Dragon’s Dogma was not a great game. I mean, it was fun to play, it had some amazing combat, and playing around with pawns was very entertaining. That’s where the fun ended though. The game was rough, had some dubious old-school design decisions that made the journey more of a chore than a pleasing trip. At some random point in existence, however, it became a cult-classic and now it even got an anime adaptation. Yeah, I was not expecting this legacy to exist when I first played the game.
Anyway, the anime adaptation comes, in a way, to prove how utterly pathetic Dragon’s Dogma was in every sense except gameplay. It is a story about a random guy whose brave soul grants him a chance to fight an evil dragon that steals his heart. Simple, right? You would expect some kingdoms thrown in between, perhaps kings fighting the dragon menace, or maybe god-like entities joining the fray. Don’t. It is just about a guy traveling to fight a dragon and fighting it.

The anime tries though

The derplander in the game is a customizable silent character which is insanely boring. The anime version of him/her, however, manages to be even worse. Ethan, the name of our derplander, is a generic-looking tough guy whose background we know is being a hunter-gatherer traumatized by losing his father at the sea. The show tries to give him some meaning, killing his wife and unborn child, along with a young kid he cares for, making the vengeful quest against the dragon be more palatable. It’s a good start, if only the show could keep it going for a bit longer than the first episode.

It’s just a waste of time

Ethan loses his wife, child, and friend to the dragon and after that he is approached by Hannah, who is a Pawn and whose purpose is to help him, as now he is an Arisen. Expect some explanations? Keep waiting. These are just terms used by the game and thrown in randomly for the sake of making us remember that this was about a game with actually fun gameplay.

Ethan and Hannah will travel towards the dragon to kill it. He is angry, yes, his loved ones were killed like insects by the frightening dragon! Of course he will hurry towards his destination and… die? How could this one guy defeat that dragon? He has no powers, he is just a regular peasant whose heart was taken away because he was braver than the guy next to him. Well, he just can, deal with it. No explanations given.

As they travel, Ethan and Hannah will stop at every opportunity to face one different foe per episode and see some quick short tales about random NPCs. It’s bland, uninspiring, and completely random. “Okay, now it’s time for the hydra!! Let’s put her in this cave and force Ethan and Hannah to travel to it!”, “Alright, now we need to put this badass colossal cyclops! Oh, let’s make some weak thugs tame it with a whip and use it in this village”, “Oh, I have this amazing flying griffon! Ethan will fight it at this random spot”.

Boring tales

Not only the monster placement feels artificial, the additional tales surrounding these fights are approached in such a superficial way they feel completely wasted here. Ethan is fucking boring. Hannah too. He is just a sword-guy who randomly becomes stronger than veteran knights, she is a “pawn” whose purpose is never really explained and is all “logic not emotion”. It lacks any sort of depth.

It gets even worse because the path they take makes no sense, parting ways with soldiers because they march toward somewhere else just to find them again along the road. The sense of urgency to face the dragon disappears and it seems the show tries too hard to prove it has a “setting” by simply throwing some lame quick tales about greedy knights, lustful women, and drug addicts. The episodes are named after the seven deadly sins, but damn. Why?

And the presentation

Gods, it is damn awful. If the anime played with the ingame graphics of 2012 it would fare way better. Not only it looks like your standard creepy CGI anime of recent days, but it is sluggish and combats are horrible. Static scenes would do a better job at presenting speed and movement here. The best moments of the show are exactly when random characters have the spotlight, because they are fully drawn and not creepy CGI models. The CGI presentation also helps to completely break the attempt at a “dark fantasy setting” with all the cheap nudity and blood losing credibility when depicted by playmobil-like dolls.

Dragon’s Dogma, the anime, comes to prove that the game had nothing in terms of story or setting. In fact, it manages to do a disservice to the game because the sidequests back in the Playstation 3 actually had more to tell us than these random meetings with knights and whores. The fights, which were the big selling point of the game, are terrible in terms of choreography and mostly have cheap outcomes. It is a boring hell of an adventure.

In a way, this should have never got to see the light of day. The only saving grace is the fact that it is only seven episodes long, so you can endure its uninspiring adventure until the end, watching a pathetic fight against the almighty dragon and seeing the interesting Diablo-like finale that was in the game.
Somewhere I want to see something else done in the world of Dragon’s Dogma, truly exploring its gritty atmosphere and shady characters. However, after watching this crapfest CGI anime, I think it is safe to just let it die. Capcom is doing an amazing job at creating video games, they don’t need crappy anime to go along with it.