Animation Domination: Dragon Quest – Your Story

The world of film has grown steadily rampant with video game adaptations as of late, with their range of quality all over the place. For every good or passable adaptation (The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog 2), there’s a Resident Evil waiting around the corner to disappoint both cinephiles and fans of the source material. While Dragon Quest: Your Story is very much of the former category, it flew under the radar when released in 2019 and very silently settled into the catacombs of Netflix without much praise or dismay.

Acting as an adaptation of Dragon Quest V, the film follows a boy named Luca as he slowly grows into the hero needed to find the Zenithian Sword, save his mother, and bring about the downfall of the evil Bishop Ladja. While the film does stick really close to the major beats of DQV, it does have some minor differences as well as a major twist that fundamentally changes the framing of the story but doesn’t dilute its thematic resolution or destroy its chance at a satisfactory ending.

The film is at its best when it’s laser-focused on Luca as a character and the whimsical nature of the Dragon Quest series and at its absolute worst when it prioritizes being faithful to the narrative presentation of the game. It tries to cram too much backstory into its 100-minute runtime that could have easily been understood through some dialogue and context clues, but as a result of trying to cram too much in and flow in accordance with the game’s own flow, everything has to move at a breakneck pace. While this is beneficial to the latter 2/3’s of the film, which truly does feel like a grand journey because of how much ground is covered while remaining lean, the opening completely fails to keep up. There’s an improper introduction to the world and we never truly get to know Luca until it’s too late.

That’s a major shame because it’s the characters and world of Dragon Quest that make it so great. The story is rock simple and contains a fantasy structure that you’ve seen a million times, but that simplistic familiarity is filled with complex emotional arcs that draw the audience in. Translating that magic into animation isn’t an easy feat, but the team on Your Story crafted a fully 3D animated film that is jaw-droppingly beautiful and visual of its own ilk while honoring the initial design concepts that the series spawned from thanks to the late legend Akira Toriyama. If nothing else, Your Story is a beautiful viewing experience paired with visceral emotional stakes that move too quickly for its own good.

The voice acting in Dragon Quest: Your Story stands out for skillfully capturing characters’ essence and evoking genuine emotions without being overdone. The cast delivers lines with an air of emotional honesty that strikes a balance between authenticity and theatricality. Notably, the game initially lacked voice acting and the crew did a great job giving these characters voice once and for all that did genuinely fit them.