Dragon Age: Blood Mage no Seisen

The anime reaffirmed my dislikes of some aspects of western role playing games, that is, their tendency to have characters so old. That was something I disliked in Skyrim, everyone all elderly. However at least in Mass Effect I could have characters look kind of younger and in dragon age. That is to say, the anime had some pretty nice designs for characters. Regalyan D'Marcall was pretty cool for the main male protagonists, Fenric, while old and such, was actually an epic antagonist. Mages are always superior characters when faced with sword only users, and he and the other blood mages were like no ... other. Regular mages too were cool too, such flashy and powerful skills. Cassandra took awhile to like for me. Her english VA sounded weird trying to get an accent (I didn't know she even has an accent, you can't tell when she voices Monkey D Luffy...) and she was so ]hardened against mages, which is against my own beliefs. However the backstory was believable and understandable for her. I also liked the High Seeker.

The plot felt like a nice addition to the world and I think this anime highlights excellent design of dragons. These dragons actually looked believable, powerful, and non cartoony and terrible like other media and mainstream movies and books. I haven't seen dragons look this good since Mashima's Fairy Tail.

The story had lots of low points but they were worth it alone for the tension among factions and traitors, as well as the action interspersed.

Animation was decent. Backgrounds and environments were stunning, the dragons were cool. Blood felt awkward. It sometimes felt really cheesy and distracting. It had weird fluid physics. I would have been alright if blood was omitted, especially since, its so prevalent that it becomes annoying to see and laughable.

BioWare's first movie Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker (English title), or Dragon Age: Blood Mage no Seisen (Japanese title), and the movie was alright. They could have done a few things differently in my opinion but it was still good and it does expand upon the Dragon Age lore.

Story 6/10: Don't get me wrong the story is good. It is well developed and it does stay true to the lore. However, the only problem I had with this is that they already used this story. The games and books both have dealings with magic and the Chantry. Non-magic ... users is afraid of the unknown (mainly magic), magic users want their independence, and somewhere down the line both sides take it too far. That is the plot they always use when it comes to those to subjects. If they have to use them, then just do something else with it. However, I am happy that they are focused on a character and her perspective on the subject (briefly touched), but I felt like they could have gone in other directions with it.

Art 8/10: The art style for this is amazing. In here it feels a lot more alive in a way. There is a lot going on in the scenes and their attention to detail is focus on where it needs to be. It is certainly a new interesting style that I wouldn't mind seeing in the near future. But more than likely this will be used for movies as supposed to regular shows. However, the animation seems out of sync at times. If you really pay attention you would see some of the dialogue out of sync at times, but it doesn’t happen too often to make the animation lousy. The funny thing is that this was made for an English cast and the Japanese cast would need to dub this, there it is definitely noticeable for dialogue being out of sync.

Sound 6/10: The sound is pretty solid, the cast of both versions do a very good job. The sound effect matches the environment very well. However, there isn't really any background music. The movie knows it and doesn't really rely on it, but when it does try the characters speak so loud that you can't hear it. So, it might have been better if either they had more music in the backgrounds or if the characters toned it down. However, if you watch the Japanese version they do add a bit more to the background music that does add to the enjoyment.

Character 6/10: Again am not saying that the characters are bad, we just only follow two and possibly a political situation. The two are Cassandra Pentaghast and Regalyan d'Marcall (or Galyan), but even then it's mainly about Cassandra. The only reason that this didn't score higher was because I wanted more development on the other characters, like the villains. I wanted to see what the reason behind their actions were or at least a better one, one of the characters seemed too simple for a complex world like Dragon Age, but that might be going back to the story part. It is solid enough, but I just wanted more. Also the things that Cassandra did are simply unbelievable, I mean really unbelievable. Spoiler alert, an example is her killing stone golems and ogres, at least a dozen of them, and by using a common sword and slashing on their legs. I know that they wanted to make her a badass, but she isn't that badass.

Enjoyment 7/10: Despite its flaws, it is still an entertaining film. Not made for a consent watch, but once and a while, I'll watch it again.

Overall 6/10: BioWare first attempt they did an alright job. If they just added a little bit more content (both in the movie and special features) it would have scored a bit higher, maybe an 8. However, any fan of Dragon Age should give this a look if they want more from the Dragon Age universe. It is worth a rent at the least.

