YMMV / Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Avan is either a Cloud Cuckoolander, a Genius Ditz or a case of Obfuscating Stupidity. Perhaps a mix of two or all three.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Galdandy and Borahorn are dispatched pretty quickly despite being said to be as strong as the generals from the Dark Army. The former is crippled by Hyunckel instantly and later loses to a weakened Popp of a single point-blank Boom, while the latter is utterly reduced by Hyunckel without giving him any trouble at all, only gaining an edge against him later when he takes Popp hostage after Hyunckel defeats Larhart.
  • Fenbren the orichalcum bishop is introduced as a formidable opponent like the other 4 orichalcum guards, and shows a good first impression of his power against Dai's group. However in his next two appearances he's first easily subdued by Baran and then in his rematch against the Dragon Knight in the entrance to Vearn's citadel he's easily cut in two and killed by Dai as soon as the fight started, ending in a rather anticlimatic fight.
  • Hym almost becomes this during his fight against Hyunckel in Vearn's Palace. At first, he's defeated surprisingly quickly by his opponent, unlike Albinass and Sigma, who prove to be formidable enemies to Maam and Popp. However, Hym manages to redeem himself and returns to the palace as a new, stronger chess piece after inheriting Hadlar's will, having a more epic and climatic rematch against Hyunckel.
  • The orichalcum king Maximum is initially hyped as the strongest guardian from Vearn's Palace, however, true to the actual king chess piece, he turns out to be another Dirty Coward antagonist whose main strategy is sending other orichalcum pieces against weakened opponents, with his abilities mainly centering in analyzing foes to check their status and weaknesses, only gaining advantage against a wounded Hyunckel cause he used Hym as a hostage to force Hyunckel to save him (after he previously destroyed his strongest pieces despite being close to collapsing from his battle with Hym). When a revived and recovered Larhart shows to save Hyunckel and Hym, he quickly makes quick work of Maximum, not even giving him the chance to escape for another battle. It tells something when Zaboera of all people manages to be a more competent antagonist than him.
• Ass Pull:
  • Maam finding the Soul Shell with the dying message of Bartos, Hyunckel's adoptive father, revealing that he was murdered, not by Avan as Hyunckel always thought, but by Hadlar. Not only the story doesn't foreshadow this item nor its powers in any way before it appears, Maam just happens to find it inside a chest by sheer luck during her escape and without any previous knowledge of its existence.
  • Avan turning out to be Not Quite Dead. After a very convincing and tragic Heroic Sacrifice, he shows up for a Big Damn Heroes moment late into the final arc with his Senseless Sacrifice being retconned into Put on a Bus with the narrative treating him as dead until that moment.
    • What subverts this some is the fact that the Sacred Amulet, also known as Seal of Rubiss, and the Diamend (Also known as Life Stone and Ressurock) are capable of allowing the user to otherwise survive instant kill spells, even their own. So it is possible the Charm of Carl contains Diamend, taking the death for him once.
  • Larhalt also appearing the final arc, resurrected by Baran and showing up to help Hyunckel out of nowhere and taking back his armor to aid the heroes.
• Awesome Music: Both anime adaptations have spectacular music on their own right.
  • The soundtrack of the 1991 anime was compose by Dragon Quest regular, Koichi Sugiyama, who adapted many tracks from the video games to an amazing effect.
    • Special mention HAS to go to the opening theme, Yuusha yo Isoge!!
    • In Latin America, the ending song 'Kono Michi Waga Tabi' deserves a mention, being fondly remembered by many people who grew watching the series. Enough to be fully translated as 'Sueños de Antaño'
  • The 2020 anime adaption was composed by Yuki Hayashi, popular among the Western anime community thanks to his work in My Hero Academia and Haikyuu!!. Although some people miss the music from the video games, most people agree Hayashi's work is so stellar that it makes up for it and then some.
    • "Dragon Knight", the music that sounds during climatic fight scenes (particularly when Dai activates his Dragon Crest), drives home that an epic asskicking is coming. A lot of people have compared it to "You Say Run".
• Cliché Storm: Part of the charm of this series: we expect to see countless RPG cliches from Dragon Quest and how the authors manage to pull them off in the non-playable media of manga and anime.
