For over 20 years, Toriyama Akira has captivated the world with his clean,
simple, imaginative character designs across various media.
The artwork of Toriyama Akira is immediately recognizable, and a special
trademark of his is the recycling of design elements, and even entire
characters, creating instantly memorable characters audiences can identify
with. Part of this is laziness, part of it is simply the high adaptability
level of Toriyama's designs--he has a style that lends itself to swapping
around particular design elements to mix and create new, instantly
memorable
characters.
Dr. Slump, Dragonball, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger...whatever your
pleasure, chances are you've been a fan of at least one thing Toriyama has
lent his considerable talents to, and quite likely you've found yourself
amazed at Toriyama's ability to recycle his own character designs without
looking lazy or unimaginative.
Unfortunately, there's only so far you can recycle something before
there's
just nothing of substance left to recycle.
Toriyama has finally reached that limit: it's called Blue Dragon.
The premise of Blue Dragon is mildly interesting, but only just so--and
the
highly derivative, over-recycled Toriyama character designs detract
heavily
from the series. Which is not only a shame, but also a jarring oddity,
because recycling and derivative adaptability ARE Toriyama trademarks.
When
*TORIYAMA AKIRA* comes up short in his self-derivation and character
recycling, things have indeed reached a new, embarassing low.
With all due respect to Toriyama-sensei...
Stick to Dragon Quest. It's all you're good for anymore.
--
"My name is Forrest Gump. People
call me Forrest Gump. I et too many
chaw-klits. Now I gotta take a dump."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Eternal Lost Lurker
www.lurkerdrome.com
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