Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (review, I guess)

[kane_magus]

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Just finished watching the entirety of the 1983 Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. I honestly think it held up pretty well. It was, in many ways, a lot... darker than other cartoons of the same era. However, I wouldn't say that it was even remotely as bad as the "Satanic Panic" numbskulls from back then made it out to be. And watching it today, it certainly doesn't seem like anything remotely bad. I preferred the later episodes, starting around episode 20 or so ("The Dragon's Graveyard"), as they seemed to have a tiny bit more of a "shit's getting real now" vibe. If it were up to me, I would probably rearrange the viewing order, though, by putting the last three episodes as "The Dragon's Graveyard," then "The Dungeon at the Heart of Dawn," and then, finally, the unaired "Requiem."

In any case, all of the episodes are available (for now) on Youtube here. That list has one mistake in it, though, as episode 17 is mistakenly labelled as "Day of the Dungeon Master" and then duplicated again as episode 18. The actual episode 17 is "The Traitor," which is not in that playlist. Also, there is another, probably better way to view the final episode, "Requiem." In that playlist is a sort of "audio play" version, with a narrator accompanied by still comic images. However, there is a full on fan-animated episode of it available as well. Not quite as well done as the real episodes, but pretty close. (They also pitched down Presto's voice in the fan-animation to sound a little more like the actual voice from the show, which was nice, because the Presto voice in the "audio play" version of "Requiem" in the playlist sounds even younger than Bobby the Barbarian, which is just plain wrong.)

It certainly made me remember why as a kid I thought Venger was so scary, that's for sure. Venger didn't fuck around the way most 80s cartoon villains did. He was pretty much serious business, from start to finish. That said, he wasn't really any more effective than any of the other villains were (because if he had been, he'd have won, and the show would have been over). Of course, unlike with most other 80s villains who were typically defeated in some goofy way, they actually had to straight up kill Venger's ass dead at the end of several episodes to defeat him. As in, straight up explode or disintegrate his shit. If an episode ended with Venger's body ripping to pieces and then his spectral form creepily floating up into the sky, which happened a non-zero, non-singular amount over the course of the series, that's quite a bit more solid of a defeat than, say, just showing him his reflection and making him run away or whatever (*cough*Mumm-Ra*cough*). And the fact that Venger just kept coming back from that shit after an episode of two like it wasn't a big deal speaks to how tough he was.

As for the kids... Hank was just 80s cartoon generic hero leader guy, for the most part, about as bland as bland could be. Bobby was the hothead barbarian, almost always itching for a fight, even when it was ill-advised. Sheila was the doting big sister of Bobby and (ostensibly) had a crush on Hank (TVTropes claims there was ship-tease between her and Hank in the show, but I honestly saw more ship-tease between Hank and Diana than between Hank and Sheila, and none of it ever went anywhere). Also, Sheila all too often made the rather boneheaded decision to not be constantly invisible while deep within enemy territory, when instead she could have been constantly invisible, which I found baffling. As for Diana, she had a couple focus episodes (usually revolving around meeting some random dude-of-the-week and falling in love with him kind of out of the blue [but then, to be fair, so did Eric and Presto and Bobby with some random girl-of-the-week]), but aside from that, there wasn't that much to her, aside from the flippy shit (and the fur bikini). Presto was probably about 60%/40% (maybe 70%/30%) comic relief/serious, given how his spells tended to backfire most of the time, but he had a few serious moments in the show. And Eric... fucking Eric. It seemed like half the time, he was the only sane man, whereas the other half of the time, he was just a raging douchenozzle for no good reason, but even when he was making a good point (which happened more often than you might think), he did it in such a raging douchenozzle way that nobody listened to him. Despite that, I still liked him as a character for the most part, though there were plenty of times when I just wanted to reach into the screen and slap the raging douchenozzle out of him. There were other times when I actually got a chuckle or two out of his raging douchenozzle antics, though. Only on a very rare few occasions did Eric put aside the raging douchenozzle part of his personality and actually contribute to the group in a legitimately helpful, non-snarky way. (And, yes, I'm fully aware that Eric being a raging douchenozzle was a mandate from on high and not something the show creators actually wanted to do.)

As a group, one thing that kind of bothered me was how wildly their battle competence see-sawed from episode to episode. In one episode, they'd be kicking the shit out of most things like it was no sweat, while in another, a small group of random monsters would easily disarm them and capture them (even in cases where that wasn't intentionally the plan).

Dungeon Master... Dungeon Master. Fucker literally could have sent the kids home whenever he damn well pleased, but chose not to because he preferred having child soldiers around to fight his battles for him, under the guise of teaching them valuable life lessons or some shit. He'd constantly show up out of nowhere, spout off a few riddles and then vanish into thin air, mid-conversation, sending them off to deal with a bunch of dragons or a beholder or Lolth or whatever. (And of course, again, fucking Tiamat was right there in the intro and appears several times over the course of the show.) Kind of half surprised he never blithely sent them after a tarrasque or Vecna or something. The whole "show up, spout some 'wisdom,' then disappear" thing happened at least once in every single episode, often more than once. As Dungeon Master, he seemed simultaneously too powerful, but also not powerful enough. It was either that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, but just chose not to, or else he actually could not do whatever he wanted, in which case he wasn't truly a DM in the literal D&D sense of the term. The Nameless One showing up scared him just as shitless as it did Venger and everyone else, for one thing. I mean, I don't actually hate the Dungeon Master as a character, but he could be pretty annoying sometimes. (Also, he would usually say something like "You make a good point, Cavalier," whenever Eric would make some raging douchenozzle comment in his presence, and everyone else would be all like "Whaaaaaaa....?")

And where do I stand on the extremely divisive issue of Uni? Eh... I didn't mind her. I mean, she was voiced by Frank Welker and sounded like Slimer from The Real Ghostbusters (also voiced by Frank Welker), but she never dominated episodes or anything (unlike how Slimer did, especially later on).

Overall, there's no real "first episode," as aside from the intro showing them getting sucked into the roller coaster or whatever, the whole thing just kind of drops right into it from the very start, sort of in media res. And aside from the episode "Requiem," which was never officially produced beyond script stage, there was no real "final episode," either. Given that there was no actual continuity to speak of and the characters never really changed or evolved over the course of the series, and any guest characters that showed up in one episode never showed up again later, I figure the purpose of that was to make it so that a kid in the 80s could pick up and watch the series from any given episode and not be completely lost.

In the end, as I said above, I think it still holds up really well, for the most part.

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Even as a kid, the ending credits always felt rather melancholic to me. It was, like, yeah sure, the sweeping orchestra and the slow pan of the carnival is awesome and all, but... well... the kids are still stuck in the other world... ;_;