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The story
A thread on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board took off after a poster pointed out that the Dragon Quest manga ‘The Emblem of Roto’ gets far less love than ‘Dai’s Great Adventure.’ Both are spin-off manga based on the Dragon Quest games, but posters argued that Roto’s story peaks with the fight against the Beast King Gnon and only gets darker from there, while also pointing to the lack of a signature finishing move and weaker technique names compared to Dai. Some noted that series creator Yuji Horii is actually a big fan of ‘The Emblem of Roto,’ which only fueled the debate over why the two works are received so differently.
What people said
stuff like the Beast King Gnon fight
Dai stayed hype all the way to the finale
But didn't they ignore Roto's spells and sword techniques and import Medoroa and Gigastrash (from Dai) instead?
If anything that one's even longer
Several of Dai's techniques even got reverse-imported into the mainline games
The Sword King's and Fist King's moves are so cool, but since they never actually landed a finishing blow with them, they don't get reverse-imported into the games
I wonder if that got scrapped too
Though I do think Kamui's art is more skilled
I mean the main character dies
The thing with Emblem of Roto is it doesn't really have a signature finishing move
He gives up on his allies so easily, like some peace-loving robot
I liked Jagan better
But the Mark of Roto chose Arus, you know…
Well he's got Giga Dain and Mina Dain, so…
After that it's just a flat, gloomy, uneventful slog the rest of the way
Jagan's fighting style was super aggressive though, it totally scratched that edgy chuuni itch (chuuni = the overblown "too cool" teenage sensibility)
And the mystical atmosphere once the story moves to the underground world was drawn really well too
Say what you want, but Fujiwara Kamui was genuinely good at depicting the world
Though his other series Raika was boring as hell and flopped hard with its sequel
The combo spells hit pretty hard too
Though the names, though…
Stuff like Bagira, Baibaha, and Okurura are fine though
You get it
The naming's just kinda lame somehow
Medoroa alone just blows all of that out of the water
It's already decided the moment Finger Flare Bombs shows up
No need to even wait for Medoroa
The one with that garbage Kiefer x Maribel pairing?
A crappy manga where Maribel being cute was the only redeeming quality
That's the Kamui one, right? Feels like he ended up a one-hit wonder with just Emblem of Roto
The art wasn't bad though — The Warriors of Eden. Then again, the source material, DQ7, was a bad game to begin with, so I guess Dragon Quest's world-building really was at its best back in the Roto and Zenithian (Sky) era
DQ7's protagonist is just some unremarkable short kid from a village, there's nothing there to get hyped about
"Don't underestimate me, Great Demon King"
Dai's stuff like Betan wasn't that cool either
But Dai's techniques in general are cool
It really resonates with kids
What's good about Dai is how convincingly Matoriv explains the Supreme [X] Spells
How is that something kids are supposed to read?
Dai's Great Adventure also blows off the face of Galdandy's sidekick with Begirama
Background and Key Points of the Debate
‘Dai’s Great Adventure’ got a brand-new TV anime adaptation in 2020, which renewed public attention on the series in recent years. The “favoritism” pointed out in the thread is likely influenced in part by this difference in name recognition from the re-animation, though that point was never raised within the thread itself. ‘The Emblem of Roto,’ on the other hand, has had few major opportunities for a comeback since its original run in the 1990s, and its structure settles into a dark tone from the midpoint onward. Opinions in the thread were split between surface-level comparisons — flashy moves, whether a character has a signature finishing move — and the deeper difference in story structure itself as the real reason for the disparity in treatment, with neither argument fully settling the matter. The detail that creator Yuji Horii is actually fond of ‘The Emblem of Roto’ also remained a factor that resists any simple explanation of how the two works came to be perceived so differently.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Proposition] Why ‘The Emblem of Roto’ Gets No Respect While ‘Dai’s Great Adventure’ Gets All the Love.”
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