Of Flying and Dragons

It's official. Time flies when you're having fun. It also flies when you're facing deadlines. A whole week whizzed by me as it turned into a mess of QA cycles and bugfixes. I'm really hoping the company's recent Technical Architect that was brought on board can turn things around.

The business has been juggling expansion in a fairly ad hoc manner, and the TA is buckling down and intending to bring more process to the office. I personally think it's a change that needed to happen for a long time now. Glad he's onboard.

I recently finished off the anime series "Dragon Drive". I had it a long way coming, since I started it months ago, but hadn't had the time to sit down and watch anything. I've got mixed feelings regarding the show...

See, normally I like things that try to be all - take Saber Marionette J as a prime example - it's got romance, comedy, action, intrigue, science fiction. It's a collage of so many elements that I find new layers everytime.

Dragon Drive was a different sort of collage. It took the most popular anime genres and squeezed them together. It's likely a formula that works for the masses. It didn't quite grasp me the same way.

Let me explain: Dragon Drive opens as your typical monster trainer kind of show, with a small mix of card game to it (think Pokemon, Monster Rancher, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc). It has addictive qualities to it, and the whole intense set up of matches is enough to hold one's interest for some time.

Suddenly, the plot twist kicks in, and we find out the game is not what it seems. However, it sticks to the monster trainer formula, turning into a tournament.

The main baddie emerges, he wins the tournament, and gets away. The next set of episodes run like Dragonball Z. The bad guy is sure to return, and the good guys have limited time to prepare - so they begin "training". The ultimate good guy, Reiji, of whom all the hopes rest on, undergoes a special quest to obtain ultimate power.

The ultimate power of course cues up the other anime cliche, the recycled transformation sequence.

And there's more to it than that - the standard character who has absolutely no character, and merely looks for a challenge; the predictable mastermind who gets offed by his suboordinate; the weakling character who is in fact the strongest of all in the end. The list goes on.

After all is said and done, I did enjoy it. But as I said earlier, I came away with mixed feelings. Dragon Drive is like a big melting pot of cliches. Perhaps a smaller set of episodes (it ran 38) would have helped it raise favour with me.