Episode 43 - Dungeons & Dragons (Kevin Paul Coates, Dennis Marks & Takashi, 1983-1985)
Dungeons & Dragons (Kevin Paul Coates, Dennis Marks and Takashi, 1983-1985).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Take a trip on a magic theme park ride with a Ranger, Barbarian, Magician, Thief, Cavalier and Acrobat as Chris and Alex turn once again to the small screen, this time to discuss Dungeons & Dragons (Kevin Paul Coates, Dennis Marks & Takashi, 1983-1985). Premiering on American television with CBS and animated by Japanese company Toei Animation, Dungeons & Dragons is a high fantasy cel-animated series that follows the tribulations of six young children as they strive to escape from a mythical realm. They are guided on their quest by the Dungeon Master, who allocates each of the characters a key role in the battle against evil forces, embodied by the wizard Venger and a five-headed dragon Tiamat. Topics include the structures of serial narration and worldbuilding, and how these elements map onto the real-world Dungeons & Dragons game as a set of props; the issue of ‘play’ both inside and outside the programme as part of its broader ludic impulse; the series’ ‘limited’ cartoonal style (including traditions in Syncro-Vox voice production); and the pleasure in fantasy storytelling of simply going along for the ride.
Suggested Readings
Tom Brown, “Spectacle/gender/history: the case of Gone with the Wind”, Screen 49, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 157–178.
Geoff King, Film Comedy (London: Wallflower Press, 2002).
V. F. Perkins, “Where is the world? The horizon of events in movie fiction,” in Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, eds. John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 16-41.
James Walters, Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema: Resonance between Realms (Bristol: Intellect, 2008).