Top Ten Anime Of All Time: #9 Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure

This is the second in a series of posts about my ten favorite anime of all time. The previous one was , and this time we’re discussing the mecha series Dual!.

Dual is an anime that I’d have a hard time defending on objective grounds. It was a part of the big boom of anime spawned after the release of Neon Genesis Evangelion in the 1990’s. Anime like Argento Soma, Betterman, Gasaraki, and others took advantage of the new interest in mecha shows that bucked the traditional Gundam formula. Dual was one of these shows, created by the person behind Tenchi Muyo!.

Objecively, it’s a little better than average. But so many of this shows tropes and ideas have hit me on a personal level that it will always be one of my favorites, and I legitimately enjoy every bit of it.

Synopis:

Kazuki is a teen troubled by visions of another world. In that world, giant robots fight it out in battles that he cannot understand and cannot affect. He’s gotten used to it, and even blogs about the battles, naming each mech and trying to make a story over it. One day, he runs into the school’s princess, Mitsuki Sanada, who takes an interest in him. An unhealthy one.

You see, she has plans to help her daddy prove his research about alternate worlds. So she lures him over to her father’s laboratory, and an experiment quickly goes wrong. There truly is another world where mechs fight, just as in Kazuki’s visions, one that forked off of the chance discovery or disposal of an alien artifact. Now Kazuki is in this world, and part of its battles. And others are there too, including alternate versions of some people he knows very well…

Review:

This is both an underrated and unusual anime. As I mentioned, it’s heavily influenced by Evangelion, but it’s actually the anti-Evangelion; it’s a fun adventure where everything ends well, and no one has the crippling psychological issues that everyone in Eva has. Where most of the Eva-clones tried to be a copy of that series, with darkness and death, this one just borrows some of the style of it and instead has its own identity. It works a LOT better than you’d expect, because of this.

That style tends to show in the unusual story itself, and also in the way it riffs off of Evangelion. You have Shinji in Kazuki, but a healthy, normal boy. He doesn’t chase the destiny in front of him, but he doesn’t whine or shrink away from it either. Asuka is here, in Mitsuki, but Mitsuki is a daddy’s girl, and a bit of a brat instead of emotionally abusive. We have the Rei clone in a green-haired girl named D, but unlike Rei, D reveals a personality, and an importance to the plot that isn’t as icky as Rei’s role was. You even have a Gendo clone in Professor Sanada, but one played for comedy as well as one who finds he actually likes to be a father instead of a person who uses his kids. The mix of familiarity and novelty works well, and none of the characters feel like ripoffs despite the obvious homages.

The animation is basic 90’s anime. Decent, but not really fancy animation combined with the use of CGI. This was novel at the time, and the subtle uses tend to be more effective than the blatant ones. This series has a decent cast, and is one of the few anime that has a dub that is a decent alternative to the original Japanese language track. It’s aged pretty well.

The major issue would be the pacing. The first 8 episodes are well done indeed, but the last five rush things. The last episode is a silly (by the series’ standards) OVA which ramps up the fanservice a little. It’s the personal aspects that really sell the series to me, though.

Personal/Spiritual:

I don’t think any other series has resonated with me as much as this one has.

Like always, there will be SPOILERS in this part, because a lot of the appeal is based on the plot.

One of the most unusual things about this series is the idea of war as a game. In the alternate world, Professor Sanada’s rival Rara discovered an alien artifact that in our world was just ignored. He uses its power to conquer the world, but does it in a wonderful way which I wish more series used.

Instead of violence, he has set up a game. Every now and then, his daughter, Miss Rara, declares a challenge trailer to the rest of the world. When that happens, the alternate world’s Professor Sanada tries to stop the robot Rara sends. If they lose, (or give up by sending a call sign) the Rara army wins more territory, If they win, the world is okay till the next trailer. Rara does this to limit the damage the artifact could cause, and is actually not a villain in the usual sense. Well, a very friendly one if he is.

