Episode One-Derland: Magi-Nation

Plot: The forces of good and evil clashed in the moonlands over 3000 years ago. A shadow magi named Agram battled a noble magi named Eidon. In an effort to save the world, Eidon sealed Agram away in the Core Glyph, summoned by the Book of Elders. Peace fell over the land for thousands of years until Agram made his presence known again with his goons in tow.

Edyn, a young magi, believes herself to be the prophesied ‘final dreamer’ – the only one who can read the Book of Elders and seal away Agram again to save the world. The book leads her to finding a boy from our world named Tony. He is summoned into the moonlands by Orwin, the elder of the land, and finds himself able to summon a dream creature of his own with a ring his grandfather gave him.

Together, Edyn, Tony and a shadow stalker named Strag team up to beat Agram’s lackies. As they leave, they find that the Book of Elders reacts to all three of them, indicating that they’re all final dreamers.

Breakdown: Mmmmmmmmpbbbbbttttttmeeeehhhhhhhhhh….That about sums it up.

This show is basically every fantasy cliché in existence wrapped up into one and peppered with a Pokemon-ish/Digimon-ish system. It’s like they were using ad-libs fantasy edition. Did any of that plot synopsis, outside of maybe the dream creature thing, even remotely interest you? From the battle of good and evil, the ‘chosen one’ crap, destiny, fish out of water, ancient mystic book, hero from legend blah blah blah.

I had to actually look up the Wiki page for this episode because I was constantly forgetting names and details. Even when I was taking notes while watching, I kept forgetting.

Now, that’s not to say this show is that bad. I had no problem sitting down and watching it. It wasn’t a chore. However, if you gauge a show with how entertaining and original it is, then it’s pretty bad.

Despite the cliché as hell story and overall plot mixed with elements that bring nothing new to the table, the characters are alright and no one got on my nerves…….but no one stood out either.

Edyn’s kinda headstrong, though she has an odd penchant for panic attacks that seem to vanish by the second act. Strag is a spiritual stoic ‘knight’ kinda guy who seems to love being outdoors. And, finally, Tony is a pretty, athletic and generic boy who probably gets better powers meant to be the one the kids in the audience can pretend they are.

Agram is about as copy and paste as you can possibly get, and not even Orwin or Eidon brought attention to themselves. Everyone is exactly as you’d expect them to be. Hell, Agram’s goons? They’re a bickering goblin creature and a troll-like creature.

As a first episode, this is a mixed bag. It does an alright job of explaining the backstory and some technical aspects of the world they live in, but it doesn’t explain much about magic or dream creatures.

Each magi can summon dream creatures from a dream plane, and I suppose each dream creature….is something the magi imagined up? I don’t know. All I know is that they’re various creatures, who all talk, that get summoned by rocks and returned back into the rocks when they’re too weak to continue. The rock aspect is the Pokemon thing, the talking partner aspect is the Digimon thing.

That being said, the dream creatures are the only interesting part of this series, which makes sense because this entire series was based on a TCG. We have to have the only marketable part of the series be somewhere near good.

The character designs and abilities are somewhat interesting, even if some of them are kinda lame like merely tackling or body slamming people.

While magi can summon various dream creatures, each magi has their primary one – Ugger is Edyn’s, Freep is Strag’s and Furok is Tony’s.

I haven’t played the TCG, nor have I played the video games, and I’m not going to make assumptions about them, but this first episode is just weak. I really hope there’s a lot more meat to this show because, as it stands, it’s about as generic as you can get.

I will admit I liked how they hinted that Edyn and Strag were also final dreamers by showing Edyn reading the book and Strag reading it through his moon sense, but that’s about it. I also believe the dream creature battles will get more creative and interesting, but I just could not care enough to go on. I waded through this episode really trying to get my hooks into something, but nothing would grab my eye balls.

The art is simplistic but not bad, same for the animation. Sadly, the music is also just middle of the road.

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