At long last I can say the end is actually in sight as it has now been confirmed that Adventure of Dai will end with Episode 100, so all the setting up for the final battle this chunk of episodes do is going to pay off! Hooray! No more stalling! That being said this chunk of episodes also shows a sudden new trend of undoing previous hard work for the sake of pleasing fans, which… well, is a bit crap really. Let’s tale a look then!
When we last left our Hero Party they had arrived at the palace of the big bad Demon King Vearn but were immediately challenged to a fight by rogue ex-lead villain Hadlar and his “Royal Guard”. The students of Avan all take an opponent, with Maam fighting the “Queen” of the Royal Guard Albinass, Popp fighting the “Knight” Sigma and Hyunckel faces off with “Pawn” Hym, leaving Dai to face Hadlar, obviously. It only takes two episodes for the underling fights to be over as Maam quickly defeated Albinass after they discuss love, Popp takes out his foe with help from Maam allowing them to finally express their feelings for each other, and Hym is just suddenly falling from the edge of the castle going “damn it!” with a hole in his chest, his entire battle off-screen. That was extremely weird given Hym has had the most character development out of the whole guard, but it actually makes sense later!
Dai versus Hadlar, round 1,000….
Dai against Hadlar in their final showdown is also short but exciting as its obvious the former antagonist is on his last legs so Dai does him a favour and fights him at full strength to send him off to the afterlife happy. Our hero wins, naturally, but almost immediately the two of them are engulfed in magical flames as the playful grim reaper KillVearn arrives and states they’re in an inescapable trap that he set, and even as Popp dives in to hold back the flames with his ice spells it’s obvious he means it. Hadlar, insulted that his death will not be at the hands of his greatest rival but instead a trickster, actually tries to sacrifice himself to save Dai and Popp but only manages to save the former. All seems lost until a most unexpected ally arrives to save the day…
I’ll get to the rest in spoilers because it’s here where some really stupid “arse-pulls” happen and I won’t spoil it for any watching along. We do soon cut to back down on the surface where all the B-level characters are still fighting generic monsters and the mage Zaboera, with Nova the false-hero-turned-actual-hero using his abilities to nearly age himself to death only to be saved by top blacksmith Lon Berk, who sacrifices the use of his arms (for a few years) in order to defeat the transformed Zaboera, who is then killed by his old ally Crocodine, who finally got to do something of note. It was nice to see and all but at this point you couldn’t help but think it was too little too late for a lot of these characters in terms of getting me to care about them!
Overall Thoughts:
Hyunckel takes on a whole bunch of metal people with his bare fists…. the only logical way.
Adventure of Dai scratches and claws its way towards an actual ending with this chunk of episodes and mixes really great fight scenes with really out-of-left-field twists that only annoyed me rather than got me excited. Still, the fact we’re one review away from putting a final stamp on the show gives me hope for a last chunk of nothing but satisfying action!
How did Hadlar and more importantly Popp get out of the deadly trap set by KillVearn I hear you ask? Well, they were saved by Avan, the Master of the hero party who had bravely sacrificed himself at the start of the show using a self-destruction spell to slow Hadlar down, a moment that drove our main protagonists on in their adventure and served as a major moment of the show… now undone because, presumably, he was popular with the manga audience at the time. Turned out a necklace he was given that wasn’t mentioned until a recent flashback protected him from his own sacrificial blast and instead of joining back up with Dai and co he decided to train himself to get stronger and allow his beloved students to believe him dead. Bastard. Oh well! He defuses KillVearn’s trap and slashes his trademark mask in half, sending him into retreat. Hadlar dies teary-eyed with Avan’s respect in a nice finale for the character.
The mysteriously alive Avan faces off with the not-so-mysteriously still alive KillVearn.
As the party head into Vearn Palace Hyunckel stays behind to take on the massive army that trying to flank them in a tactic he was taught by Avan (apparently), and after a few hundred grunts get defeated Hym returns because… magical reasons and gets a massive power up due to his love for his now deceased Master Hadlar, even gaining a similar “haircut”. The two fight evenly but Hyunckel comes out on top, just, but then has to face the rest of the chess board themed metal foes including the “King” called Maximum. He dispatches them with ease despite having only “1 HP” because… magical reasons, but fails at the last hurdle and with Hym still down for the count it all looks grim until Larhart, the spearman from Baran’s Dragon Army who was killed by Hyunckel in a dramatic showdown is back from the dead because “Dragon Knight Magic”. This was yet another out-of-nowhere arse-pull that was clearly just because he was a popular character, but seriously some deaths have impact and should be kept otherwise what’s the point? I know the series has “Dragon” in the title but there’s no reason to go full Dragon Ball…
Larhart is also back! …. For some reason!
As for the rest of the Heroes Party? They ended up confronted by MystVearn, with Avan taken into a side-dimension by a vengeful KillVearn and Maam and Popp requesting Dai and Leona go on ahead and face regular Vearn, though they struggle which causes Dai to come back. It’s here where a restored Hym (who’s now a good guy) and Larhart arrive to join the battle, with Hyunckel now officially unable to fight again due to his antics from earlier. Happier with his friends fate Dai and Leona head to Vearn for real this time but along the way Leona is captured by the “heart of Vearn palace” and that forces Dai to unlock a whole new level of power by getting his father’s Dragon Knight crest alongside his own one, making him some sort of double-Dragon Knight, I guess. It’s enough to allow him to destroy the core of Vearn palace and give the Dark King himself reason to be worried as Dai finally arrives before him…
Hogan Reviews 