Ranger, Barbarian, Wizard, Thief, Cavalier, Acrobat… and fifty bucks.
Daniel Swensen
With the Michael Bay Transformers epic right around the corner, I know what you must be thinking: could life get any better for people stuck in the Eighties? Well, it’s about to. The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon is coming to DVD. Willie Aames! Don Most! Adam Rich! God, it’s like some kind of beautiful dream!
This is one of those childhood favorites about which I’m deeply ambivalent. I had a real love-hate relationship with this show. The concept itself was great, if already a little tired by the time the cartoon rolled around, and Venger, well, he was awesome, the ineffectual Darth Vader of Saturday morning TV.
The execution, however, often left me cold, never quite living up to the promise of the opening credits sequence. The ranger’s bow just tied people up, or otherwise mildly inconvenienced them for seconds at a time. The cavalier was a sniveling coward, jamming the irony down our throats at every possible opportunity. And the wizard, with his wizard’s hat, never once did anything useful, making a complete bollocks of every spell, usually making everything worse. Watch the opening credits and enjoy, because that’s the only time wizard-guy isn’t completely worthless. Watching this cartoon, I kept envisioning some kind of Lord of the Flies scenario would eventually erupt, and the wizard kid was always Piggy.
The Dungeon Master, meanwhile, was some kind of gleeful, sadistic demigod, cheerfully throwing kids into mortal danger, only to show up once the smoke had cleared to deliver some platitude. He billed himself as the “guide to the world of Dungeons & Dragons,” but was probably some kind of bored, supernatural psychopath. He’s like the guide who takes you deep into the Louisiana backwoods, and then leaves you to be raped and murdered by a tribe of radioactive hillbillies. On the off chance that you survive (using the cryptic and broken-ass tools he’s left behind to “help” you), he’ll just smile and shrug when you show up, covered in your own blood, demanding an explanation, and tell you all the answers you seek are in the spiked pit trap to your right. And yet, the kids looked up to the Dungeon Master as some kind of mentor. Those are some stupid kids.
And let’s not forget Uni, the only character in the cartoon more worthless than the wizard. Even as an innocent youth, I was of the opinion that they should have cooked and eaten that little bastard on day one. Uni, shrieking like the whiny nephew of Darwin from SeaQuest DSV, never does anything but wander off at the worst possible time, and even manages to fuck the whole crew out of getting home by getting his dumb ass stuck just when the crew is this close to escaping. I’m serious, Bobby. Just cave his head in with the barbarian club. He’ll never feel a thing.
All these memories and more can be yours! The DVD comes out November 7th.
July 27th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Oh, holy crap. I watched that damned show almost every week, and it sucked almost every week. Still watched it, though.
July 27th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
What is fascinating is reading WHY the cavalier was such a loser and to realize it was a Reagan Era conspiracy.
July 27th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
? Explain…
July 30th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
OMG, I don’t remember this being all that good, but I’m guessing I’m going to have to buy them anyways. BTW, have you seen the Lady Death animation from 2004. I have a review of this in my now defunct RT journal - don’t know if you’ll ever be able to get to it though, as, um, the server is busy at the moment. I rather enjoyed it though.
February 26th, 2007 at 8:15 am
[...] I first heard of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon coming out on DVD, I tried, for some reason, to be indignant instead of enthusiastic — “why the Dungeons [...]