Dragon Crisis!「REVIEW」

Aww. Isn't that picture simply adorable? In all seriousness though, this is just another of your typical shounen anime with the happy fairy tale ending that we all love complete with your loveable (or very annoying depending on personal tastes) lolita love interest, your average teenage boy, his hormonal friend, well endowed sister and the shy girl who has a secret crush on him. Not to mention all those stereotypical minor characters but I won't go there.

Now the plot. Credit there for some originality in terms of the concept. The spin on the conventional mythology of a dragon was quite interesting. Other than that it was all quite bland and predictable. You have your boy meets girl in a really random scenario, complications arise but ALAS! there's always a solution and then you have your wonderful happy ending. The romance was way too superficial though.

The series was interesting initially with the high action and not so many elements of a harem but after episode 4 (the compulsory beach episode in any harem anime) it kinda of just...died. Episode 9 seemed like somewhat of a filler. The story did seem to be quite fast paced until mid way and then the ending was just too rushed for my liking. There was also way too much story and not enough back story I mean not to spoil the story or anything but they suddenly spring the fact that Onyx and Maruga are childhood friends on you in the last 10 minutes of the entire thing. I mean it's not like it was relevant or anything so WHY?! Ryuji's irrelevant parents also made a cameo in the last 10 minutes. That was weird.

Don't even get me started on the art. That picture I put up there might look amazing but the actual art was pretty drab.

Here you won't find the normal bright colours and nice character designs that you'd usually find in a shounen anime. Everything seemed terribly ordinary so it didn't do too well at keeping my attention. It wasn't eye-catching like say.. Star Driver. The only bright thing in the entire series is Rose's hair... and dragon mark.

COMPARE THE PAIR! Which would you choose?

The animation seemed a little inconsistent at times. Battle scenes seemed lazy and not so dramatic. There were some other pretty strange things I noticed but in case of spoilers, I won't post them. I really had no idea what the hell was going on in the director's mind sometimes.

Now let's consider the music. I actually quite liked the OP but the EP was just ridiculous. I found that the music conveyed the emotion better that the somewhat superficial sounding voice acting.

OVERALL:

+ Points:

• concept
• high action, well-paced first couple of episodes
• in spite of how rushed it was, the ending was nice
• music
• non-convoluted, easy to follow plot
• potential rewatch factor

- Points:

• predictability
• slow middle, rushed end
• character designs, boring colours
• animation
• voice-acting

Enjoyment factor:

Using Clannad as a level for boring, this was fairly enjoyable in comparison. It did have it's boring bits but there were entertaining parts to it.

Score: 7/10