• Common Knowledge: Many people claims that Akira Toriyama worked on the series, if he's not directly the author. While some minor monsters are taken from the Dragon Quest games (therefore are designed by Toriyama) and the art style is similar, Akira Toriyama doesn't have any involvement with The Adventure of Dai.
• Complete Monster: Zaboera, the general of the Mystic Legion, is easily the most despicable member among the Dark Army. Having no problems playing dirty tricks, Zaboera kidnapped and had Brass, Dai's adoptive grandfather, brainwashed, and had Crocodine give up his pride to use Brass against Dai. Zaboera also has no problems getting one of his subordinates killed to save his own skin, and several times abandons other generals to run away. Zaboera coldly treats his son, Zamza, as a tool, showing no sadness over his death. In the end, when Zaboera was finally forced to fight the heroes himself, he killed his defeated minions to create the monstrous Hyper-Zombie, all while gloating about how he planned it in the first place, disgusting the heroes.
• Cult Classic: One of the lesser known manga works in English-speaking countries, but is beloved by everyone who has read it.
• Evil Is Cool: With the exception of a few others like Zaboera, each of the Six Generals, Crocodine, Hyunckel, Myst-Vearn, Flazzard, and Baran are all memorable and imposing villains that Dai had to overcome, each with their own unique power sets and three of which, undergo a Heel–Face Turn and become even more impressive than when they were evil.
  • Hadlar, ironically, becomes even more cool when he becomes more noble and eventually stops being evil, but becomes a neutral character. His character evolves into an honorable fighter wielding a legendary sword and imposing demonic visage while being an intimidating threat. His personal squad, the Guardian Knights, also qualify for being noble yet still dangerous like their creator.
  • Vearn himself is a very intelligent, charismatic, and immensely powerful villain that is able to fully justify his need to not always get involved all the time through his several backup plans while also having the strength to back it up.
• Fan Nickname: Since the new anime was released, the name Popp no Daibouken (The Adventure of Popp) has become popular with the fans, thanks to the absolutely massive Character Development Popp receives during the series and the fact that he tends to be the one who encourages the party to never give up.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Hadlar starts off as intimidating and menacing wit his black robes....until his robes are removed, revealing tat he has a large tuff of hair standing on the top of his head, making him less like a demon and more like a rock star wannabe. Thankfully, his next prominent appearance, has his hair slicked back, giving him a much more dignified appearance.
• Franchise Original Sin: The use of heroes turning back after scenarios that clearly left them dead has occurred all the way back with Crocodine and Hyunckel. In the case of the former, he suffered grievous injuries through sword slashes that left a significant amount of blood out, but had been healed with special healing preparations both times he was injured and he is very durable anyway. In the case of the latter, he was established to be the Undead Commander with incredible durability and will to live, so while his survival from being engulfed in lava is somewhat questionable, it's not as ridiculous. The problem really came to a head in the final arc when Larhalt and more significantly, Avan showed up apparently well and good- after being established as dead for the majority of the series. While the case of the former's revival happens through an already established method, for the latter there was no indication on how he could survive the manner in which he had apparently died till that moment. Though with the latter many argues that he gets a good interaction with the main cast and his fight with Kill-Vearn is considered one of the best of the entire series.
• Friendly Fandoms: As explained in the main page, this series has a lot of overlap with the Dragon Ball fan base in Europe and Latin American, particularly with those fans who grew up in the early-to-mid 90s. Unlike English-speaking countries, where Dragon Ball only became popular in the late 90s-early 2000s, well after the show had ended in Japan, Europe and Latin America fell in love with Toriyama's work while the anime was still around half way of its original run. Thus, they managed to catch up with the Japanese broadcast rather quickly, meaning that the European and Latin American networks broadcasting Dragon Ball Z eventually ran out of new episodes^note circa the first half of the Android arc, at different points depending on the country. Many of these networks then decided to broadcast The Adventure of Dai instead during the down times waiting for the series to advance further in Japan and receive new episode batches, likely due to how similar the art style and tone was to Dragon Ball. Often, the dub was even made by the same team that was adapting Dragon Ball at the moment^note Usually with the Dub Name Change in full display, meaning that these fans knew "Dai" with the name of "Fly". Dragon Ball fans at the time usually turned out to really like Dai's adventures as well, and were a bit bumped out when the anime was prematurely canceled. Thus, albeit this series' following was never as strong as with Dragon Ball, those who grew up during that era tend to have very fond memories of "The Adventure of Dai". Needless to say, these people were delighted when the new 2020 anime adaptation was announced.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Popp suddenly becomes a Sage just before the final battle. The bios show that Popp has an extremely high luck stat, and he serves as the Butt-Monkey of the team, similar to the Jester/Gadabout class from the games. This was the only class that naturally possessed the ability to become a sage without a special item.
