Ronald Reviews Deltora Quest But Only The First Episode Because He Quit

The First Episode of Deltora Quest: The Review

If I could write in paragraphs, I wouldn’t be failing English so here goes.

Why Deltora Quest?

By now everyone has had a thorough taste of the current pandemic situation and the ways that we as a society have been crippled. From the smaller scale of effects, I was sat there in front of my monitor with my tutor trying his best even after explicitly telling us how he has been exhausted to the point of tears. All I could think was “same”.

We had to go through a past paper for English and text 2 which we had to analyse was called ‘Blue Mountains’ by Emily Rodda. Emily Rodda. Emily Rodda. Her name was imprinted at the back of my mind and yet I couldn’t exactly picture who she was. I consulted my best friend, DuckDuckGo, I mean Google. It was obvious she was an author, because, ya know, we were studying a piece of literature from her.

My eyes darted straight for the books section of the search results. ‘The Lake of Tears’, ‘The Shifting Sands’, ‘Rowan of Rin’, ‘Dread Mountain’, ‘City of the Rats’. It had hit me like a metal baseball bat. So hard I gained more memories than I had lost.

SHE WROTE DELTORA QUEST.

To every 1990s and 2000s kid in Australia, this was a staple in childhood. No matter if you read the books from your school’s library or watched the show on ABC3 (rip), you had at least a vague memory of it. Such a masterpiece of Australian Writing ingrained into millions of children. The last time I watched it was probably when I was 10. Considering I couldn’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, I HAD to watch it again.

Which Medium?

There were three routes that I could have chosen to go for actually going about this: books or anime with there being a Japanese and English version of the anime. If I had enough of an attention span for reading something other than subtitles, I wouldn’t be writing this piece.

Since I had decided to just go full-throttle on the anime, I had to choose which version. The one that aired on ABC3 which I was most nostalgic about was, of course, the English version as it was (obviously) an English speaking country. Also probably since they don’t expect 6-year-olds to be able to read subtitles competently whilst being mesmerised by a different language.

What was the actual difference? Was it just one being subbed and the other being dubbed like usual? No! I stared at the Wikipedia page in disgust to see that as children, we had been swindled by the fact that the English version had 52 episodes, whilst the Japanese version had 65. THEY STOLE 13 MORE EPISODES OF THIS GOLD FROM US. It was settled. I was taking back what I had lost in my childhood. The 13 extra episodes of the Deltora Quest anime.

Where Do You Even Watch such an Old Series?

This wasn’t available on televisions anymore since the show is LITERALLY OVER A DECADE OLD. I don’t even have a DVD player so that isn’t really an option. Who actually has a DVD player in this day and age?

Of course, I went straight to my first and favourite choice. Anime piracy. My usual sites are 9anime.ru and animeflix.io. They are hotspots for pop-up ads which contain *questionable* material so I use a chrome extension called uBlock Origin so after getting it, you can watch episodes 1 to 52 on there.

I actually had some trouble locating the last 13 episodes so I just kind of searched it up, which led to me finding out that there was a channel called Deltora Quest (bit.ly/DelQuestYT) dedicated to stealing every episode of Deltora Quest first in English dub then English and Portuguese (nice) sub for the last 13 episodes so that’s also a great place to go.

The Opening Theme:

The anime of today, usually, have a hook of up to around 1 minute which starts each episode. This has become widely popular not just in anime but in other TV shows such as with the popularity of cold opens for Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Parks and Recreation.

The first thing I actually noticed, however, was the dimensions.

Unlike the aspect ratio which was used today (16:9), this show featured a 4:3 ratio, which you can see is drastically different from the gaping sidebars. That begs the question, why 4:3? 4:3 was originally the size in which film stock was made so all the old movies and animations from around the 1900s were displayed in 4:3. This was then adapted into TV and Monitor screen sizes as people would have been more accustomed to the ratio which they watched films in. I paid no attention to the actual amount of pixels as you can’t tell the original size from a pirated copy :P

This was truly indicative of being an old series.

You’re familiar with cold opens, right? Great! But...you don’t need to be since Deltora Quest opted to not have one. This was quite strange since the phenomenon of cold opens were popularized in the 1990s for anime, with the first cold opens for anime being from the 1970s.

The nature of the opening theme, compared to today’s openings, was quite generic, which shocked me. I remember sitting on my couch as a young boy, being enchanted by what I had believed to be such good animation. Oh, how naive I was. After watching hundreds of anime with no slight exaggeration, I was quite disappointed with how my first impressions now were.

Most of the shots that they employed just seemed, well, outdated.

Wow, an important symbol covering the whole screen!

A generic title card with a huge overly-drawn series name! (see two images back)

This man is looking into the distance which shows his forward-thinking and has a cape so he must be a hero!

He also runs!

Look at this bloke! He’s a big man!

There are monsters and they have bad CGI! (won’t criticise because, as discussed before, old)

One screen filled with monsters and a dark tint! The good guys have their own screen with light! Wow! Dark is bad! Light is good! The symbolism is, quite frankly, blatant and lazy. There are also multiple random sky shoots which just confused me as only one was needed to fulfil their purpose.

