Dimension Heroes is cute.  That can be a horrible insult, depending on your audience, but I don’t mean it that way.  To date, at a prologue and 5 chapters, the story has made me smile, with its soft Saturday-morning-cartoon nostalgic glow.  It’s "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends", "Justice League Unlimited", "Naruto", and "Power Rangers", all wrapped up together.

I’m not sure of the author’s intent, but the story feels like it was written for kids, and, as such, I’m pretty sure it’s successful.  My inner child certainly liked it.  Hell, I’m still smiling now, 20 minutes after reading it. 

The story starts off with an obligatory fight scene, definitely Naruto-style, with lots of named techniques and a big robot to fight—some humour and some characterization, but mostly just hokey action.  The story then jumps back some amount of time to just before the five protagonists gained their super powers, and, for me, that’s when the writing is at its best.  The fight scenes are a little too slavishly cartoonish, while the back story is written more like a novel, the prose clean and straightforward.  We see the kids leaving school on the last day of the year, having teenaged conversations and engaging in teenaged antics.  Mysterious things happen around some bracelets.  It’s fun, in a very cute way. 

The pacing is mostly very quick, which I think is why it works.  The dialogue is sometimes fun, sometimes bad, depending on whose mouth it comes out of.  The female characters, in particular, don’t sound right, and the monsters are invariably too literate, talky, and accommodating for the context.  But, again, these just all seem to contribute to the general Saturday-morning-cartoon cuteness.  In stories like this, the plot is the thing.  And the evil villain chewing up the scenery.

I think the speeches of the evil villains could stand some trimming.  It would be nice if the evil villains were at least a little, well, evil.  Also the main characters are allegedly 17 years old at the time of the story, and I actually found myself thinking a lot younger — 13 maybe.  This is partly from the dialogue, partly from their sweet, harmless, angstless personalities. 

I think Dimension Heroes is worth a read.  I’d probably rate it higher if our readership was younger than I think it is.  For an adult audience, well, you’ll want to be in firm touch with your inner child before you even bother.  But if you still like cartoons and anime, check it out.  It might make you smile.

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