Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai #1-15

Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai #1-15

Originally released in 1989

Written by Riku Sanjo

Art by Koji Inada

Dragon Quest is a long-running series of role-playing video games, and I was surprised to see that a manga adaptation of that series was on the Shonen Jump app. The manga takes some inspiration from those games (with Dragon Quest 3 specifically being referenced in the first page), though it isn't a direct adaptation of any game.

The series follows Dai, a young boy who was abandoned and wound up on an island of monsters. After the defeat of the Dark Lord years ago, the monsters became friendly and raised him, with the eldest monster on the island trying to teach him magic. (Dai isn't very good at using magic)

Akira Toriyama, who handled the character designs for the games, has a very distinct art style, but while Koji Inada does well at replicating it for some creatures, the humans and the Slimes (the series' mascot creatures) look off. Still, the action's easy to follow, and the designs of the humans make it easy to tell them apart.

Fittingly for the hero in an RPG-inspired manga, Dai proves to be adept with a sword after getting one from a princess, Leona, and meeting a tutor named Avan.  Avan teaches heroes to combat the forces of darkness, and he was once the hero who saved the world from a dark lord. Avan has another pupil, Popp, who isn't as much of a hard worker as Dai is, but he's a mage who becomes inspired by Dai's example and tries to improve as a result.

The series does a good job with making the world feel lived-in - it introduces the Dark Lord Hadlar, back from the dead, only to establish that he's been revived as a minion of what appears to be this world's version of the Devil.

Before Dai gets access to a sword, he uses tubes to summon the friendly monsters that raised him, who volunteer to come along with him when his best friend, a Gold Metal Slime, is kidnapped.  Unfortunately, once the Dark Lord is revived, his presence causes all monsters to go berserk once more, with Dai's home island only being spared because Avan put a magical barrier around it to let the inhabitants keep their sanity.

It's a shame; I would have liked to see Dai combining the standard Dragon Quest hero abilities with monster summoning.  I had no familiarity with this series, but it felt like reading a book that you've read many times before - you likely know what's going to happen (three guesses for what happens to Avan, and the first two don't count), but it feels familiar and comforting, much like the Dragon Quest games themselves.