A CCG arcade game from Japan. The player pays for a starter deck and scans the cards into an arcade cabinet. Then they play a fighting game where dinosaurs (real ones ranging from obscure to well-known) with superpowers fight both each other using both a literal rock-paper-scissors and an
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors battle system. As the player progresses, the arcade cabinet dispenses newer and rarer cards for them to add to their deck.Oh, and the superpowers? They're never really explained. We're just supposed to accept the fact that dinosaurs all had superpowers and the ability to
breathe fire, electrify their bodies, and change in size. Rule Of Cool, of course, applies.
A
tie-in anime was eventually developed. It features the adventures of Max, Rex and Zoey, a trio of dinosaur-loving kids who search for dinosaur cards scattered all over the world before the Alpha Gang—a team of stranded time-travelers responsible for the appearance of the cards—can retrieve them. The series has been brought to the U.S. by
4Kids and is considered to be their best dub. You can watch it on
their website
or on
YouTube.
Tropes used in
Dinosaur King:
- Affirmative Action Girl - Zoey, who was created from whole cloth for the anime.
- Alternative Foreign Theme Song: It's a 4Kids dub, so you should expect this to happen.
- Bare Your Midriff-Zoey.
- Berserk Button - Every time Ursula is called an old lady, she can even be heard from the other side of the planet.
- Capcom Sequel Stagnation - The games. Version 2 didn't introduce any new storylines, only new cards, slightly tweaked gameplay, and the ability to take on Dr. Z, who is the final boss.
- Conspicuous CG - The full-sized dinosaurs.
- Dancing Theme - While the anime originally had one, 4Kids didn't bother adapting it, but you can spot bits of it in the 4Kids OP.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Partly thanks to the Japanese word for dinosaur meaning "fear dragon".
- Dogged Nice Guy - Dr. Owen is infatuated with Ursula; Zander with Reece.
- Doppleganger Spin/Attack - Ace's Ninja Attack.
- Dumbass Has a Point - Ed may be the dimmest of Dr. Z's minions but even he knows the disastrous results of a forest fire in the Jurassic.
- Enigmatic Minion - Seth
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs (duh!)
- Evilutionary Biologist - Seth, especially after his Starscream
- Gotta Catch 'Em All
- Happily Married - Max's parents, Spike and Aki Taylor.
- Healing Hands - Paris, with her Nature's Blessing ability.
- Hey, It's That Voice! - Expected, given 4Kids' tendency to reuse VA's, but particularly notable because several of the VA's played very similar roles in Pokémon.
- Hidden in Plain Sight (In the anime, the Muggles are usually made to believe that the little dinosaurs are dogs.)
- Idiosyncratic Wipes - featuring either the D-kids' or Alpha Gang's symbol depending on where the focus was shifting next.
- Locked Out of the Loop - Annoyingly, Aki Taylor.
- Mecha-Mooks-the Alpha Droids.
- Ms. Fanservice (Ursula. Also, Zoe in the uncut Japanese anime. Since she is supposed to be about 11 years old, this obviously has Unfortunate Implications, depending on who you ask. Those poses she makes when swiping those cards doesn't exactly help keep this under wraps.)
- The Napoleon - Dr. Z
- No Celebrities Were Harmed - one episode has Dr Owen falling out with a Hollywood director over how dinosaurs are represented in his movie. The director's name? Stanley Speilgman, whose past works include one with a guy attacking a shark with a whip, and one with a bug-eyed alien. The movie he was working on at the time? Not-Jurassic Park.
- Parental Abandonment - Averted: the three protagonists' parents are accounted for, and play parts (of varying importance) within the story. Also played straight with Rex, who was found abandoned by his adoptive father.
- Power Trio
- Robotic Reveal - Occurs with both Helga and Jonathan.
- Running Gag - Zoey: (about Ursula) "It's the old lady!" Ursula: "I'M NOT AN OLD LADY!!" This was used to the extent that she could her someone calling her an old lady on the other side of the globe.
- Satellite Character - Patrick, Dr. Owen's assistant.
- Shown Their Work - Given the amount of different countries visited in the series and the multitude of obscure dinosaurs used, there's a good amount of educational material in the series.
- Spin-Off - The game is actually a spin-off of an earlier game, Mushi King, which was more or less the same thing but with beetles in place of dinosaurs. Mushi King wasn't imported to America beyond its arcade version, as the bug collecting hobby is much more perennially popular in Japan than in the US, but everyone loves dinosaurs.
- Stock Dinosaurs. Averted: while the main character's dinosaurs fall under the definition of stock dinosaurs, many of the other dinosaurs (and assorted Mesozoic beasties) in the show are fairly obscure, especially when compared with the dinosaurs that the target audience (young children) is familiar with.
- Terrible Trio - All three of the former trope namer's VA's work on this show, coincidentally.
- Transformation Sequence - The series' main dinosaurs all have these for their tranformation from their chibi selves into their full-sized forms.
- Tykebomb - Several of Dr. Z's dinosaurs, particularly ninja dinosaur trio Dino, Dano, and Sue.
0 reviews