Title: Dragon Crisis!
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Romance
Rating: 4.0/10
Summary: A normal high school boy Kisaragi Ryuji’s peaceful life is turned into an adventure by the return of his second cousin Eriko. Ryuji and Eriko seize a relic box from a black broker. In the box, they find a red dragon girl Rose. In order to protect Rose from the black organization, Ryuji decides to fight using his power as a relic handler
Review: Oh poor Dragon Crisis! you can so much potential after the first episode and you let it all go to waste. What happened? How could you have dropped so low in my ratings? Of the anime I watched during the Winter 2010-2011 season, this was by far the least enjoyable. It wasn’t just the jumpy story or poor art, the characters were horrible. I can honestly say that I didn’t like any of the characters in the anime. I probably felt neutral at best with all the ones I didn’t dislike. They weren’t the worst characters I have ever watched, but they were starting to get there with their emotional uncertainties and non-existent development.
The first thing I noticed was the art quality. Now some may say that art is all opinion based and can’t actually be rated properly. Some anime want to have very brightly lit colors and simplistic backgrounds, which is all well and good. However, while watching the anime I noticed multiple skips in body movements. For example, a scene was meant to have the characters grab hands. However, a split second before holding hands they missed each other and suddenly snapped into the correct position. There were multiple minor details that started adding up. At times the art was well done and not terrible to watch, and at others it was obvious the budget wasn’t very high for this anime. I also didn’t like the extremely bright colors used in the series. I felt that it took away from any dramatic or action scenes. The bright colors always seemed to keep a happy atmosphere which wasn’t present throughout most of the anime. It is possible that they were just trying to be different form the other standard animated series out there, but they didn’t do a good job with it. Again, it made the series look very low budget (which it might have been considering the story).
The story wasn’t well articulated. I could debate for the series being continuous or episodic. At the beginning the series it gave rise to a pretty solid plot. It soon turned into a poor romance with bits of action here and there. I wouldn’t mind the romance if it was actually done well. It was obvious from the start that the relationship between Rose and Ryuji was going to continue, but that’s because she literally through herself at him. Alongside the bad romance, the short stories weren’t interesting either. The introduction of Onyx was probably the best because it brought about a villain. However, I didn’t find him so much as a bad guy since he didn’t really do anything that bad. His intentions were to simply marry Rose and become more powerful. Although his true intentions may be a bit off, he never seemed to want to actually harm her. I can’t say the guy was as evil as they come which left a rather boring bad guy. Onyx’s sole reason was to bring about a competitor for Rose’s heart. I can’t say he was much of a challenger considering Rose was completely set on Ryuji. There were many other faults with the story that I don’t want to get into because it would make this post far too long. Overall I would say that the anime was boring and cheesy. It didn’t stimulate any brain activity and left us off with unanswered questions.
Like Onyx most of the characters were boring, or worse, irritating. Ryuji wasn’t a great main characters because he had no redeeming qualities. Being a Level 10 breaker (for unknown reasons) was about the only thing unique about him. His personality and attitude were annoying. I didn’t enjoy watching such a kiddy display of loving, then hating, then liking-like-a-friend, then loving again, as the series progressed. Ryuji’s emotions were all over the place when it came to Rose. My one compliment I give him is in the final episode where he admits treating Rose like a child. I’m glad that he at least realized at some point his actions didn’t reflect his words of loving Rose like a girlfriend. Rose was another annoying main character. The only compliment I give HER is having the same voice actress as Tiaga, a character I loved. We didn’t need twelve episodes of her yelling “Ryuji! Ryuji! I love you so much Ryuji! RRRRRYYYUUUJJJIII!!!!”. And yes I say twelve because she was doing it from the very beginning. In the end the mediocre Ryuji and childish Rose coupling was cheesy and stupid. Fools attract I suppose. As I said in my
first look the best character was probably Ryuji’s cousin, Eriko. She was the only one who had any signs of maturity and seemed to be laughing at the puppy love going on between Ryuji and Rose. It was obvious that in the end she was getting tired of the childish antics.
The soundtrack wasn’t terrible, average I would say. The opening was pretty fun to listen to from time to time because of the fast beat. I think they did a good job blending together the rhythm changes. I may not have understood the lyrics, but they sounded pretty good as well. I’m a fan of the fast paced singing and it had just that (at least at the start and finish). I’m not sure I will be listening to the entire OST though because I didn’t enjoy it that much.
Final statements: As a romance this anime is a definite avoid. As an action this anime is an avoid. And finally as an anime in general, yeah you guessed it, avoid watch. I can’t say that I enjoyed anything about the anime except a couple short fighting scenes. The story, characters, romance, and art were disappointing. If they have a season two I suggest they revamp the anime completely.
