Off Topic Tuesday: Dragon Quest: Abel Yuusha Densetsu - my favorite anime of all time.

On 1/25, I got to talk about two Dragon Quest RPGs, with one of them focused on the Dai series. I mentioned that I would be talking about the Abel anime and here I am, talking about it.

Dragon Quest: Abel Yuusha Densetsu or in English, Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel is a very underrated Dragon Quest anime that deserves more love. It has a total of 43 episodes, however episodes 32 and 33 were put together as one episode, bringing down the count to 42. Characters are designed by Akira Toriyama, of Dragon Ball fame. It also has an English dub, which I will be bringing up later on in the post. And if you google this series, you will mostly find some fanart... coming from me since I love drawing fanart of this show! (the art is from 2020 and this drawing here I was experimenting with a diffrent art style):

If you happen to own the "Dragon Quest Illustrations: 30th Anniversary Edition" book, this art done by Toriyama is in the book:

(note: notice that some of the designs look diffrent from the final)

Here's some info from a deleted Wikipedia article (guessing reason why it was deleted is because of lack of info or how poorly typed it was):

"Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel (ドラゴンクエスト ～勇者アベル伝説～ Doragon Kuesuto Yūsha Aberu Densetsu) is a 1989 Japanese anime television series based on the video game series of the same name.

The series was released on DVD in Japan on October 2006, with its nine volumes selling about 90,000 units and averaging 10,000 sales each by February 2007.[1] A box-set with the complete series was released on March 28, 2008 in Japan.[2] Thirteen episodes were dubbed in English by Saban Entertainment, under the title of Dragon Warrior, and aired in the United States.[3][4][5]"

The plot/story:

"The story is about a teenage boy, Abel, and his best friend, Tiala. On her 15th birthday, Tiala receives a red jewel that has the power to awaken the Great Dragon. The Dragon can grant eternal life to the one who drinks its blood. Baramos, a demon from the kingdom of Estark, desires to find the stone and gain immortality. Baramos kidnaps Tiala and sets off to find the dragon's location. A village elder gives Abel a blue stone, which has the power to "seal" the dragon if it is woken. The elder imparts some advice to Abel before passing away, and Abel begins his adventure to save Tiala and defeat Baramos.

Abel and Moco travel to Ariahan Castle to get help from the King. During an ensuing monster invasion, the King helps them escape via a teleportation pool. Daisy is hunting monsters in Ariahan for the gems that they leave behind after being destroyed. When Abel and Moco arrive at the other end of the teleporter, they meet Yanack, who joins their party. Tiala flies onboard Gaim, a living, flying airship used by Baramos, and befriends Dodonga.

The party travels all over the world fulfilling quests and seeking out Tiala. Daisy also joins the party, and the four continue the quest to find a way to resurrect the Dragon of Legend so that it can defeat Baramos."

Reason why it's my favorite anime of all time: it's characters, the music, the fights, just everything about this anime. Heck, I even watched the series again last year (both sub and dub) which is the first time I watched an anime twice. The anime's first ending, Yume o Shinjite is something I love to listen to over and over while I draw. 

Like I said, characters are designed by Toriyama. I love the designs, but the one that sticks out the most for me is Daisy. I love Daisy, as she's my favorite character of the show. There's this one episode where she wears different clothes (I forgot why), which looks nice on her. 

And her VA, both Japanese and English does a really good job. She's also afraid of mice/rats!!!

Of course, there are designs similar to Dragon Ball characters such as Abel's hair looking like Yamcha's and having Goku's face, Moco having Yajirobe's hair, and a character who appears later on in the anime named Adonis who looks a lot like Trunks. There are also cameos of IV characters like Alena.

Episodes 32 ad 33... about those two. Here's some info from the Dragon Quest wiki: 

"In the original episode 32, an old woman is telling a story to two children, a boy that looks like Abel and a girl that looks like Tiala. While not explicitly stated, it is implied that the old woman is Tiala and that all the other protagonists, except Abel, died. Around half a year later, the broadcast was resumed on a different time slot and it immediately showed that the other protagonists had not died, and that Moco, who should have died, just fainted. The original version of episode 32 as well as the original episode 33 have not been available since the original broadcast."

If you're looking for official subs, well sadly... there aren't any official sub of the series. The only Dragon Quest anime that has official subs is the Dai reboot. There used to be fansubs of the series by a Youtuber named Element7, but all episodes (including the original broadcast of 32/33) was taken down due to copyright and those subs are hard to find now. You can find the series on websites like Gogoanime, but be warned: use an ad blocker and the last few episodes are in the wrong order/backwards (episode 39 is the last episode instead; watch episodes 42-39) and a have bad translation (whenever there's singing going on in the background, especially on the last episode, the subs stay in Korean and dialogue that's spoken in Japanese isn't translated to English). And if you don't care for the subs and want to watch them without, there are DVDs of the series on ebay, including a complete boxed set.

Now, for the dub.

The series also has an English dub under the name Dragon Warrior (since at the time, Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior due to copyright issues possibly) and according to TV Tropes, (like Wikipedia, isn't a reliable source I guess) ran on Fox Kids with no commercials or promos. It ran for a total of 13 episodes with the last episode ending on a cliffhanger: I believe the narrator says that Abel will be having more adventures or something like that. Of course, like 4Kids, Saban made some edits to the anime which will be below:

The show's opening:

There could be reasons why Dragon Warrior only had 13 episodes. Either one: Akira Toriyama, who did character designs for the series wasn't credited in the show's credits, two: poor timeslot or three: the show's later episodes were too much for Saban to censor. Either one of these could be the reason for the show not lasting long.

Had it did last long, we would've gotten some cool merch like figures of the characters.

I was planning on getting in contact with some of the English cast to see if they remember voicing their roles, mostly Daisy's VA, Marcy Goldberg. However, I believe some actors may have forgotten, are deceased or doesn't have social media at all, and I tried to get in contact with Goldberg last year (I found her email and phone number via an Internet Archive of her website) but I never got a response back. Either she passed away (I think her recent role was in 2017), doesn't do acting anymore, or no longer uses that email anymore. If anyone knows (if you're from Canada and know Goldberg), please do in the comments. Also, Tiala's English VA only has 1 role according to IMDB and has no social media, which is disappointing.  I don't want to get in touch with every VA on social media because of a big following they have and imagine all the DMs they got.

Well, that's all I got to say about the anime. Sorry if it's much, as I really want to talk about this underrated anime. Let me know what you think in the comments and tell me if you have seen this anime or at least know something about it. If I make a mistake or if I miss any info, let me know.

Someday, these characters will return... maybe not.

Character design references: https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-10/art-of-dragon-quest-legend-of-the-hero-abel