Copyright © 1995, 1996 Sega Enterprises, LTD.

We've said it before and we'll say it again. A good action game does not easily translate into a good piece of film. PANZER DRAGOON is certainly no exception, and anyone not obsessed with this old Saturn title should avoid this baited trap like a lactose intolerant mouse!
I'll get right to the story and script so I can get them out of the way. They're crap. This is pure eye candy and fluff, with virtually no pretense of substance. In an odd way it's almost refreshing; this frank honesty about the film's intention to simply cash in on the success of a popular game. Almost refreshing, but not quite. The characters and plot elements are so contrived and rushed that it's actually painful to recall. (Ouch.) Very little is explained adequately, but I have a feeling we're better off. Add to this a comically forced dubbing and you get one of those scripts that we all remember from the early days. Otherwise pleasant voices repeating names pathologically, odd usage of colloquial English, and agonizing word choices designed to match lip movements that were never matched to the original Japanese in the first place! I winced a lot.
But here it is, the saving grace. PANZER DRAGOON's animation is actually pretty good. Mind you, I must qualify that with a distinction between the computer and cell animation. Yes, they're mixed and no, for the most part they don't mix well. We've been hearing a lot about how advanced CG is becoming and how a lot of animation is done with computers with no viewer the wiser. This is all true and (to an arguably large extent) good for the art form. But this is not an example of such cutting edge technology. It's not as bad as the now-infamous GOLGO-13 helicopter sequence, but it's still pretty obvious where one ends and the other starts.
To be sure, neither medium is actually handled poorly here. But the CG animation is so good it makes the cel work look flat and poorly detailed. The problem being that much of it is, in fact, flat and poorly detailed, especially (of all things) the dragons. This wouldn't have been quite so bad for a one-shot video riding a game's coattails, but the CG really makes you sit up and take notice.
It's too bad, really. The character designs and music were fairly nice, and the English voice actors all sounded good (especially Kim Sevier as Alita). They just had a piece of trash for a script. All in all, I have to recommend you give this title a pass. It seems to be a technical semi-triumph and an editing flop. Videos like this remind me of those Magic Eye 3D pictures. Sure it looks kind of nice and it appears to have taken some effort to produce, but do you really want to spend a half hour looking at it?

Released in North America by A.D.V. Films
VHS, English Dubbed 35 minutes
VHSPZ/001D $19.98
Available now in the USA
Where to buy