Dragon Quest Dai episode 8: Brass is turned against Dai

Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai episode 8 is where the bad guys come back for revenge, and I liked this episode a lot. It's an action-heavy chapter that pits Dai against his own adoptive grandfather, Brass, brainwashed into a weapon by the scheming Zaboera.

The 2020 anime adaptation of Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai adapts roughly manga chapters 23 through 24, with a little bit of 25, in this episode. Now that the party of Dai, Maam and Popp has formed, this is the start of the story where they run into real trouble.

How fast the Dragon Quest Dai anime is adapting the manga

Each episode covers about two or three manga chapters. At this point the show is in volume three of the manga, assuming it's adapting the story without any extra material. I don't know what they're going to do with the anime, and we don't have any idea yet.

The manga runs a total of 37 volumes, so there was still quite a bit of story to go, even though the adaptation was moving faster than I expected. Based on that pace, I figured at the time that the series could end up lasting about a year and a half, maybe a little longer, but probably about a year and a half.

An inn stay that feels like playing a JRPG

What is the one thing almost all JRPGs have? If you play Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest or Breath of Fire, you know the answer: inns, places to sleep so you can replenish your HP and MP. In this episode our heroes stay at an inn, and it was pleasant to see that here.

If you're a fan of these kinds of games, you're going to enjoy this show because it reminds you of being in the game. Granted, it isn't based on any one Dragon Quest game, and the stories are all different. But it's like being inside a video game, and it's comforting and familiar if you grew up with these games as I did.

There's also a great cameo, if you can call it that. At the inn they run into the fake hero from episode one, who tries to squash the beef and let bygones be bygones. Yeah, right. I had said in a recent review that this guy was coming back; I just forgot exactly when, and this turned out to be it.

Crocodine sends an army of monsters to the Romos kingdom

Meanwhile, Crocodine is furious. He sends an army to the Romos kingdom, because that's where Dai is heading. I think in the manga it was something like an army of a hundred thousand monsters, which is crazy. The goal is to destroy the entire kingdom. As Jim Ross would say during the Attitude Era, business is about to pick up.

Dai and the others see this from the inn. I think Dai may have felt responsible, because he knows they're coming after him, and if people die at the castle it will be his fault, indirectly of course. He has to do something, because things are getting bad with this army. For us as an audience, it's getting pretty awesome, because this is epic stuff.

Popp refuses to help Dai, and Maam is disgusted

The interesting part is that Dai rushes off to fight, but Popp doesn't want to. He's being a coward. Maam grabs him and tells him they have to go help, and his response is that Dai is good in a pinch, he'll take care of himself, and Popp doesn't want to die. Meanwhile Dai is surrounded by hundreds of monsters. The fake hero won't get in there either, but we already knew he was a coward.

That was an interesting development, because Popp is a bit of a coward, and I don't like it because Dai could die. He's strong, but he can't do this alone. This is a war. There are soldiers at the castle, but it might not be enough to stop these monsters. Maam is totally disgusted, and you can't blame her.

Dai faces Crocodine and shows he is leveling up

Dai bursts in and confronts Crocodine face to face. The king recognizes Dai because he saw him in earlier episodes, which is part of how everything ties back to what came before. Crocodine doesn't care about the king or the kingdom. He wants Dai. This is all a revenge plot.

Dai uses Frizz on him, and Crocodine is surprised, since in their last battle Dai could only use a sword. He's leveling up, learning new spells and new forms of combat. The villains are witnessing the evolution of Dai as a fighter, slowly becoming the hero and leveling up the way we all do when we play these games.

Zaboera's secret weapon is Brass, Dai's brainwashed grandfather

Crocodine chooses to use Zaboera's secret weapon, the one he didn't want to use because he considered it too dirty. He wanted to beat Dai fair and square, but he changes his mind because Dai is beating him and is now stronger. So he brings out what is supposed to be Dai's weakness: Brass, his adoptive grandfather.

When Zaboera got through to the island, he not only took Brass but brainwashed him into an evil monster. Now Dai is facing his only family, the one who took care of him for so many years, on the bad side with the red eyes and everything. It's interesting, and this is Dai's weakness right here.

Evil Brass casts confusion spells on the castle's army so the soldiers fight each other. It's a real pinch, because Brass knows his spells far better than Dai does. Dai can't deliver here. He knows his grandfather is brainwashed and doesn't want to hurt him. He takes a Frizz spell and even stops Maam from attacking Brass. The cunning Zaboera was on point with this, and it was good stuff because it makes sense.

Maam questions Crocodine's pride

Maam starts taunting Crocodine. She thought he was a warrior, an actual beast king, and instead he's using Dai's family member as a hostage to mess with him psychologically rather than fighting him properly. She's questioning his pride because he can't beat this kid and has to use Dai's own relative against him. I thought it was pretty cool that she stepped up, since that's the best way around this without actually hurting Brass.

Crocodine simply says he has already abandoned his pride and doesn't care anymore. Zaboera laughs at his manipulation tactics working, and even mocks Crocodine as a muscle-brained buffoon or something like that, because he set all of this up and sees himself as the mastermind. Earlier in the episode, Hadlar says Zaboera is the most cunning of them all, the brains of the operation so to speak. He's a very manipulative guy, and this was all his idea.

The plan to save Brass fails and Crocodine unleashes his strongest move

The heroes form a plan. Dai will take the cylinder Brass was kept in away from Crocodine, while Maam goes up against Brass in a magic duel. They split up to see whether they can find a way through this without anybody getting hurt, at least nobody Dai cares about.

Dai's plan fails, though. His speed has been halved by the Frizz spell, and he gets knocked away. Crocodine then brings out his most powerful move, in which his right arm gets enormous, like Scott Steiner's, and he fires a huge blast. This is supposed to be the killing move, the one that takes Dai out for good. Dai and Maam are blasted through a wall and knocked unconscious.

Meanwhile, Popp is still standing around asking what's going on, not wanting to get in there and help. He would have made a difference if he had been in the fight. That's the cliffhanger. The following episode is where Popp finds his courage and goes in like a house on fire to, hopefully, save Dai and Maam from Crocodine.

My verdict on Dragon Quest Dai episode 8

Overall it's a thumbs up. There have been no bad episodes of Dai so far, though there have been a few that were only decent. The previous episode was more of a development episode, while this one had a lot of action, and I enjoyed it.

I expected the next one to be even better, because top tier animators were working on it and it looked incredible in the preview. I was excited to see where they would go with it and how it would look.