Blue Dragon: Beautiful Visuals, Some More Revealing Than You Would Expect

We have been excitedly working to get through our copy of Blue Dragon here at our Tokyo offices (Read: me in my apartment). With captivating visuals, great music, interesting play mechanics, and wonderful art direction, the game is a true success. While those Stateside have some time to go before they can get their shot at the game, be sure to check out the official website here. It's loaded with trailers and downloadable content. You can also link to, Victory club, Blue Dragon's official strategy based site, which contains videos and maps that assist you through the game.



By now, you have most likely heard of the two manga that have been serialized by Shueisha as part of the Blue Dragon media onslaught. While I am not too impressed with the art style that Blue Dragon ST has taken, I was excited to hear that Blue Dragon ラルΩグラド (Raru Omega Gurado) was being helmed by Takeshi Obata of Death Note fame. He has a distinct art style that makes characters feel less cartoony and more real than Toriyama's well done but semi-exaggerated creations. Given the light hearted feel of Blue Dragon's art direction and story, I was expecting something along those lines in terms of a related manga. So you can expect that I wasn't prepared for this:

Internet buzz has expressed mixed emotions but regardless of whether or not opinions have been favorable, everyone is in agreement over one thing: This manga is erotic. It's far removed from the heart warming puppy love of the game and replete with harems and bedroom scenes.

An online survey by OriRan shows most fans think Obata is concerned with sales and that they were hoping for something more like Death Note. Readers, that hadn't yet played the game, were fairly evenly split over whether or not they were interested in doing so.

We will have a review of the manga once the first collected volume is released.