Orphen #1:
Spell Of The Dragon

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75 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 07/10/2001
Reviewed: 09/27/2005

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I will never lie to you, fellow readers, unless it's something that provides me with a significant monetary gain. But I don't see any profits coming from my little venture here, writing reviews and such. So when I come into this review of Orphen, I will say what I always say in these situations: I do not care for fantasy anime.

I'm sure there was some time in my life when I was "down with that sort of thing". Earlier in my childhood, back when I actually cared about reading fiction, I would find myself positively enraptured with The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. In my tender years I would devour books of swords and sorcery like no other. Now I have to rebuke my coworker's constant attempts at convincing me to read Harry Porter books. It's not that I'm against reading a series of books written for children... that's not entirely the reason anyway. I just don't like fantasy anymore. Somewhere along the way I had a gestalt shift that said things like magic and princesses and swordfighting was a bit silly. I mean, if you went back to the time where the things that happen in fantasy novels actually happened they'd laugh in your face. I'd like to see you try to explain to some Norman that there's a dragon, and a princess, and a noble knight with a fiery sword. He'd cut your ass up, and then he'd eat you.


Orphen took me by surprise, then, because at the beginning there's very little in it that would cause pre-French types to practice cannibalism on you. Try as I might, then, I really just wasn't able to hate it. Dislike it, sure: don't get me wrong, I certainly don't like it. That'd just be wrong! But it wasn't as bad as it could be...

The first place Orphen most conspicuously falters is the dub. That the paragon of meddling, Mr. Steven Foster, got his hands on it and sullied what wasn't all that great to begin with. Orphen's characters are unfairly transmuted, saying things they'd never say and doing things they'd never do. They become caricatures of themselves, turned into shrieking, grunting mannequins, flailing their arms on the stage for all to see. It's acted competently enough, featuring the likes of Hillary Haag in the role of an androgynous gnome and the impossibly sexy Shelly Black as Cleao, the shrieky girl character that's mind-bogglingly irritating in both the dub and the original language version. I guess every fantasy anime has to have its annoying tagalong girl, otherwise the creators have to pay the unions for the the right to make something that doesn't suck eggs. Spike Spencer, predictably, reprises his role of "15 year old kid whose voice cracks a lot". I guess if you've got something you do, you might as well do it.


Orphen works like you might expect a fantasy anime to work. There's an apprentice and an annoying girl and the most famous magic school in the land is actually comprised of a bunch of self-furthering jerks who don't give a rat's ass about what happens to the common man. The difference is in Orphen, who's also a jerk, a jerk that that scams bartenders for free ice cream, is not your standard paragon of light or dummy-but-nice hero that you're so used to seeing in your fantasy anime. It's nice to see something where the male lead isn't a blowhard who always has to have his coholes pulled out of the fire, or who's so much of a lech that he can't be bothered to focus on the task at hand.

Don't get too used to it, though, as the rest of the characters are as cookie cutter as you'd expect. The apprentice doesn't even need to talk. His name alone causes in me swells of bile to surge their way into my throat. Majic. I mean, really, who names a character Majic? Especially one that's in training to be a magician!!! That would be like if I named a baker Sweet Roll, or Cinnamon Bun. That only happens in stupid role-playing games. Real people don't name their kids based on prospective professions. The dwarves are there specifically to garner unfair laughs out of the viewer due to their pathetic plight. Oh those greedy gnomes! They deserve everything they get for their avarice!! And Cleao! Cleao guffaws and growls, taking every word directed her way as if it were an offensive barb designed to specifically penetrate her womanhood and steal her chastity. It gets old. It gets old fast.

 
In fact, Orphen goes out of its way to make a case of mistaken lechery part of its jumping off. I wouldn't say the joke falls immediately flat, but something like that just isn't my cup of tea. Orphen spends quite a bit of time surveying a manor with the totally wholesome intention of keeping an eye on a very special sword. Cleao, our generic noble rich girl obsessed with herself, is so offended by what she perceives as Orphen's peeping that she goes after him whole-hog sword in hand. This is about where I lost interest in the show. It seems to me that if someone's swinging a sword at you're going to do a bit more than juke out of the way and spout out goofy lines in an attempt to get your assailant to "chill out".

When Orphen started to lose me and no amount of grumpy female dragons could bring me back to it. I'm not gonna say that my position is completely intractable, but the first time you do that "girl so wrapped up in herself she thinks everyone's a pervert" thing I immediately get a little turned off. Orphen had a good thing going when it made its main character a jerk, they must've just spent so much time on it that they didn't have the time make the supporting cast anything but generic anime clichés. The loudmouthed rich girl, the naive apprentice, the goofy comic relief. Orphen had a good start, but it doesn't pull it off in the clutch. Better luck next time.