Love dragons. Love sweet gentle characters who are misunderstood. Perfect anime for me! Right? Teehee, no =]
First episode was great, and gimmicks are put into place. All characters seem to have a single thing that really highlights how their character is going to be. For example, the disciple the dragon has is quick to submit herself to the dragon, is extremely powerful, yet still idolizes the dragon despite him not being all too powerful himself. The one guy who seems to REALLY want the disciple girl back makes it his whole shtick to go after the dragon and 'save' her, and the dragon is just a sweet jolly old fella who wants the best for his 'disciple'. Sounds great! Love these simple ways to introduce these characters!
Wait, what do you mean that these characters have exactly one gimmick of their personality they center around entirely? Do you mean to tell me that the disciple doesn't change attitudes at all, the guy who seems like he will be a good 'antagonist' shows up exactly 3 times in the whole season, and all the other characters act exactly the same towards the dragon until they realize he is good by some act? Of which they retreat into another 'personality' consisting of one overblown characteristic?
Uhm, yeah... Things get old/boring kinda fast. At least for me. Every character never really changes anything other than their view on MC, and most are just one-note, which I understand, but it's a bit hard to pass it off as 'haha feel-good anime ofc they don't have to worry too much about characters!' when being one-note applies to the main characters as well.
The formula is VERY simple for how things will go. Dragon walks into the place. A person who is in said place does not trust/like the dragon because of rumors they heard [which they somehow immediately assume it is him even though dragons don't seem to be all too rare??]. A person in said place tries killing MC. MC communicates very obviously he is not bad. The person does not listen. Some nutty thing happens and it is revealed that they now no longer think MC is bad. Something regarding disciple is brought up. Confetti, yay!!! Move on to the next place for the same thing to happen again.
This wouldn't be all too bad of a formula if something broke it up or the characters in said formula were interesting. The characters are uninteresting due to them being one-note, the dialogue is boring, the comedy doesn't even make me huff out of my nose, and worse of all, because of the fact nothing too eye-catching is usually happening, I actually THINK, which unfortunately makes me realize how there are a lot of strange choices the anime makes, and how all the characters might as well just be robots who say "Dragon BAD. KILL." and then after 10 minutes say "Dragon GOOD. FRIEND.".... strange analogy, I know, but seriously, this IS how it goes.
EVERY main character misunderstands this dragon instantly and tries to kill him every time they see him. Knight girl had a pass, even if the whole 'testing' him thing was objectively ridiculous. Water saint was actually goofy. There was a WHOLE OTHER DRAGON at one point INSIDE her barrier and she didn't care one bit about it, despite it literally announcing it was serving the demon king or whatever. Reminder; OUR dragon has this misunderstanding about him which makes the Water Saint want to kill/evict him PRONTO despite the fact he has been nothing but docile. After the evil dragon gets whooped by the disciple, you'll never guess how people treat it. AS A JOKE. NOBODY CARES ABOUT IT AFTER BECAUSE THEY SEE IT AS "docile". THE WATER SAINT DOES NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT THIS DRAGON JUST CHILLING!!! AND STILL VOCALIZING HOW HE WANTS TO DESTROY HER TOWN THING!!!
Aggravated me to no end. It's like every character has exactly one brain cell and the only character that has maybe a pea-sized brain is the MC. Every person misconstrues him as this great dragon who levels cities or whatever despite his disposition suggesting entirely different. I could see an argument being "Oh, well, they just don't know if he's tricking them or not!" Ok. Question. If YOU were a very powerful being who wanted to destroy a kingdom and can do so in 5 seconds, why wouldn't you? I, personally, would never go in, get chummy with people [takes a week maybe?], and than destroy everything. Like, what's the point? Why would they assume he is tricking them when he obviously has no reason to? He never attacks anyone or shows any ill will, so i get frustrated from a writing perspective due to the fact that they could've done SO much more.
They could've made him accidentally knock things over, accidentally eat someone's crops, etc.- THAT would have made it a tad bit interesting if they actually made him do things that COULD be misconstrued as evil as well. That one scene where he is eating hay with the sheep- could've easily shown how he needs to be careful with how he presents himself, as him wanting to take from the sheep could instantly have people questioning how good he is. They also could've played around with the fact that he basically knows nothing about the human world.
Anyways, so much missed potential in what they COULD have done with this anime. I wish they made the characters a tad more interesting along with the world. Water Saint was the only interesting character other than the MC, and i'm bummed she didn't go along with them or something because honestly, MC needs more friends in his Posse to NOT have these misunderstandings happen constantly. Unfortunately I don't think that can happen since the only thing this show is based on IS people misunderstanding him and nothing else.
In conclusion!!
=] - Jolly good MC
=] - Charming base idea, even if they do milk it all out for the entirety of the series
=] - points for water saint + disciple [ily precious bbs]
=] - points for no strange fanservice or out of place/character moments.
=[ - points for stagnation of idea, strange character views, unintelligent cast, and overall
=[ - I wouldn't reccomend this to anyone I know personally.
=[ - I wouldn't watch it again. Only thing i'd look this up for is the character designs. >v<
=[ - I giggled 0 times so it kinda fails at being funny which it tries to do constantly
11.5 out of 16 users liked this review
