Strange Dawn

Original Title: ストレーンジドーン
Romanized: Strange Dawn
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Yuko and Eri are two normal girls with a big problem: a princess in a mysterious world populated by tiny people has summoned them as "Great Protectors"--magical giants of legend who protect the land in a time of strife. The two girls, discovered by the people of an isolated village, set out on a mission with a group of warriors from the village to find out what power brought them here and what might return them home. But there is a war brewing, and these two Great Protectors, like it or not, are the political tool that every faction lusts for to rally the people to their side.

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2004-06-13

Strange Dawn is indeed very strange. On the surface the plot looks like any of a dozen humorous magical-girl type anime series: high school girls get sucked into an alternate world filled with pint-sized people who think the girls are their saviors. But what makes Strange Dawn so strange is that it's presented in an utterly straight-faced manner, with as much realism as the odd premise permits: the girls are thoroughly modern, disinterested, and have no special abilities whatsoever, the cute little folk have a wide variety of well-developed personalities and plenty of very adult problems, and the world is on the brink of a war between several different factions with no clear good or bad guys. It's an odd idea, but the juxtaposition shines light on how petty and silly the complexity of the modern world can be, and gives viewpoints easily dismissed as simplistic and childish more weight than those of leaders and warriors. Creative touches abound: from the design of the world to the fine art to the beautiful soundtrack. The only rough spots are the information overload of the multitude of subplots and the bizarre dub with its mishmash of accents.

Strange Dawn is a really, really interesting series, and not for the children's audience Urban Vision apparently decided to (mis-)target it at. It's too offbeat to be for everybody, and it takes some getting used to, but as a fan of creativity and colorful, detailed fantasy worlds and cultures, I couldn't have enjoyed it more.

US DVD Review

The DVDs are basic but functional--the bilingual audio is crisp and clean, the semi-accurate subtitles (not dubtitles, though the dub dialogue is awkwardly close to the subtitles) can be turned off, and the video looks bright and relatively crisp. Extra features are, however, essentially nonexistent, and the end theme changes on the second disc to a weird acoustic piece, which I'm guessing wasn't in the original.

Content Guide

Though Urban Vision rates it as "for most audiences," there is enough violence and mature themes that I'd call 13-up more appropriate.

Violence: 2 - People die, but the violence isn't very bloody.

Nudity: 1 - Nothing really noteworthy, though a big deal is made of exposed feet.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - Some sexual violence, discussion, and some strongly implied physical relationships.

Language: 0 - The dubbed version seemed clean, though the subtitles are a bit rougher.

Notes and Trivia

What was Urban Vision thinking?! Seriously, this has to be one of the most badly botched US anime releases since Warriors of the Wind. Ignoring the bizarre dub, the biggest and most baffling problem is that Urban Vision apparently decided that instead of marketing Strange Dawn as the allegory it is, they'd target it as a kids show.

Never mind the fact that the cheerfully colorful box art is about as unrepresentative of the plot and mood as any I've seen, or that kids will likely be utterly and completely lost by the depth of the political story, or that most of the themes (rape, realistic violence, sexual taboos, the corruption and breakdown of religion in the face of reality, and subtle romance) aren't exactly standard Saturday Morning fare, or that Urban Vision actually went so far out of their way as to create a whole new label--"Lil' Vision"--to cover this inappropriate marketing. No, let's just confuse the living daylights out of kids, or encourage them to laugh at characters and situations that really aren't funny.

And as if this gross mishandling weren't enough, they've only released the first two of four discs in the series, leaving the few people who did go out and buy the series high and dry waiting for an end. I can only guess that this insult-to-injury release schedule is the result of predictably poor sales on the first two discs, and have no choice but to desperately hope they'll eventually get so bored with other projects that they finish their release (they didn't, incidentally, respond to a request for any sort of a release schedule).

On a totally different note, the dub took some creative license with the dialogue, but although the subtitles were far more accurate, there were several strangely obvious translation mistakes. The most glaring was that they actually botched Eri's name for the entire first disc--translating it as "Emi", though I believe it was fixed in the 2nd disc. There were other situations in the dialogue where translations were loose at best, or figures of speech were incorrectly translated literally (for example, when Eri tries to make a friendly comment to Yuko outside the cave in the 3rd episode, Yuko's dismissive comment was translated as "It's cold.", when she actually meant "That was a bad joke."--a far more unfriendly remark).

Availability

Available in the US from Urban Vision on their "Lil' Vision" label on two bilingual DVDs spanning the first half of the series. The second half has not been released as of this writing.

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