Dinosaur King has had a strange history. The series began as a series of card games from Sega based on the beetle fighting arcade games, and then a series of video games were released in 2005. Now there is an anime version on American. The story of Dinosaur King Volume 2 is as such: Two young boys, Max and Ben, find a tablet and travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs. While there, Max meets and befriends a baby Styracosaurus that he names King and meets with another dinosaur that is capable of speaking the Human language. And while in the past they stumble upon the evil forces of the Alpha Gang.
Highlights
With Alpha Gang's theft of King's mother, and Ben and Max encountering two entrances to Alpha Mountain. With this split we see some strange members of the Alpha Gang: little children, a young boy and girl. Max confronts the young boy who has a Torosaurus and Ben confronts the unusual girl whose dinosaur partner is an Allosaurus. After their respective fights, the two learn more about the tablet and go on to confront the Alpha Gang's leader, Dr. Z.
On their way to confront him, they are stopped and challenged to a fight by another minion of Dr. Z named, Nopiece. After their fight, and learning how to use the tablet for their own means, Max and Ben make their way to the top of Alpha Mountain to stop Dr. Z before he can finish his plans for world conquest. After learning the truth of Nopiece, Max and King fight against Z and his Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Overall
As someone who was more familiar with the Dinosaur King anime, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. But I will say that this manga is interesting, it would be best to go back and pick up Dinosaur King volume 1 to understand how everyone got to where they are. But this was still interesting even though I'm coming in the middle of the action. Other than being confused by two different versions of the same series, I rather enjoyed this.
The art was decent and aside from King looking like a more like a cartoon version of a dinosaur, all the dinosaurs in this story are very well drawn, and look as realistic as possible. And the ending seemed a little odd, but was still decent enough.
ComicsOnline gives Dinosaur King Volume 2: 2 out of 5 Tablets.
