So he goes around hitting every stranger he sees in the face with a club, reasoning that whoever handily dodges his blow must be the Night Master. Granted, that leaves a trail of bruised, unconscious strangers around Shu's little town, but Shu feels no remorse: He blames them for wasting his time by not being the person he's looking for.

Then he meets what he presumes is the Night Master: A willowy, self-possessed woman named Zola, who responds to his attack by destroying his club. But she refuses to admit she's the Night Master, and says Night Masters never fess up about their identity. And she isn't interested in Shu; she and her angry young apprentice Jiro are in town looking for a legendary incredible power that might help them fight the forces of the evil overlord Nene. Guess—just guess—who happens to have that incredible power in him?

When Nene's forces arrive in town, also looking for that power, Zola and Jiro both turn their shadows into towering monsters—hers is a bat, his a minotaur, and they're unimaginatively named Killer Bat and Minotaur—which have their own personalities and abilities, but also tend to mimic their casters' fighting moves. But their prowess isn't enough to keep Shu's people from being threatened, and when he sees his friends about to die, his own shadow turns into a monstrous blue dragon and acts to protect them. As the series goes forward, Shu travels with Zola and Jiro and trains in his shadow power, but learns that Blue Dragon can't be summoned at will—he's a power-hungry, sneering figure who holds Shu in disdain, and even when summoned, often won't obey Shu's will.

Not just another boring video-game face

Blue Dragon is based on the Xbox 360 game of the same name, and it has the usual hallmarks of a video-game-based series: A series of escalating boss fights, characters who are kind of interchangeable apart from their varying power sets, special signature powers that only get activated toward the end of a fight, and so forth. It's also clearly meant for kids, with simple, repetitive dialogue and a lot of exposition, sometimes involving characters narrating the events, i.e., "Their shadows turned into giant beasts!"

In spite of all this, Blue Dragon becomes addictive pretty quickly, largely because it's so combat-oriented, and those combats are so much fun. In the early episodes, at least, Nene's people tend to save the bosses with shadow powers for the end, and instead rely on surprisingly complicated robot minions with entertainingly creative designs. This first disc is worth it just for the robot-transformation sequence in episode two, which is particularly well animated and comes to a funny conclusion. And the shadow-beasts' big, dramatic attacks tend to be exciting and well drawn as well.

Blue Dragon is highly cartoony, with character designs by Dragonball Z creator Akira Toriyama, whose influence is particularly clear in Shu and Nene. Its episodic quest, its tone, its perky boy hero and the companions that activate and face off against each other in every battle all recall Pokémon. But it tends to be more emotionally rooted than that show, particularly when dealing with the furious boy Jiro and his shadow-beast Minotaur, who seems far older and more patient and philosophical than his caster, while still enjoying a good fight. It also tends to be funnier, both in Minotaur's acerbic comments and when dealing with Shu, who's initially so completely out of control that Blue Dragon flies around, dragging and slamming Shu through the air by the soles of his feet, where his shadow emerges. So far, the gamey, cartoony plot doesn't seem to have much to do with its deep-background tales of Dark and Light powers. But it seems like it'll be cheery fun sticking with the series to see what gets revealed.