Panzer Dragoon OVA: Don't Make Me Blue

Panzer Dragoon is a 1996 direct-to-video Japanese animated film (OVA) based on the video game Panzer Dragoon. It was originally released on VHS and LaserDisc despite being only 26-minutes in length, and was made available to stream on the Bandai Channel in the 2000s but only in Japan. If you're willing to sacrifice a few minutes of your life that you'll never get back, the Panzer Dragoon OVA is also available (unofficially) through YouTube. Normally I wouldn't advocate for this sort of thing but given the limited release and obscurity it may be the only way to view the film without locating an old VHS copy.

Opening Song: N/A
Credits Song: Sora no kiseki (空の奇蹟) (by Yuri Shiratori / 白鳥由里)

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis and my opinions at the very end.

 

Summary:

Naraka Class Imperial Battleships approach a mysterious Tower and are quickly dispatched by its "first strike protocol". Inside the tower, amidst dormant Lazara (Defender?, Manakin?) ships, a sleeping dragon awakens. The movie never properly explains the significance of the dragons in this world, which in the games act as guardians of the Towers, and in a few rare exceptions, as destroyers of the Towers.

The scene transitions to what is essentially the video game's opening, as three coolia riders - Devidok, Kyle (mistranslated from Keil), and Kyle's blind girlfriend Alita, hunt bug-like burrowers. Alita aids the group by using her excellent hearing to pinpoint where the burrowers are when they dip beneath the sand. A black 'prototype' dragon flies past the trio, chased by an armored blue dragon and its rider. The group retreats to a cave but the prototype dragon manages to smash its way in, killing Devidok. Alita is then (magically?) fused into the rider's seat of the dark dragon.

Although Alita was not in the original video game, a magazine ad claims she was intended to be a selectable character in the sequel.

Kyle is left to slowly dig his way through the rubble blocking the exit and discovers the corpse of the blue dragon's rider not far from the cave entrance. Kyle receives a vision telling him not to allow Alita and the prototype dragon to reach the Tower. The purpose of the Tower is never explained in the movie, but in the games they are revealed to be ancient monoliths that defend the natural world by controlling the environment, creating new lifeforms, and culling the human population to stop it from reaching unsustainable levels.

"The wind, it’s so cold. So this is what the sky feels like!" -Kyle

Kyle mounts the now riderless blue dragon and gives chase. The duo comes upon a fleet of Imperial Battleships whom Blau (the blue dragon) attacks with his breath weapon. Kyle pleads for the dragon to stop killing humans but Blau persists until Kyle pulls a gun and threatens to kill him. They land near the wreckage of one of the downed vessels, where Kyle locates a single green-haired survivor. Later that night the survivor turns on Kyle, but Blau intervenes. Kyle shoots the man dead and comes to realize the Empire may not be as good as he thought.

 
The pair fly through the iconic arches of the Submerged City (the first area of the game) and locate a hidden underground passage full of dead/dormant dragons like Blau. They exit the passage and the Tower comes into view just as the two are attacked by the prototype dragon.

Kyle forbids Blau from fighting back because it might hurt his lady and Blau suffers severe injuries as a result. Blau locks talons with the dark dragon causing both to collide with the Tower. The dragons continue their fight on the ground, giving Kyle enough time to pull the now unconscious Alita out of the saddle.

"Dragon, you took quite a beating. Are you strong enough to keep fighting with me?" -Kyle

With his lady safe, Kyle is willing to pursue the dark dragon. He develops some sort of telepathic link with Blau who insists Kyle needs to help out more. Instead of finally using the gun he has had with him this entire time, Kyle unleashes a super hadoken because he can apparently do that now (it wasn't in the game) and the black dragon is roasted to a crisp. Blau destroys the Tower, Alita gets her sight back (it's never explained how), and Kyle is dumped onto a beach somewhere.

 

Final Thoughts

I never really understood why the blue dragon needed a rider in either the games or the movie. Blau always seemed intelligent enough to know what needed to be done and how to do it. The silent human protagonist contributes so little that he might as well not be there and this movie just reaffirmed that opinion. Poor Blau came off as an abused animal the way Kyle kept neglecting him and yelling about saving Alita. At least now I understand why Blau abandoned Keil on the beach. Honestly though, I am just baffled by the existence of this movie. It is a feature film with the runtime of a single television episode that released one to three years (sources vary) after the launch of the game it adapts. Was it made to promote the game? Was a TV series possibly in the works? I dunno.. the best I could dig up was an old magazine ad containing precious little information. Perhaps even more perplexing is why they chose to make a "movie" that just retells the game's storyline, and to such a degree that it basically acts as a serviceable substitute to playing the game. The story was never a selling point of the first Panzer Dragoon anyway - the aesthetics were, and with so little plot to work off of there was plenty a film adaptation could have expanded upon or blank-slate character's that could have been developed further. Instead the OVA adds nothing of significance and fails to convey any reasonable logic for most of what the characters say and do.

Plot issues aside, the audio and visuals are about as low quality as they get despite this OVA coming from a major studio, Production I.G. A few segments also used CGI that clashes with the hand drawn animation, but at this point I have seen far worse from more modern releases. I just feel bad for anyone that paid the full VHS rental-price back in the day thinking they were getting a full 60 minute movie.

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