I don't know if anyone else here was like me in this way... but I have fond memories from when I was a 13 year old kid watching the series of Dragon Quest cartoons that Saban had brought over as "Dragon Warrior". It was broadcast in the abysmal time-slot of Sunday morning via a Seattle based station KTZZ (I imagine it was broadcast in other locations as well, but I do know it was limited in where it was seen). Despite this I made it a point to attempt to watch/tape every episode I could while it aired. I still have some of those old glitchy VHS tapes from that time.

As fond as my memory of this show was, it's punctuated by the tragic event on the week following the broadcast of the 13th episode. I tuned in as usual (this time from my grandmother's house where I was visiting that day) and readied my tape to record the episode.... and then... nothing... absolutely nothing... it had been canceled! For a kid that age, something like this is pretty heartbreaking.



I later discovered that there were a number of problems leading to this. The time-slot gave the show bad ratings and Saban had failed to credit the famous character designer Akira Toriyama for his work... it all lead to the show not seeing it past the 13th episode (amusing that this coincided with my age at the time that I discovered the show).

Either way, I've seen a few episodes of the series past this point on scattered VHS rentals at Asian rental shops... but I've never been able to see the whole series. I was excited when I heard that the whole series was being released in Japan in a boxed set of DVDs and then crest-fallen when I noticed the price tag for that set was well over $300.



Then just recently, I noticed something up at a popular anime torrent site I check from time to time. The series was being put up in english-subbed torrents (http://animesuki.com/series.php/1496.html) it's only one episode but the video quality is great (as it is taken from this DVD set). Then I noticed another thing... scrolling down on the actual torrent page that the Anime Suki entry linked to (http://frenchies-subs.edwardk.info/) I saw that there were torrents for all the episodes in the show! They were subbed into French... but since I've been studying Japanese (just finished my third year in college and going to Japan to study for another year at the end of this month) I didn't find it too hard to follow.

I have to admit, clicking on the 14th episode after watching the first 13... It made me feel like I was that age again, a giddily happy emotion to equal the depressively disappointed feeling I had back then. So yeah, if there are other old fans of the series around like me... I hope you find this as welcome news. Or maybe some of you out there who never heard of this series can enjoy it now. Still, it would be fun to see some discussion around this show here.

Oh yeah, and for those of you who don't want to hassle with the torrents right away... and maybe just want to peek at a few episodes... there are some lower quality streamed copies up of the first 15 episodes (French-subbed) on Veoh currently: http://www.veoh.com/search/videos/q/Able+Yuusha

I remember your artwork kind of creeped me out but still I'm surprised you liked this show it seems kind of not INTERESTING enough for you

I dunno I tried to look this up a long time ago but it was more because I didn't know it even existed and DQ8 wasn't around yet so it was interesting to see the game depicted that way. Wasn't it ridiculously long just like Dragonball Z was

like maybe there were 5 separate times the hero died and they tried to revive him with MAGIC or some special item instead of dragon balls but same difference artificially making the series longer

also how old are you now didn't that show run in 1986 or something (that's why I didn't watch it I wasn't ALIVE yet)

This show aired in 1990 in the US (the full series aired from 1989 to 1991 in Japan) and I was born in 1977... so I was 13 at the time... but I'm 32 now. Yeah, a majority of the people around here would be too young to have seen this show, I suppose.

Either way... as for the show being interesting or not... I found it pretty interesting at that age. It had a nice way of reproducing the experience of playing one of the Dragon Warrior/Quest games (I had played all of them on the NES at that point). It also had a nice "flavor" to it that's hard to describe. The textures and line quality used in many of the show backgrounds and even the characters had a really nice rough fantasy feel to them.

There's a few times in the show the hero is saved from near death by various means (life stone, magical cloak, another character sacrificing themselves,  etc...) but it's never to the point like in Dragon Ball where he completely dies and is brought back. There is one part where the hero seals a dragon made of water that Tiala had summoned up. He falls into fever and spends several episodes in somewhat of a coma. They revive him later with use of the Padekia Tree leaf, that Daisy and Tiala cooperate to get. I kinda' liked this though since it relates to the games... in Dragon Quest IV there's a similar scenario with Cristo (Kurifuto) falling into a coma from a fever and needing the Padekia Tree leaf, which the hero's party retrieves. There are actually tons of references and names that cross over in this show. It references things from pretty much all that games at the time (I, II, III, IV).

Overall I think it had an interesting story and pacing to it as much as any of the games did. You have to remember that the character design was the only thing handled by Akira Toriyama... so while you might try to draw comparisons between this and something like  Dragon Ball Z... there's really no comparing them. Earlier I had just finished watching the last of the 42 episodes. In my opinion, that's not too long, right? It has a defined start and finish and never really drags at getting there. Nothing like some other "shonen" genre shows that take 100s of episodes and never really end.

In some ways I'm a big dork for this kind of nostalgic stuff though... so you'll have to excuse me for feeling such a fondness for something like this. It was a really big inspiration for my early teenage self, yeh.