The Tower of Druaga - The Sword of Ururk
Crunchyroll Edition
by Pedro Rodriguez
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Although with Druaga's death, it looked like the story was over, everything literally went downhill when Neeba and Kaaya betrayed everyone, and revealed that there was yet another tower above them. With everyone short of Jil and Fatina missing, the season ended with a cliffhanger, and fans would have to wait until sometime 2009. About six months later, The Tower of Druaga: the Sword of Uruk premiered on Crunchyroll. Rise and shine, Mister Freeman, rise and... shine.
Rather than starting right after the first season, the story picks up six months after it ended, which lands close to the time between the two seasons - June 20, 2008 to January 8, 2009. Jil has already climbed the tower along with Fatina only to find that the now dubbed Mythical Tower is gone. Although the absence of monsters has left the cities within the tower to prosper, the Kingdom decided not to recognize their accomplishments and stiffed them on the rewards. With no contact from their friends, the two of them are staying with Kelb, the now former leader of the Royal Army. About halfway through the episode Fatina tells Jil that she wants to cut her losses with everything that happened before, and wants to start over together. The mood is interrupted when they find themselves in the middle of a chase between a young girl and a group of rogue knights. After shaking them off, the girl shows Jil a vision of Kaaya mortally impaled. She tells him that if he wants to stop it from happening, then he should take her to the top of the tower.
The backdrop of the story has changed somewhat due to several key issues being replaced by others. First and foremost, each of the characters has different walks of life. The Fire Mage Fatina is now a tour guide, the former leader of the Royal Army Kelb cooks in his own tavern, and party defender and leader Jil has resorted to sleeping in. The tower is much is no longer littered with monsters or impassable terrain, making their only obstacles a group of conspirators that are after the girl.
While the story continues to serve a decent helping of both action and humor, most of the gags now occur unexpectedly during the action sequences. The gags are well placed and serve to break up the pace every so often. The show also uses a lot of references from the previous season, such as Utu's real appearance, or Jil's dream sequence. The group has also gained another new party member Henaro, a Druid who uses a crossbow that shoots magical arrows. While short of accidently shooting Jil in the back of the head with a sleeping arrow, she has yet to really affect the pacing of the story. It will be interesting to see where her role in all this will be.
If there's one thing that has been pushing the story forward, if at least for the first two episodes, it's the relationship between Jil and Fatina. It's interesting to see where they are to say the least. After the first climb ended in disaster, the two of them climbed the tower together, and have been together ever since. They do not appear to be lovers, but rather close friends. While it does seem like Fatina would like to become more than friends, it looks like she wants Jil to be the one to take the lead, something that may be out of his character. Whatever the case may be, the show has an interesting card up their sleeve. It’s now just a question of how they play it.
As for those of us living stateside, Crunchyroll’s report card is both good and bad. Starting with the positive, the video quality of the series is an improvement when you compare it to the first season. Then there's the fact that the episodes are subtitled immediately after it is released in Japan. If anything that means that the people making the series can make money off of their work while providing their product to a much bigger audience. On the down side there seems to be a correlation between when the episode is first release and amount of server's performance. There is also a strange issue that occurs when you pause an episode for a random amount of time. The good news is it seems to be happening to fewer people, and Crunchyroll seems to be committed to fixing problems.
After watching three episodes, it looks like Gonzo plans to push things forward with their recipe of action sequences, with bits of witty humor mixed in. In the end, the problem is not lack of material, but the matter of balancing it all that keeps viewers coming back for more, something that haunted Gonzo in the first season and in shows like Linebarrels of Iron. The good news is that everything looks well balanced at this point, so it’s just a matter of keeping it that way. While it’s hard to see if they keep things balanced, I do remain hopeful for this series. Beyond that everything is looking good.