The best part of the opening by far: the intro music. In the Japanese version, they used HEART☆BEAT by MARIA, which is, in fact, a full-on banger. They had synced the opening quite well to the song which showed that it was at least, a semi-decent anime studio. This wasn’t really what I remembered watching as a child so I quickly searched up the opening on youtube.

It had brought tears to my eyes.

The opening was completely different. The shots they used were the same but rearranged. What really set it apart. THE INTRO MUSIC. It was reminiscent of my summer nights, glued to the TV, binging all the content I could before they took my freedoms away.

The orchestral pieces used were actually originals, composed by the talented John Lee Mitchell and Tom Keenlyside. A musical masterpiece which any two children of the 2000s could bond over. I was over-joyous after hearing it for the first time in years.

I flipped back to my sub den to see who had produced the series.

BANDAI ENTERTAINMENT.

I obviously LOVE BANDAI and what they do. They have brought absolute hits such as ‘Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu’, ‘Byousoku 5 Centimeter’, ‘Nichijou’, ‘Cowboy Bebop’, ‘Code Geass’, ‘K-on!’, ‘Lucky☆Star’, ‘Akira’ and so much more! They had become a household name for anime around 2005 to 2010 and even earlier than that.

Sony Music is quite decent. And then. ANIPLEX. THE PEOPLE WHO MADE ‘SWORD ART ONLINE’. Take that how you will.

I knew I was in for a long ride by at least the brand that made the car was known for some extremely sturdy ones.

Sort of a Plot Summary:

Lief, Barda and Jasmine are a group who set out to find the 7 gems which have magical powers to defeat the Shadow Lord. An enemy who had taken over the land which used to belong to the people of Deltora, the name of the city which the group used to reside in. This just seems like a generic plotline, because it is, but just having a plot that can be simplified does not mean that it is a bad show. I can assure you of that much. Is Deltora Quest a bad show? We’ll see, won’t we?

Some Oddities in the First Episode:

One major difference in the first episode of Deltora Quest was that the Japanese version featured a backstory scene while the English cut straight to the first real shot of the episode. Due to the important role that the backstory plays, this was a mistake on the part of the English production team.

I’m very certain that the English version is censored in their use of language by as the Japanese have stated through their media, they aren’t really afraid to do some small-time swearing with words like “糞”(kuso) which translates to “shit”. You don’t see that on ABC3 every day.

The Shadow Lord is an actually shadowy figure which is used to represent how he has no bounds and the only visible features are his eyes which show his all-seeing nature and his hand which compared to a person displays the magnitude in which the Shadow Lord is sized. Since the Shadow Lord is the literal embodiment of evil, this size is quite significant in how it comments on the size of evil in the world.

The events of the story are actually controlled by this bloke

who does all the actions and is used to represent the bottleneck that people(humans) are. This also shows how people are manipulated by the evils of the world and is just a full-on metacommentary … or I’ve gone insane and this is just a scene in a kids TV show which I should be feeling nostalgic about and not analytical. His willingness to bow down and ask for forgiveness at the drop of a hat (or the Shadow Lord’s anger) reveals this tendency to be controlled and manipulated.

This is literally just the first episode and I haven’t even gotten to the 10-minute mark.

I mean I can keep going so why not?

They used many things which are known to be cliches like the fact that the main character seems to be royalty separated from his parents and raised by others. Secret tunnels. Handing down family heirlooms and the works.

Animation:

The animation as you would expect is quite bad.

Houses look more like misshapen blobs.

Leaves are just misshapen blobs.

The castle is about as lopsided as Polish pine trees.

And this is all from one frame. The quality they have put in for worldbuilding is quite poor in my opinion.

They miss many of the finer details which should be present

and just shows off how lazy the animation team is. Thanks, ANIPLEX. With such big names in the anime industry, even at that time, I would have expected a much more in-depth effort to make this not just some 2007 show. Then again, they were focusing on larger tasks and with a no-name anime like this, they probably decided their talent should have been put someplace more promising.

The fights scenes which include anything large from armies to monsters are made through CGI. And it’s terrible. But 2007 show. There aren’t really any in the first episode with the exception of the opening and the conflict between Lief and the Grey Guards (generic soldiers of the Shadow Lord).

One thing that I really did like about the episode was the transition. One really clever way was through the claw slashes of the shot.

It was extremely cool compared to the sound effects and the fact that it was just such a rare sight.

Even today, this is extremely underused still so it was quite refreshing to see this be implemented in such a nice fashion.

Other transitions also tickled my fancy. Particularly the one used for the ad break.

This wasn’t for the animation really, but the nostalgic nature that had been brought back. It may have been an ad break transition, but it was important in the fact that it set up the characters to be like cards in a game. Tools used to be played to the plans of the higher beings (the players). It gave us a sense of how we were involved and just boosted the idea that our moral support really did help them win. Another selling point for children to get hooked to anime and end up spending hours decoding one episode of their childhood like a fish being filleted.