This is INCREDIBLY appealing. The middle of the series, where Kazuki joins Sanada’s team to fight, is the highlight of the show, especially when he discovers that Rara’s not an evil mastermind, not one bit. And when he realizes Miss Rara is a counterpart of a certain person back home…

This idea, war as a game, has become a part of my mindscape because of this series. Very few anime have the “no villain, no hero” idea and yet make it into a positive force. There’s plenty of anime like Akame ga Kill where it’s perfectly fine to have everyone be villains and antiheroes, but not many that have people on either side be normal and even heroic in their own way. The true villains of the show are misguided if anything, or just selfish, and a certain heroine isn’t so pure herself in the end. But it always ends well.

The story itself hits all my buttons, too. It’s an alternate world tale, and a heroic one. The conceit of having two worlds with two different versions of the same people is interesting, and the first few episodes show how disconcerting it would be to travel to a world where YOU are the only one who is different. But it’s fine adventure, too. One of my favorite spots comes late in the series, where Kazuki has a choice. He can stay in the world he belongs in, or he can leave it to fix things left undone back in the alternate world. The scene where he looks up at his giant robot, nods at it, and says in effect, “Yeah, I have to go back. I can’t leave it like it is now,” has always touched me. There’s no normal life for you, not just yet.

I even found after I wrote Triune: Three as One that I made homages to many of the characters in Dual. Doctor Ion in his non-armored form was always close to Professor Sanada in my mind, and SARA shares some of D’s concept, although the two are night and day. I liked the contrast between daily life and a secret life of adventure that Dual had, and I like to think it is a part of my own work as well.

Finally, the gentle adventure always appeals to me over the violent one. This isn’t to say Dual is bloodless or cozy, but despite having some seriously good mech battles, it’s not about the carnage. It’s funny, but not ecchi. The characters have depth, but aren’t angsty. And the concept is legitimately interesting; the mystery of the world and the alien artifact is revealed slowly through most of the series, and quickly at the end. It gels into something that personally appeals to me, even though I admit I can’t call it a work of art or even a hidden treasure.

I’m not sure I can draw spiritual parallels from it, though. Sometimes a secular work can just be a good, moral work that appeals to what C.S. Lewis called sub-Christian values; the common moral values that we all strive for that are the best of the pagan world, whereas the Christian values are the best of the world beyond. Sometimes it’s okay to be refreshed by those pagan values, because they aren’t at all bad in themselves. Dual is a fine adventure tale, and adventure is a part of life as much as charity, humility, and self-sacrifice.

There’s also some nostalgia here too. Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventures will always be linked to the TV network TechTV, as it was one of the mainstays on its Anime Unleashed block. There’s also the 90’s aspect, where a lot of the bad aspects of today’s anime simply do not exist. There is no yuri, nor much in the way of pandering save for the last OVA episode. While it’s a harem, all of the characters aren’t types like modern harems are. Mitsuki is a tsundere, but only in romance; she treats Kazuki perfectly fine at times, and schemes instead of abuses him. D is an emotionless girl, but not underage nor cloyingly cute. Kazuki is obviously a mecha hero, but he’s awesome in a sense because he accepts his role. Contrasted to Shinji, he not only accepts the offer to become a core unit pilot right away but the next scene shows him studying a manual, his face set and serious, in order to be a better pilot.

You can contrast this with Dual!’s spiritual successor, Tenchi Muyo: The War on Geminar. Geminar is heavily inspired by Dual, with the same “alternate world” idea, the same “only male protag can pilot a mech” plot, and the same “secret of the world” kind of idea. But Geminar is different, and not just in its fantasy setting. It’s heavily sexualized, with characters that quickly become stereotypes and a plot that becomes nonsensical fast. Even the comedy falls flat, with it centering around all the girls wanting the hero and the hero being a perfect Mary Sue.

Dual! will always be something special to me. Not many anime hit me on a personal level like it does. It’s quirky, unusual, and a product of its time. But it’s a good product of its time, and a fun mecha show.

Next up in the series will be the science fiction “magical-girl” series Figure 17.