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Ixion Saga DT
Anime Review
There's something weird going on with Ixion Saga DT (short for "Dimension Transfer") where everything you can point to as a weakness of the show somehow works in its favor. Sure, the animation is nothing special and the character designs look like they were cobbled together from about eight different anime, but that just gives it a shoestring- budget charm. Sure, the plot may as well be nonexistent at times, but that's fine for a show where the main purpose is to make you laugh. Sure, the humor may be largely of the sophomoric variety, but who says everything needs to be sophisticated all the time?
 Camp can be a difficult vibe to capture, because aiming for "so bad it's good" often comes out just plain bad. However, studio Brain's Base has really nailed it with this show: a low-budget, self-deprecating fantasy comedy where it's clear that everything that's kind of messed up about it is 100 percent intentional. The result often feels like a smart show dressed up in disguise as a dumb show, much more appealing than the all-too common alternative.
 The series shares a common premise with several contemporary shows: a normal boy, hardcore gamer Kon in this case, gets trapped inside the world of a fantasy computer game. However, that set-up is where the similarities end. While shows like Sword Art Online mine this premise for serious musings about the nature of virtual worlds, Ixion Saga drops the video game aspect and becomes a kind of humorous fantasy road trip. The fact that Kon is a gamer does come up from time to time, but the show is more about poking fun at typical fantasy tropes and character types than anything specific to games.
 Kon's party, made up of stuck-up princess Ecarlate (who, like any princess worth her salt is hiding a dark secret), virile swordsman Sanglain, and the beautiful, gun-toting transsexual Mariandel, tries to escape the villainous machinations of an enemy militia led by the dashing Erecpyle Dukakis, or ED for short. Yes, ED is also short for something else, and you can probably guess what kind of problems Mr. Dukakis encounters; it's that kind of show. On the way, heroes and villains alike skewer just about every fantasy cliche you can think of.
 Like catching some late-night fare on Comedy Central, the jokes are pretty lowbrow on the whole. However, saying that the show is completely devoid of any substance beyond cheap jokes would be unfair. Mariandel in particular is one of the most sympathetic portrayals of a transsexual character we've seen anywhere, and the writers have a gift for mining humor out of her situation while making it clear we're laughing with her, not at her. Some episodes, like one that pokes fun at religion, actually run the risk of seeming like they might have some deeper message, but with this show it's probably best not to take anything too seriously.
 Some may be put off by the show's meandering pacing; for a group of people that are supposedly hurrying to the capital so that the pint-sized princess' arranged marriage can bring peace to warring factions, they make an awful lot of stops at beaches and hot springs in the like. ED and his band of minions, in addition to starring in the fabulously cheesy ending animation, also seem to spend a lot of time just hanging out instead of chasing after Kon and his entourage. Of course, if you're looking for a taught, plot-driven drama, you have probably already surmised that this is the wrong show, so no harm done.
Some anime snobs will call the show stupid, and they may even be right; the difference between embarrassingly stupid and laugh-out-loud-funny is often paper-thin, and we'd be lying if we said Kon and his friends never crossed it. All we know is, we thought Ixion Saga DT was on the right side of funny more often than not, and the fact that the mascot character is a cheeky flying squirrel with flight goggles cannot be understated. The show is currently available streaming on Crunchyroll.
Reviewed by Karen Gellender, January 2013
Below: Scenes from Ixion Saga DT.
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