Dungeons & Dragons (The Animated Series)

In 1983 Dungeons and Dragons was starting to become popular, or at least widely known outside of the basements of parents with geeky children.  News channels were starting to carry news of kids playing it and Christian groups were accusing it of Satan worship instead of Rock and Roll.  CBS needed something new to add to its Saturday morning lineup and Scrappy Doo was a breakaway character that saved Scooby Doo from cancellation (It wasn't until later that he was blamed for the show jumping the shark).  So CBS, in a rare forward-thinking move for a TV network, combined the IP from TSR and the storytelling skills of Marvel Productions (Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk, Muppet Babies, Transformers: The Movie) into a Saturday morning cartoon that ran from 1983 to 1985 and spanned twenty-seven episodes.  That is pretty short lived for a series, so it wasn't really a huge success.  It also got a lot of criticism for the level of violence, despite the fact that the weapons were rarely used again people or animals (the barbarian would use the club to strik the ground to create an earthquake) and when they were they did not harm the target (the Ranger's arrows ofter turned to rope and bound the target).  Eventually, the low of ratings and high criticism (at one point the National Coalition on Television Violence demanded a disclaim linking it to real life fatalities) made it no longer worthwhile for CBS to keep it on the air.

The characters were pretty boilerplate for the time and it is so stereotypical 1980's cartoon that it is really fun to rewatch, in the same way that you'd go through your old yearbook and laugh at the hairstyles.  There is the tall, handsome, older leader of the group.  He is blond and smart.  There's the thief, a bit shy and a cute female to balance out the leader.  There's the token minority, a black girl (she's 14 and probably a girl to balance out that there is only one other female in the group).  There's the loudmouth coward for comic relief, the nerdy, brainy wizard whose spellcasting is a bit unreliable at best.  You have the little kid cast as the fearless barbarian because...  umm...  because... Scrappy Doo.  And what 80s cartoon would be complete without an adorable little mascot?  In this case, we have Uni the baby Unicorn who adds nothing to the show except cuteness and the occasional comic relief or plot device ("Oh, no!  The monsters took Uni again!  Let's rescue her!") 

Just look at that face.  She was up to no good, I tell you!

The general plot is that a bunch of kids ride a rollercoaster at a fair and get sucked into the "world of Dungeons and Dragons."  Why them and not anyone else is, to my knowledge, never explained.  Personally, I blame Uni.  I never trusted that little bastard.    Where was I?  Oh, yes.  So they're randomly sucked into the nameless world of D&D and met by a short wizard known only as the Dungeon Master and told that to get home they must fight the evil Venger, a winged magical baddie who either has one horn or it too cheap to replace his broken-ass hat.  The DM tossed them a bunch or weapons because what harm could giving a bunch of kids weapon bring and told to go fight evil.  DM appears whenever they need help or advice and gives them riddles before disappearing for the rest of the episode.  Wizards are dicks.  At least when Gandalf pulls that shit he comes back and either saves everybody's ass or has been up to something useful - like chilling out on top of Saruman's tower until an eagle happens to pass by.  But even Gandalf never comes out and says, "dude, this shit's fucking evil and the bad guys are going to come and kick your ass."  He just says, "Hello, you tiny, defenseless hobbit.  Why don't you take this pretty ring and wander around aimlessly for a while.  I'll catch up later."  Yeah.  Wizards are dicks.



You didn't really think Hasbro cared about where or not
you shared with your little sister, did you?



The series, like most cartoons of the time, never really advances the plot.  Each episode has is pretty formulaic and has the kids meeting a random stranger, who may or may not be a henchman of Venger, and cleaning up after the loudmouth's mess.  Uni may or may not be at risk of getting eaten by something.  The kids whip out the magic weapons, kick ass, and then Dungeon Master shows up to fulfill the shows legal requirement of hold an educational value (yes, there was a legal requirement for a show to be educational, that's why so many had PSAs at the end).

In at least one episode, they got to go home for a short time before needing to go back to the D&D world.  Come to think of it, I don't think the cartoon ever named the world.  Sadly, the show was cancelled before they kids ever got home, so they're trapped forever in the fucked up land of D&D. 





Uni, that's the last time we miss the portal
because you were getting eaten by a grue!

The show is pretty bad, but it's a fun kind of bad.  The bad 80s styles and cliches are a bit fun to recognise and point out, the villains are over the top and evil for the sake of being evil.  The kids sometime agonize over moral dilemma that are quite silly, and the requirement to have some kind of redeeming value is shoehorned in so clumsily that I imagine the writers at times just said, "fuck it, let's do a sharing is caring episode and be done with it so I can go get a beer."  DM is completely useless.  In fact, he's exactly like an idiot pretending to be smart - he just blabbers some nonsense and tells you after the fact he knew it all along but that you needed to learn it for yourself.  The barbarian has no pockets whatsoever and yet manages to conceal a massive club. 

Let's face it - It's cheesy and cheese is delicious!