First Look: Dog Days
Title: Dog Days
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
Summary: Republic of Biscotti faces a predicament by the invasion of Galette Leo Knights. In order to save the country, Princess Milchore summons a “hero” from the outer world. Shinku, a junior high school boy living in the Earth, is chosen as the hero.
First Look: Dog Days is probably one of those anime that you pick up if you have extra time, or if you just don’t want to watch any real violence but still have some cool action scenes. Like many other anime, the characters in Dog Days never die in combat. However, it isn’t because of some miraculous medicine or borderline save. Instead the characters don’t die because they are unable to. This alone already sets the anime back in my opinion. Although it is nice to see your favorite characters the entire series, it kind of pulls away from the combat knowing that the characters will at worst turn into balls of fur. The main character, Shinku, is the only one who obviously can’t turn into a cat when he is seriously injured because he is from a different world. Apparently turning into cats to recover from injuries is genetic.
The story starts off by basically finding a way to force the hero into fighting for Princess Milchore’s army. When I say force, I mean more of tricking. And when I say tricking I mean a dog made a portal right under the guys feet and he fell through. It wasn’t he most graceful entrance needless to say. After a rather slow opening things picked up pretty quick. The anime throws you right into a battle where the hero shows off his awesome skills. Of course they didn’t make him a completely dominating character with no challenges (because what’s the fun in that?) so that leaves some room for improvement. Currently the episodes are mostly about him fighting more and more people because everyone wants a piece of the fresh meat. But after watching the introduction there doesn’t seem to be many new characters in the line up. Kind of leads me to wonder where they will be going with it. My only guess is the rest of the anime is going to be spent figuring out how he is going to get home. Which is a bit sad considering the only reason to watch is really for the action.
What I’m trying to say is the anime has nothing going for it other than the action scenes. It isn’t intense, and I don’t think I’ve really laughed either. There can’t exactly be much drama because it seems everyone is actually friends with one another despite being from different kingdoms. Plus no one can die so I don’t feel the rush of battle compared to other anime. Another thing that is more of a personal problem is the main character. It isn’t his personality, or how he looks, or acts… it’s his voice. That’s right, if any of you have watched Star Driver you know exactly what I mean. I’m not saying the voice actor is bad at all, in fact I think he is quite good, but every episode I’m just dying to hear him say “It’s a pinch…”. Anyone else? No? Just me? Ok well I’ll just wrap this up before I embarrass myself more.
Final statements: There isn’t anything interesting about Dog Days. They set up a cute little world where you can see cool action scenes without the consequences of war. Without the thrill of battle though I’m on the fence with this one. There are a lot better anime out this season and I’m not sure if I can write 17 reviews in the end on my own.