S2 E32 - Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai Manga (#SpitefulManga 2: The Sequel)

It's been a year since we did a specifically manga episode, so this week...we're talking about manga! And anime! Particularly, about The Adventures of Dai, or Dai no Daibouken. Dai no Daibouken ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1989 to 1996, in what became one of their most popular manga ever. WSJ didn't originally intend to be more than the first volume, then it was incredibly popular. So they did a second. Then they did it for real and made a continuous story...for, like, 330 chapters. In English, however, we only have access to fan translations done by a team of students known as Square Ocean. DragonQuestManga.com has those up (as of this recording) for you to read. Eventually, Dai no Daiboken was adapted into an anime in 1991, and once again, it does not have English translations. I am pretty sure there are fan subs out there, but I am really terrible at finding those sorts of things. There are new Blu-Rays in Japan that were just released a few months ago that collect all 46 episodes of the show. Which, once again, have no English. But, luckily for us, a new Adventures of Dai anime is launching this fall in Japan in October. No idea yet if it's based on the old stories, or if they're all new content. We can hope it's new content, but let's be honest: if we got the old stuff retold, we'd not know the difference. Because, you know, none of the original Dai is in English. Same for the games coming out this year: Infinity Strash and the Dai no Daibouken action RPG. They haven't released any kind of information as to whether or not they're original content or retelling the story from the manga or anime from the 90s. And once again, we'll be playing it either way. And since we don't speak Japanese, we won't know from this one, either! Hah! Also, Dai is a character in Jump Force, and Beej bought the game just for him. It was a steam sale and totally worth it. I can Avan Strash Goku. And that's pretty awesome. You can find Austin on Twitter as @dragonquaustin and Beej at @professorbeej. And hey, remember that Austin has that other podcast, JRPGs and Me, that he never talks about and forgets to mention. Just don't, like, forget to listen, though.