I discovered Dragonquest for the first time on French television (TF1). I had already watched Dragonball(Z), Saint Seiya, Albator (=Captian Harlock), Capitaine Flamme (=Captain Future) and so on. And till then my absolute favorite was Dragonball(Z).
But when I saw Dragonquest for the first time, I was immediately charmed by the story, and the musics composed by Koichi Sugiyama. It was a great deception for me when the anime ended with the battle against Baran. But suddenly the manga was edited by J'ai lu and nothing could stop me to begin the collection. Nowadays I have the 37 volumes of the french version and one number of the Italian edition (9: Di nuovo insieme). I have also tapes of the anime. My favorite volumes of the french version are: 2, 8, 9, 12, 16, 24, 28, 33, 35, 36, 37.
The manga is so good that it's easier to say what are the bad points for me, than enumerating the good points. In my opinion the manga is nearly perfect though somewhere in the middle, the story is getting somewhat dull. To visualize it in a plot:
From number 23 on however the story is getting again better and better and is raising to a climax, just like the suspense.
The anime is also very good though the quality of the images is not as good as that in the manga. I have always had the impression when I saw the anime that there were two teams working on the anime. One team that drawed very good, but followed the story in detail. The other team drawed less good but compensated it by a greater originality. Moreover the latter used much more shade effects.
These are the only bad points I've found to Dragonquest, Dai no daiboken. For the rest it is perfect!!
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