  • In the first battle between Dai's party and Shinei Kidan, there was a Psycho Rangers-like battle taking place. Maam's battle was with Sigma, the Knight of the chess-themed Shinei Kidan. That would make Maam the Dai's party counterpart of a chess' Knight. In a game of chess, the Knights are often the ones capable of capturing/defeating the Queen. In the final battle between the Shinei Kidan vs Avan's disiples, guess who was defeated by Maam: Albinass.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Avan being voiced in the 2020 anime adaptation by Takahiro Sakurai. There's something funny about a character that used to be a main hero of the Dragon Quest franchise being voiced by someone who is more popular for voicing a main hero from a different Square Enix franchise.
  • After the release of Among Us, it's been a meme to point out patterns that resemble its Crewmate characters. Avan's emblem is one such symbol, and the joke is actually relevant to the story as he disguises himself as Kill-Vearn to interrogate Myst-Vearn and is called out as an impostor.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Crocodine has been very conspicuous in the Kemono Bara world.
  • Borahorn appears in the bara world as well.
• Love to Hate: While the series has its share of honorable and loathsome villains, some are enjoyable in spite of and because of their obvious vile personalities.
  • Flazzard is an incredibly underhanded, sadistic and arrogant fiend, but unlike, Zaboera, he has the powers to back it up and the right mix of hamminess and scumminess to make for an enjoyable villain who always steals the show whenever he appears.
  • Kill-Vearn is a sadistic assassin who joins Vearn specifically because it will lead to a Social Darwinist dystopia. His casual, whimsical personality mixed with his obvious malice, makes him an enjoyable hatable villain.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Vearn burning Baran's corpse to oblivion and killing the Team Pet.
  • Zaboera crosses it when he convinces Crocodine to throw away his honor and use Brass, Dai's adopted father as a vanguard to mentally exploit the boy's weakness and make the soldiers fight amongst each other in a fit of mental hallucinations.
  • Crocodine realizes he did this when he throws away his honor and aids Zaboera in his scheme with using Brass as a weapon against Dai, and spends the rest of the series trying to make up for it.
  • Hadlar when he kills Hyunckel's adopted father figure for failing to guard him against Avan.
• One-Scene Wonder: Myst-Vearn briefly possesses Maam in order to fight the heroes for a few pages before going into Hyunckel and dying in the inside out. The result of that possession being an darker skinned more powerful version of Maam without her conscience suppressing her was indeed memorable as several fan arts of it would demonstrate.
• Popular with Furries: ...Crocodine and Borahorn, of course.
• Retroactive Recognition: In the Latin American Spanish dub, this was one of the earlier voice acting roles José Antonio Macías (as Popp) did before his Star-Making Role as James.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Crocodine and Borahorn are often paired together in fanfics and such due to them being one of the few non-human characters. In actual canon, they never even meet each other.
• Squick: Abinas's Psycho Supporter towards Hadlar. Keep in mind, she's technically his Opposite-Sex Clone and he treats her like a daughter, and she's attracted to him in spite of this.
• That One Attack: Vearn's "Ten-Chi-Ma-To", an attack that combines a defensive movement, an armor-piercing attack and a powerful magical spell is presented as the biggest obstacle to defeating him in a straight fight. Author notes indicates that this was done specifically as a Shout-Out to the cheap attacks that the Final Boss usually has in videogames.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While the more "clean" visual style of the 2020 anime adaptation has some detractors, it's also given some of the best fight scenes to come out of Toei Animation in recent memory. Even when the visuals clearly jump from 2D to 3D, the spectacular choreography and silk-smooth camera work make up for it and then some. Stand outs include... Well... Pretty much every major fight involving Dai.

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