Josh’s Anime Blog

The Essentials

Name: Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventures, Dual! Parallel Lun-Lun Monogatari
Genre: Mecha, Comedy, Action, Fantasy
Episodes: 14 total - 13 TV, 1 OVA
Released: TV - April 8, 1999 - July 1, 1999, OVA - December 22, 1999
Based On: N/A
Director: Katsuhito Akiyama
Produced By: AIC
US Distribution By: Geneon

Major Japanese Cast

Kazuki Yotsuga: Takayuki Yamaguchi
Mitsuki Sanada: Rie Tanaka
Ken Sanada: Ryunosuke Obayashi
D: Ai Uchikawa
Yayoi Schwael: Chie Nakamura
Akane Yamano: Yuko Kobayashi
Mitsuki Rara: Megumi Toyoguchi
Hiroshi Rara: Kenichi Ogata
Ayuko Rara: Doi Mika

Major English Cast

Kazuki Yotsuga: Joshua Seth
Mitsuki Sanada: Michelle Ruff
Ken Sanada: Sean Thorton
D: Sherry Lynn
Akane Yamano: Barbara Goodson
Mitsuki Rara: Wendee Lee
Hiroshi Rara: G. Gordon Baer
Ayuko Rara: Diva West
Yayoi Schwael: ?

Scores

Animation: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 9/10 (x 2 = 18 pts)
English Dubs: 8/10 (x 1 = 8 pts)
Gut Score: 7/10 (x 5 = 35 pts)

Total: 153/200 (76.5%)

Review

The concept of this particular anime is actually pretty interesting to start with: while constructing a building in a Japanese City, an known artifact is stumbled upon by a construction worker. Not wanting any archaeologists to delay the construction, the boss tells the worker to destroy the artifact. At this point reality splits off into two dimensions - one where the worker obliged and destroyed the artifact, and one where he didn’t.

Move 22 years into the future, a boy, Kazuki Yotsuga, sees visions of giant robots fighting around the city. He sees them so often that he has named them as writes a webpage talking about what he sees. Perhaps not surprisingly, he is ridiculed by his classmates for his “visions.” That is until one day when the most popular girl in school, Mitsuki Sanada, invites him over to her house, saying how interesting his stories are. However, once there it is discovered that it is Mituski’s father, not Mitsuki herself, who is interested in Kazuki.

Upon entering his house, Kazuki is mistakenly transported to the other dimension, where he sees the robots he saw in his visions fighting for real. However, his favorite robot - Hartzenen - is in trouble and has the pilot are open up, revealing an injured woman. Kazuki goes inside to save her, but the opening closes on him. Not knowing what to do, he attempts to control Hartzenen in order to win the battle, and does surprisingly well. After the battle, he stumbles upon Mitsuki, who was also taken to the other dimension. She tells him that his piloting of the robot is a mystery since only women are able to pilot them.

From there, Kazuki fight a series of robot battles alongside Mitsuki and an alien life form found with the artifact - D - against the RaRa Army, who is trying to conquer the world in the name of making it peaceful, and who also happen to have mechas as well.

One of the things someone may notice immediately when watching Dual! is the influence that Evangelion has on the series. The designs on the robots are similar. How the robots are created is another similarity. The three main pilots of the robots is a third similarity. However, Dual! doesn’t go as far as mimicking the psychological ponderings of Evangelion, as Dual! is largely a Comedy.

I think the biggest problem, though, with Dual! is that there was a great potential to explore a great many things dealing with parallel universes, and while the show did some, it seemed to be more concerned with the mecha’s battling while throwing in some comedy here and there instead. There were also some things brought up that weren’t really ever answered that I could tell. For example, every time that Mitsuki and Kazuki get transported from one dimension to another, Kazuki always arrives on month later than Mituski. However, why this is the case is never really answered.

The animation was, on average - average. There were some areas where I thought the animation was pretty good. However, I thought character designs were only average, and the CGI sequences of the mechas being launched reminded me of some of the CGI I’ve seen in mid-1990 PC games. The story was slightly above average I’d say, and maintained a pretty coherent story line all the through the TV series.

I won’t really rate this a good anime. It has several good points and several bad points to it. It’s one that I may enjoy watching if I’m in the mood, but I doubt I’d go as far as buying it. Possibly it’s biggest flaw, though, is that Dual! tries to be too many different genres at the same time: action, romance, comedy, mecha, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. that it ends up not really being any of them very well (except mecha). Also, the additional OVA episode was pretty much unnecessary.

First Watched: February, 2006 - March, 2006
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Indifferent