Dragons in Modern Culture
Dragons are a familiar motif in Japanese art and architecture, literature, and popular culture. Some alphabetically arranged examples include:
- Gosei Sentai Dairanger is a series in the Super Sentai franchise. RyuuRanger was based off of a dragon and controlled a dragon-themed mecha.
- The Chunichi Dragons are a professional Japanese baseball team.
- Manda is the sea-dwelling serpentine dragon guardian of the underwater Kingdom of Mu. Manda serves as one of the primary antagonists in the 1963 tokusatsu film Atragon, however appears in minor roles within the Godzilla film series.
- King Ghidorah is a three-headed golden dragon that has taken many forms in the kaiju films, specifically in the Godzilla series, where he is commonly portrayed as a rival for Godzilla.
- Dragon Ball is a 1985 manga and anime metaseries created by Akira Toriyama, which features the seven titular mystical orbs. When gathered, the Balls will summon a dragon named Shenron that will grant one wish. Once that wish is made and executed, the Dragon Balls will scatter across the planet to be found again, however are coincidentally and commonly found by the main characters and allies.
- Dragon Quest is a popular video game series which debuted in 1986. The artwork is produced by Akira Toriyama.
- Kamen Rider Ryuki (English Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight) is a show in the Kamen Rider Series.
- Long is the main antagonist of the Gekiranger Super Sentai series and is later Americanized in Power Rangers: Jungle Fury as Dai Shi and Scorch.
- Nāsu ナース is a dragon robot in the Ultraman series.
- "Ryū (龍)" or Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
- The 2000 Capcom video game Breath of Fire IV features a tale of Ryu and Fou-Lu possessing the ability to transform into ancient dragons.
- In Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 fantasy-adventure anime film Spirited Away, Haku/Kohaku is a river spirit whose true form is an albino Japanese dragon.
- In the Dōjin soft video game series Touhou Project, a dragon is the Highest-order God of Gensokyo worshiped by all living creatures as the creator deity. Based in Perfect Memento, the dragon is said to live in the ocean, heavens, or rain and look like a serpent with hands and horns.
- In the 2010 Capcom video game Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, Amatsumagatsuchi the elder dragon of Sacred Mountain is loosely based on the Japanese dragon and possesses the ability to manipulate storms and wind.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Dragon
Famous quotes containing the words dragons, modern and/or culture:
“Hermann and Humbert are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about “the way things used to be.” But that doesn’t mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all it’s cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)