 The Tower of Druaga won't be winning any prizes for novelty, and it starts to run out of inspiration before it hits its climactic twelfth episode. But this fond celebration/send up of Dungeons and Dragons–type arcade games has a surprising amount of wit and drama to spare, and may even be better at pleasing viewers who don't know the source material than those who do.
The action takes place in one of those vaguely European medieval kingdoms that these kinds of quests always seem set in, even though the personal and place names are all taken from ancient Mesopotamia. The land, it is vaguely intimated, suffers under the oppressive presence of the dark god Druaga, whose intricate, spiraling castle (the tower of the title) rears higher than any mountain and loses its head in the cloud tops. Nevertheless, the city of Meskia, nestled at the tower's base, is a prosperous place, largely because Druaga's tower is the ultimate "dungeon": Adventurers from all over flock there, hoping to strike it rich with a plundering expedition, and naturally drop a lot of coin in Meskia before disappearing into the tower, rarely to return.
The sole seeming exception to this rule is Jil, a young teenage boy who dreams of climbing the tower and slaying the evil creature at the top. Let others get rich; he wants to be a hero.
There is quite a bit more to the story, but this very familiar structure forms the backbone of the 12-episode "The Aegis of Uruk." Jil, naturally, hooks up with a few other adventurers with their own skills. There's Ahmey, the badass woman warrior; Kaaya, the breathy-voiced healing mage; Lord Melt, the lecherous fighting mage; and Coopa, Melt's omnicompetent assistant. Other war bands are also making their way through the tower; each of these bands has its own reasons for striving for the top floor; and alliances between them form and dissolve along the way.
So far, so bad; this could be the template for every dreary animated sword-and-sorcery adventure series ever made. Luckily, the makers of The Tower of Druaga prefer to subvert the formula rather than repeat it.
 The first subversion comes in the very first episode, as Jil, breathlessly narrating his astounding adventure, tells the incredible tale of how he defeated dragons, monsters, a quartet of warriors who innumerately call themselves "The Three Knights," and finally slew the not-quite-as-tall-as-he's-advertised Druaga, even as he tragically lost each of his companions, usually just after said companion had just announced he'd be returning to his native village to marry his sweetheart when the fighting is done. (Even Druaga, just before he's impaled, announces his intention to get married. Druaga also tells Jil that he (Druaga) is Jil's father.) Of course, it all turns out to be a lie, a Naked Gun–style dream Jil suffers after he's incompetently gotten himself knocked cold during his first foray into the Tower. But it's a loose, anarchic, and very funny introduction to the series; and it's one that signals that the storytellers know the location of every boobytrap in the genre, and that they won't be above springing said boobytraps if it will earn them a laugh.
Druaga's early episodes continue to be broadly comedic. Boobytraps are explicitly evoked in Episode 5, for instance, when the party must traverse a dungeon stocked by a mage with a puerile sense of humor. Characters—even the serious ones—suffer the indignities of being gender swapped, transformed into furries, and flattened into the style of a 1980s-type arcade game. And in Episode 8, Jil is actually (and almost literally) inserted into such a game, and all the other characters take turns guiding him through a cliché-ridden dungeon.
But things become darker as the series unfolds, and by the end it is able to generate some fairly gripping tension. There is some political skullduggery in Meskia, for instance, and Jil has a fraught and emotionally complicated relationship with his older and more experienced stepbrother. Most of the humor also comes to revolve around familiar archetypes. Coopa, for instance, is the typically hyper female character who knows better than her boss; and her boss is played very broadly as an egomaniac, a lech, and a boob in his own right. But Druaga is also capable of some very subtle jokes; I particularly like that the aristocratic Melt's spellcasting technique makes him look exactly as though he's playing golf.
The climax, frankly, is both perplexing and aggravating, largely because it blows a massive hole in the plot wall so the producers can make a sequel, and is such an obscure and ill-motivated twist that it leaves various accusations of personal treachery ringing hollow. But at least it's a fine and exciting journey up until those final fifteen minutes.
 Animation is by Gonzo, and though it wasn't done by their A-team, it still looks good enough. Despite it being an adventure series, don't go into it looking for terrific battles. (More than once the series winkingly acknowledges its cheapness.) But what fights it features are well-staged and fairly exciting, because the makers have made the fights important to the characters—and because the characters are important to us, some of these battles are real nail-biters.
FUNimation has included a decent set of extras with The Tower of Druaga: Aside from the usual trailers and textless opening and closing, it comes with an episode commentary on Episode 5 and a bonus thirteenth episode, which shows us Episode 1 (Jil's fantasy sequence) from the point of view of his companions. Though superficially more realistic, it almost as funny and fanciful as Jil's dream.
The Tower of Druaga may have a hard time finding an audience because it is so hard to describe. Neither a parody nor a straight-forward adventure story, it's a loose and freewheeling entertainment that doesn't really fit into any pre-existing category. But it delights at every turn, and adventurers who plunge into it will return with a real treasure.
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