Anime Profile: Dinosaur King

One day an object of some kind appears to fall from space into the woods nearby the home of one Max Taylor, a pre-teen boy who is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs, though that should be no surprise considering his dad is a paleontologist. At any rate, Max sees this unknown object land somewhere in the woods, and so he calls his friends out to come help him search. Max, together with Rex Owen and Zoe Drake, are known as the D-Team (can you guess what the "D" stands for?), and it doesn't take them long to find the point of impact, but they're shocked at what they find... stones! Not average, ordinary stones, but specifically shaped stones, with symbols on them... and a little button/knob thing. Touching the button makes them light up. Oh, and Max also finds a card that has a triceratops on it.

When Max rubs the card against the stone for whatever reason, the triceratops comes out of the card and stands before them in it's giant, full-sized CGI-glory. Yeah, the dinosaurs here are done in CGI, and they don't match too well with the traditional anime-style the rest of the series follows. But I'm thinking this was probably on purpose, to make the dinosaurs stand out. As Max cowers from the giant lizard, the triceratops somehow disappears back into the card. Max then rubs the card against the stone again, but instead of a giant triceratops, a little baby one the size of a dog shows up... and it's in the traditional anime style. Max names it Chomp, because it starts biting him.

Now that we know the heroes of the story, we are taken to meet the people who will be the villains. Doctor Z is the man in charge, a short guy with white hair and an extremely annoying voice. Along side him are the beautiful and busty Ursula and her two male lackeys, tall and slender Zander and short pudgy Ed. Together they make up the evil Alpha Gang! There are also a couple kids, Laura and Rod, but not too sure how they fit into this dysfunctional family. Oh yeah, and some blue-haird guy named Seth. Unlike the others, he actually looks like he's not a bumbling idiot.

The meat of the series here is that the D-Team must travel around the world capturing dinosaur cards, though usually they seem to be in their full-sized forms that need to be beaten so they will turn into a dinosaur card. And of course, they usually have to deal with the Alpha Gang. Oddly enough, Max's dad gives him and the other D-Team members an electronic device that supposedly acts just like the stones they found, just swipe the card through the slot... wow, isn't technology wonderful? Well, wonderful or absurd, one of the two. At least they included a ginormous manual with it... except that most of the pages are blank because apparently the people who made it don't actually know what it can do.

Okay, I'm just going to come out and say it... this is a Pokemon clone, pure and simple. It's based on a videogame, which I haven't played, so I don't know if the two games are similar, but the two anime series definitely are. Instead of pokeballs, they have cards. They both have cute little creatures, but in this series they happen to be baby dinosaurs, and when the creatures battle they are made bigger. The kids here are also similar to those in Pokemon. And the bad guys? Yep, Ursula, Zander, and Ed feel very much like Jessie and James, and Meowth.

Max Taylor is a dinosaur fanatic and the leader of the D-Team, a group of friends devoted to learning all they need to know about dinosaurs. He is the son of Dr. Spike Taylor, a paleontologist assisted by Reese Drake, the older sister of Zoe Drake, one of Max's friends. His second and best friend, Rex Owen, lives with him under the Taylor Family's care while his father is away.

One day, Max sees a meteor that crashes into a nearby forest, and wakes up Rex while also calling another friend of his, Zoe. The three investigate, and stumble upon magic stone slabs with images of dinosaurs. Soon enough, the kids are being called out to by the dinosaurs for help. It seems that an organization known as the Alpha Gang, led by Dr. Z, has traveled back in time to hunt down dinosaurs so they could use them to take over the world.

And so, the three kids start traveling around the world, battling the Alpha Gang while hunting down the dinosaurs.

Dinosaur King is based on a Sega game franchise with the same name. It's also the second anime series to be based on a Sega game, the first two being the Sonic the Hedgehog movie and Sonic X.