rocknload | retro television!

Okay, I've been meaning to do this for a while and I've got nothing to do, so I will write a post about the best animated cartoon ever, Dungeons & Dragons. If you haven't heard of it, it's because it only ran for twenty-seven episodes and it was cancelled in 1985, the same year I was born. Supposedly it was the most violent show on television at the time, and I'm linking the most violent episode of the series, and I'd personally feel okay with kids on any age watching it so I don't know what the National Coalition on Television Violence was complaining about—but that intro, the one from the third season, probably demonstrates the somewhat sinister themes they were going for. It also shows all the characters' personalities and powers really well in fifty-eight seconds, I like it a lot. Also, that villainous voice at the end? That's Optimus Prime.

First of all, I always thought the premise was a brilliant way to adapt Dungeons & Dragons for a television show—six ordinary kids are sucked into an insanely inconsistent magical universe, assigned seemingly arbitrary "jobs" and weapons, and from then on out are forced to follow the whims of Dungeon Master, who has an endless list of tasks he claims he needs them to do even though he's clearly omnipotent and all powerful, and he'll only give them instructions in riddles.

The kids range in age from fifteen—Hank, the fearless leader, and Eric, the fearful smartass—to eight—Bobby, a sort of obnoxious little kid perhaps unwisely armed with a magical club that can knock down anything. Bobby also has a pet unicorn named, uh, Uni. Bobby is not a creative kid. The creative member of the group is actually Presto, the twelve-year-old hapless magician. Sheila is thirteen and can turn invisible, and Diana is fourteen, a champion acrobat and the action girl, who is probably more competent than anyone else in the group sans her weapon. As anyone who's ever seen an anime might expect, the weapons they're assigned by Dungeon Master serve as characterization and character development, too—like Eric, the coward given the magical shield, who's thereby forced to be the protector of the group way more often than he's comfortable with.

Despite the excellence of the character development and writing—this isn't Speed Racer or Transformers, though time restrains means they have to do their fair share of summarizing and editorializing, these people talk like human beings having actual conversations—the series is pretty episodic, and there's no particular order the episodes have to be watched in. There's very little continuity. The overreaching plot is their nemesis ~~Optimus Prime~~ Venger wants their magical weapons and is willing to kill them to get them, not to mention chase them to the ends of the earth. That's all you have to know to watch what's probably the best episode of the series, when the kids get sick of Venger screwing up their plans to get home, and decide the only choice they have is to kill him in cold blood. Edit: Okay, it just occurred to me that calling it the "best" is probably sort of lazy. It's considered the best because it was willing to show these really young kids go the dark route of, well, murder. I don't know if the writing is notably better than the rest of the series, because the quality was pretty consistent throughout.

This episode also features the dragon ~~Megatron~~ Tiamat. Listen to that voice Jesus.

I think I want icons. I should make some, I have all the DVDs.