Bandai has a number of popular anime shows that they've managed to put on cable, among them Power Rangers, Digimon and Gundam Seed.  One of their latest offerings is DICE, a show that Bandai did in-house for North American audiances.  They have retained control of the merchandising rights, making DICE one of the few properties where the TV show, toys and video games are all produced by a single company.  Because of this conscience decision to market all aspects of the show themselves, the show was created with a lot of tie-ins in mind.  The upshot is that the story takes a back seat to the what toys and games can be spun off from the series, and that makes the show not nearly as exciting or entertaining as one might have hoped.

To create this show, it seems that Bandai has taken aspects from other successful shows, put them together, and ended up with a mess that is generally unexciting.  The show plays like a mixture of Thunderbirds, Power Rangers, and Transformers.  It has the traits that those shows have, but none of the charm.

D.I.C.E. stands for DNA Integrated Cybernetic Enterprises, an organization much like The Thunderbird's International Rescue, that helps people who otherwise would otherwise have no hope.  DICE is a large group that has many space based teams but the show concentrates on only one team, F99, the only DICE group which is solely composed of teenagers.

Each member of DICE drives a vehicle that can transform into a mechanical dinosaurs.  They use these vehicles, and their powered armor suits, to change the paths of comets, fight pirates, or deliver a much needed vaccine to a remote location during a violent storm.  Their really isn't a villain or antagonist in the show, which is too bad.  Fighting is kept to a minimum, and when there are battles, its always robot verses robot.

This show should be entertaining and exciting for adolescent boys, but it's only marginally so.  I viewed the five episodes on this disc with my two sons, aged 9 and 12. The show is aimed right at them, and I thought they'd be a good judge of the show's appeal.  They only liked it a little.  The thought the character designs were cool, enjoyed the rocking theme song that starts the program off, and laughed at the comic relief.  The only thing was that the conflicts didn't interest them very much.  Since there aren't many fights, the conflict is often a race against time.  Can they set off the bombs on a comet before it slams into a planet?  Can they get a vaccine to a dying child in time?  You know they are!  Just like you know the Power Rangers aren't going to be killed.  It's the journey that makes these shows fun, not the destination.  The fact that there isn't an evil villain for the members of DICE to battle really weakens the appeal of the show.  I mean, they have cool weapons but they hardly ever use them.  What the point in that?

Having said that, there is one bad guy in the show, but he hardly ever shows up.  In the second episode they encounter the Phantom Knight, a powerful adversary who knows all about DICE and even has some of their weapons.  He too rides in a vehicle that can transform into a dinosaur, technology that only DICE possesses.  He fights one of the DICE members and wins, only to escape and proclaim that they'll meet again.  He was an interesting character, but aside from one short appearance in the next show, he isn't featured anymore on this disc.

Another problem with the program is that there isn't anything new in it.  Like the Power Rangers, the members of DICE shout their battle cry when every transform their vehicle: "Moto-raptor:  Libertize!"  The fact that "Libertize" isn't a word and doesn't mean anything doesn't seem to bother them.    The problem is that instead of being exciting like when the Ranger shout "It's morphing time!"  It just comes across as being lame.

The similarities don't stop there though.  Like Thunderbirds they reply to orders with a three letter acknowledgment (G.T.R. in this case, which again doesn't seem to mean anything and comes across as being pretty stupid.)  Like Transformers, their cool vehicles are really robots in disguise, and in their robot forms they seem to be alive, growling at their rider when he talks to them.

Audio:

This disc only has a stereo English soundtrack with no subtitles.  While a surround sound track would have been better, this disc sounded pretty good.  The crashes and impacts were loud and forceful although there wasn't a subwoofer track.  Even the loudest blasts didn't distort and other audio defects weren't present.  A solid sounding disc.

Video:

The full frame video looked very good.  The colors were solid and the image was generally sharp, which is what I would expect from a recent show like this one.  Digital defects where very minor, even aliasing, which usually plagues animation.  A nice looking show.

Extras:

There are no extras on this disc besides a 30 second preview of the DICE videogame for PS2.

Final Thoughts:

This show, while it is marginally entertaining, leaves a lot to be desired.  There is a lot of action, but since you don't really care about the characters it's not that exciting.  There is a race against time in almost every episode which gets tiresome after a while too.  The show comes across as a marketing team's idea of what would sell to kids, not something that a writer thought would be entertaining.  The nearly total lack of fight scenes in most shows ensures that parents won't protest the show, but it also means that kids won't find it exciting.  My children said that it was okay, but when I asked if they'd ever want to see it again, they said "no."  That makes this a good rental.