Druaga no To, or the Tower of Druaga, was a 1984 Namco game. In this game, you control Gilgamesh (or Gil for short) and your mission is to rescue the Princess Ki (pronounced Kai) from the evil Druaga.

The Aegis of URUK follows the protagonist, Jil (no relation to Gil) and his quest to bring down the tower again 80 years after Gil, who is now the King, destroyed the original tower. Along with the anime, the 7th sequel to the original game will be released for PC. The Tower of Druaga: the Recovery of BABYLIM looks like its going to be a MMORPG although I’m not sure how the payment system will work as yet, as I haven’t really paid much attention to the game. This post will serve as an introduction to the new GONZO series, Tower of Duraga ~The Aegis of URUK~.

Summary:
Yes the OP gets a summary. The song is Swinging by Muramasa. It starts off with Jil waking up late for school, and getting ready in a hurry. He runs out and grabs a slice of toast from the kitchen where his “family” is. Outside his house, Fatina steals his toast and they proceed to run to the rail station. At the rail station, Fatina does some sort of Olympic class hurdle over the gate, while Jill just goes through normally, and some guy goes in the wrong one and is totally rejected. We then see a train full of people in armored suits, and Fatina does a high jump over them all to get on the train. On the train, she is pushing herself away from Jil and bumps into Neeba, while Jil looks out the window and sees Kaaya on a different train. The rest of the OP features Jil and Kaaya alternating between their “Druaga” universe and this modern day “school life” universe. At the end we see Jil and Kaaya holding hands and falling asleep on a bench infront of a “Tower of Druaga” poster.

Thoughts:
Definitely not what I was expecting, especially from GONZO. I absolutely love this OP, I don’t think I’ve watched an OP this many times since I discovered Baccano! (a show which I decided to watch solely based on what I saw in the OP). What really got my attention was how the credits were shown embedded on objects (kinda like some others, ie R.O.D.) and how it all takes place in (what seems to be) an alternate universe. At first I though that maybe this was about these kids playing a game, but there has been no hint of this after 3 episodes so I’m tossing that theory out the window. I also enjoyed the cameo appearances by everyone, including those I did not mention in my summary like Coopa, Kelb and Malty. Oh and the song is really addictive. My only (minor) complaint is that the song needs subs too! No, I don’t really care for the karaoke effects, and the English lyrics will probably be posted somewhere once the single is released (May 28th from what I heard). but it’s one of those “nice to have” things.

I am not a big fan of GONZO’s recent (if you can call the past 5-6 years recent) works, but I think Druaga has potential. Even if not, it is an industry first (along with Blassreiter) in that it is streamed online for free/subscription with subtitles at the same time it airs in Japan on YouTube, Crunchyroll and BOST. This has led to pretty much no (legit) groups fansubbing it at all. Advantages for us, the fans? Obviously, the fact that there is no need to wait x months (or years) before the official subtitled DVDs are released (thus the need for fansubs in the first place). We also have a choice. We can watch the craptastic quality that is YouTube (what I did for episodes 1 – 3). Or pay for higher quality (or so I heard) on Crunchyroll* and BOST. This will definitely be something I will write about often as I continue to blog Druaga no To.

*note: Crunchyroll has a free low quality version and a paid high quality version. From what I heard, the paid subscription will allow you to download the episode and it also has a iPod ready version too. I may give this a shot starting from episode 4 or 5.