The colour palette itself is actually quite bland as can be seen. The serious nature is shown through this choice but it wouldn’t have made it worse by having more vibrant colours to increase the amount of interest which could be stimulated.

Characterisation:

The biggest part of this episode was characterisation and worldbuilding. Since this is the first episode, we are like newborns to this series and considering the ages the people watched this, there may have been actual newborns watching, who knows?

Backstory, in this case, isn’t just used to introduce the world like we normally see it. This time it has a much greater role to foreshadow the links of royalty to the main character through an extended metaphor of a blacksmith. It also hints at the fact that Lief may be royalty, which could be used as a large turning point in the story.

Expectations are also subverted to display the spontaneous nature of the series with introductions of people such as Barda, the person serving Lief’s household, to have been wearing a wig to resemble a beggar. Barda, being a battle-hardened soldier instead of just some raggedy old man. It sets the viewer up to not trust everything that is shown on screen and also teaches this as a type of life lesson to be sceptical (have trust issues).

Lief is more blatantly characterised to be a quick-witted and impulsive young man. He attacks the Grey Guards with just some pebbles while they have full-scale weapons. He steals food from an orchard owned by the Shadow Lord. He scales a wall to escape the guards. This sets him up to be what he is. Just a 16-year-old boy who has been thrown into a lifelong journey. A 16-year-old boy nonetheless.

The characters are also quite symbolic as like how the Shadow Lord and his followers are as seen above. There isn’t really a focus on the other, more minor, characters. Lief’s mother is shown to be a woman who cooks, cleans, sews, but this would have also been the life of a commoner in a time period like this, where swords are the main choice of weapon.

There seems to be a lack of Deus-Ex Machina which is a good thing since most things like the way Lief escaped from a dead-end after being chased by the Grey Guards are due to someone who was tailing him (presumably Barda) throwing down a rope. Or the fact that Lief and Barda escape through a secret tunnel system in the wall of the basement which Lief never noticed. Barda is explicitly said to be a plot device to protect Lief (the holder of the belt which controls the 7 gems). (Is this sarcasm? I don’t know!)

The show actually uses the fact that he’s a dumb 16-year-old kid to their favour. He is shown to run ahead of Barda while escaping and runs into a Grey Guard who almost kills him. He is shown to have a lack of physical stamina after being extremely tired from running.

The Ending:

Like any other show, to keep you hooked on to the next episode, they have a cliffhanger. Again, a subversion is used to have Barda in danger where only Lief can save him, which has been briefly pointed out before.

A picture of the belt is shown with how many gems have been collected, which shows the progress which has been made in the series so far. A very useful thing to keep the audience engaged.

The ending is actually quite fitting. ‘Sakura Uta’ by Rythem is used as the outro. A calming and gently song which contrasts the highly suspenseful cliffhanger which has just been shown and mellows the responder whilst not deterring the hook, line and sinker nature it has.

Multiple shots of them just sitting calmly go hand in hand with the music and just amplify the effect which the song has on the audience. Both the opening and ending opt to employ natural imagery of trees, leaves, birds, mammals, the moon, stars, the sun.

This is all contrasted in the English Deltora Quest ending. They repeat the opening music in the ending. THEY REPEAT THE OPENING MUSIC IN THE ENDING. This is just pure laziness. To repeat an opening in the ending. This is a sin that I cannot forgive for the English version. This is really bad as the opening is meant to excite the viewer and gear them up to watch the episode, but this hypes them up for nothing, creating an effect similar to deflation.

The shots of the opening are also reused for the ending in the English version, which is directly against how the Japanese Deltora Quest has used new, more calming shots. This also shows the cheap nature of the show producers in how they aren’t willing to create a new ending or ending theme.

There are also episode recaps and previews which aren’t that special so I won’t really comment on them.

Final Thoughts:

Most people have opted for the 1 episode test to see whether an entire series is good or bad. This is shown in how the only good anime with a bad first episode was Gintama. That being said, THIS FIRST EPISODE WAS AMAZING. It isn’t really a masterpiece by itself as it’s like saying that the first 3 pages of a book are a masterpiece. Just because the whole book is a masterpiece doesn’t mean the pages are by themselves.

The animation could have had some more work but I do quite like the characterisation which was used. The world-building was great in my books and the use of backstory was quite genius. This is a great series and missing out on this is probably going to be the one thing that will keep your life from being complete. I implore you to watch the whole series, in subbed for the best experience and dubbed for a more nostalgic one. I know I didn’t really have an equal focus when analysing but what can you do?

Final Ratings:

I would actually rate the Japanese first episode and the English episode quite differently. The Japanese tried to have a good first episode and knew what to do. This is why I believe that it is a 9/10 considering it is a 2007 show.

I would say that the English version is more of a 7/10, butchering scenes, removing backstory, lazy openings and endings, but still, Deltora Quest.

There will always be a place in my heart for Deltora Quest and I hope you can feel the same way that I do after watching the series in this new light.

~Ronald

P.S. This took longer than expected bc tutoring hw is a thing >:(

P.P.S Probably won’t update cus this is just too tedious.