D.I.C.E. (original) (raw)

TL;DR The storytelling is quite bad but I had a ton of fun watching this. It's a show designed to market their game to kids, so really don't expect much out of it.

I watched the English version (which, from my understanding, came before the Japanese version), so I will base my review off of that.

Story 3/10
The storytelling itself is extremely poor in that each episode rushes the viewer through a fast narration giving background, before throwing you straight into the action. I get that the purpose of this show was to market their toys/game/whatever, so they didn't focus too much on properly guiding the viewer... through each of the stories, and also, each episode (of the first season anyway) is mostly self-contained so they have to squeeze as much as they can into a 19-minute segment. Due to the rushed nature, there's hardly a sense of proper atmosphere throughout the episodes, as everything jumps from scene to scene quickly. Sort of like a patchwork quilt, where you can clearly see the edges of one scene/time period that choppily flips to the next without transition. Furthermore, there are oftentimes points are brought up for no reason and then not elaborated upon (eg. one character's passport being illegitimate), so I don't see why they really needed to bring it up in the first place if they are already pressed for time and could have just used that time for more action scenes/proper storytelling.

The stories themselves are super cheesy and pretty hilarious if you don't take them seriously. Lots of things happen for the sake of it and don't particularly make that much sense (eg. This here's the biggest mammal in this star system... okay let's just freaking throw it into outer space!!!, or We're gonna switch to this new fortress that we have absolutely no idea how to use and it might even be rigged but oh well!!). Not to mention a tooon of plot holes and inconsistencies and loose ends. (shrug)

Art 7/10
I personally love the art style and character designs; they're really cute. It's no million-dollar-budget movie, but often even a crowd of background characters will all have unique designs. Animation can get funky sometimes, but again, it's not exactly an art-focused show. I'm not an expert on CG though, so can't comment on that.

Sound 8/10
Although it doesn't have a wide variety of soundtracks, I loved the music; the main theme played when they deploy is super enjoyable, along with its variations, such as the piano version.

Character 7/10
Not much to say on these characters. Generally likeable, typical characters found in this type of shounen-for-young-kids-style show. Obviously I'm not going to compare character development to something deep like FMA, but as a marketing show, the predictable and static characters get the job done. The English acting can get a bit cringey though.

Enjoyment 9/10
What can I say, maybe this is just my thing. Also because it's pretty hilarious.