So last night I decided to try watching something besides Brooklyn 99 reruns. At the top of my suggested list was Dragon Quest: Your Story, and the Netflix trailer was intriguing enough to overcome my initial misgivings about it being a Netflix anime, which in my experience have been mostly swing and misses.

For those that may not be aware, Dragon Quest is a series of JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Game), similar to the popular Final Fantasy series. Personally I’ve never played a Dragon Quest game, but I’ve played my fair share of Final Fantasy and other miscellaneous games within the medium. So I had a little bit of familiarity with the history and typical style that Dragon Quest: Your Story would be drawing inspiration from.

The movie itself is an overall pleasant watch, with lovingly rendered animation (though I think everyone will agree that the hands are weirdly big) and enthusiastic voice acting. I myself watched the English audio with subtitles (apologies to the purists), and for anyone else who does the same you’ll notice a disconnect between the English voiceover and the English subtitles. A small problem, but hardly a dealbreaker.

I felt the greatest strength, and also weakness, of the movie was its relentless earnestness. It dives headfirst into a number of typical anime tropes (the over the top embarrassment surrounding expressions of affection for example), but it does so with such energy and enthusiasm that even though you may (and probably will) cringe, it won’t feel too out of touch with the movie’s tone.

The plot itself has a number of fairly common fantasy story elements (a couple timeskips, a prison break, it even borrows the barrel escape from The Hobbit) and suffers for them. Dragon Quest: Your Story never feels like a truly unique tale, only a unique patchwork of other, already told stories. There were a couple of twists that caught me off guard, but I don’t know whether to applaud the movie for some brief moments of originality or criticise it for being dense and incomprehensible.

Which brings me to what may be the biggest turn off of the film; it jumps from plot piece to plot piece like a hamster on coffee. The opening sequence introduces you to a number of characters in rapid succession before most of them disappear till about a third of the movie’s runtime has passed. You’re left floundering trying to remember who is important and why, and which important character has which name and is the son/daughter of which king or warrior.

The villain is some sort of cross between a jester and a magician, and his portrayal is quite weak. He’s far from intimidating, but still feels somewhat par for the course within the context of the movie. It’s not until later that he (and the movie as a whole) begins to shine.

The final plot twist, though not a favourite of many (based on some reviews I read online), was one of the strongest points of the entire movie in my opinion. Before then it had been fairly by the numbers. The last section of the film, however, was the first time it really tried to step outside of convention and make a real point. You may find said point weak, or even wonder why the filmmakers felt it needed to be made at all, but it’s certainly not something I can say I’ve seen attempted before.

So, the big question. Is it worth watching? Honestly, no, not really. Dragon Quest: Your Story is not going to shake you to your core, leave you hungry for more or even remain in your memory for long. If you have a spare few hours and nothing better to do with them, I can think of worse ways to spend it, but that’s hardly a favourable recommendation now is it.