the Slime is a young girl in a fairly standard gothish-loli-ish outfit with the right kind of hair named Coopa. While she at first gives the impression of being a girl who makes herself out to be an important mage, it turns out that she's really just hist servant and is trying to find him work by courting Jil and the others. When the actual mage, named Melt, is introduced, he fits in perfectly with the party. He discounts Jil off the bat for his slow looking face but does an about face himself when he sees Ahmey and Kaaya and takes an instant liking to them. With a noble background of some sort to his name and apparently a House as well, he brings a kind of light hearted personality to the mix but one that isn't positively foppish or annoying. And that's really the best thing about the show so far is that even when they introduce characters like him and Coopa, they aren't annoying as all get out.

In Summary:
With each new episode, the Tower of Druaga is really proving to be far more entertaining than I would have guessed based off of the promotional text about it and coming from a fair bit of Gonzo fatigue. The series is giving me exactly what I want out of a fantasy genre, one that's so poorly handled for so many years, that it's simply making me quite happy and keeping me quite interested. The characters aren't rushing into danger foolishly for the most part, there's a sense of importance about the events going on and it's running through standard story elements in a way that doesn't feel exactly like the norm but isn't standing out as something too strange. Everything is being done in an above average way but without that kind of stellar stand out quality that will take it over the top. I suspect that it will come in time however as the series certainly has me hooked with what it's doing right now. If it continues as is with a few glimpses of great material, I'll be quite pleased.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language,English Subtitles

Review Equipment
Dell Inspiron 1720 Laptop running Windows Vista