Talk about a lifeless adaptation… While not aware of the games, I have watched a few videos about them and they are quite close to a standard D&D; campaign, full of knights, wizards, elves, and of course dragons. It felt quite typical but it surely wasn’t as blunt as this movie. There is simply very little going on and are presented in the most simple way possible. Every single event and character in it are closer to a fairy tale than a dark sword and sorcery adventure, so it fails to be attractive in both sides of the spectrum. Too violent for kids and too ... dumb for teenagers.

So, the plot is about evil mages using an elf girl to order dragons to attack the main temple of their mortal enemies. The champions of the temple find out about this in time and attack while performing the ritual, seemingly preventing the invasion. But turns out there are traitors amongst them who try to frame the champions and resume the ritual. Hm, ok, nothing much.

It sounds and plays out like a typical Hollywood action flick, and in all honesty it would better off being made there instead of Japan. The budget is quite poor and everything is animated with low resolution that makes it look like a cut scene from a mediocre videogame. Don’t let the cover picture fool you; the actual animation in it is quite simple and usually crude. The armours and the monsters look nice but the faces of the characters and their motions are just very fake-looking. Plus most backgrounds are hardly detailed. The explosions and the debris were awesome.

Despite being animated in a three-dimensional way, the characters are all one-dimensional. You have this Saturday-morning cartoon villain mage, who is the leader only because he is the only one who can transform to a bird and escape while everybody else in his team is killed. You have this chick paladin (named Seeker in this setting) that runs around and kills stuff because she is pissed. You have this good mage tagging along as a comic relief. You have a cute elf girl which… um, doesn’t do anything other that spacing out. And you have a bunch of other cardboards that don’t even have a face if they are not important to the plot. Nobody seems to be anything beyond what he looks and any attempts to flesh them out by giving them a tragic past or making them traitors blinded on power later on doesn’t help one bit to make them more interesting. All because of the following reason.

The script is written by a five year old, as everything happens in a most unrealistic and yet obvious way. The lead chick is like Super Girl, as she is able to take out hordes of mages and demons, while everybody else has a hard time not being stabbed by a nobody after a few sword swings. She even casually escapes perils, while wearing a mini skirt and her companion the mage is constantly able to have spies all over the place so to conveniently tell them what they need to know. Weird how everybody in the kingdom seems to know of the conspiracy. Everyone besides the elites in the temple, that is. And how nice of them to be talking about it so casually, as if it’s not important at all. Anyways, the whole story is basically the chick killing stuff, them someone giving her a hint, then she keeps killing more until another one starts to reveal stuff. In effect, the main characters in this movie do nothing but fighting and let NPCs to tell them everything, a thing which ruins any real tension since they don’t really figure out anything on their own. So basically you get this movie where the bad guys want to rule the world JUST BECAUSE and the heroine fights them because they killed her family and friends. All the rest are nothing but ephemeral dressing.

So now you may be wondering if at least the action is worth to bother. And sadly, not even that means much. It’s not just the crude visuals, but also how most of the battle choreography is just random slashes and unimpressive fire attacks. Hell, there is blood spilling all over the place and yet it washes off like it’s nothing but tomato juice. I also never understood why everybody walks around in impractical huge armours that don’t protect you by even a knife stab. There are lots of huge monsters in it too but they are all casually killed by simply jumping on them and stabbing them in the neck with a short sword. And I love how the corpses magically disappear after the battle or how a whole army is watching from a high place yet never seems to notice a battle taking place a few meters below them, or dragons the size of a tower coming towards them until they are right next to them.

It’s a completely lazily made film that will leave the action lovers indifferent and most likely make the fans of the games to once again never wish for anything they like to be adapted.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 6/10
Analysis: General Artwork 1/2, Character Figures 1/2, Backgrounds 1/2, Animation 1/2, Visual Effects 2/2

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Analysis: Voice Acting 2/3, Music Themes 2/4, Sound Effects 2/3

STORY SECTION: 4/10
Analysis: Premise 1/2, Pacing 1/2, Complexity 1/2, Plausibility 0/2, Conclusion 1/2

CHARACTER SECTION: 5/10
Analysis: Presence 1/2, Personality 1/2, Backdrop 1/2, Development 1/2, Catharsis 1/2

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Analysis: Historical Value 0/3, Rewatchability 0/3, Memorability 1/4

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Analysis: Art 0/1, Sound 0/2, Story 1/3, Characters 0/4

VERDICT: 4/10