First Look: Dragon Crisis!
Title: Dragon Crisis!
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Romance
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.
First Look: Ah yes, Dragon Crisis!. This season’s fantasy romance that had the possibility of touching hundreds of viewers. Notice that I said “had”, because after watching many romances I might have set the standard a bit too high. But who can blame me after such great feats like Toradora!. It is unfortunate that Dragon Crisis! has basically taken everything I liked about romances and flipped them upside down. It pains me to say that Dragon Crisis! isn’t the anime I expected it to be after the first episode.
So what is it exactly about this anime that has got me so riled up? Possibly the extremely bright colors, or the obnoxious characters, it could even be the ridiculously fast relationship progress. I’m going to go ahead and say that the art isn’t all that bad and I’m just being fussy. However, there were clear instances of animation faults that did catch my eye. Although they weren’t major scenes, it was quite obvious that the editors didn’t take their time fixing every detail. Then again jumpy scenes might simply go hand in hand with the story. The anime is extremely bright and pointy. You can probably tell from the images above that the anime doesn’t have that bold coloring I love so much. Now I understand that many anime have different art styles, but this one just doesn’t feel right to me. It is possibly the way the characters are drawn, because I don’t have much complaint about the backgrounds. However, it seems like the illustrator just didn’t want to take the time to really wow the audience. The animation though has nothing on the romance.
The romance in Dragon Crisis! makes me think of a shotgun wedding. In fact, it basically is a shotgun wedding. I don’t know how it happened, but in the span of three episodes Rose and Ryuuji were engaged and confessing their passionate love for each other. How old are they again? 12? I just don’t understand how someone can fall for a person who basically acts like an overly attached younger sister that they have technically known for a week (if that). Or for that matter a girl falling for a complete loser she met once for a brief moment when she was just born. I mean where exactly was the development? Did the authors just want to get it out of the way since everyone saw it coming from a mile away? Even after that sudden confession nothing really changed. Ryuuji doesn’t act like he is head over heels in love with Rose as he claimed. Sounds more like he just spout whatever came to mind to get Rose to fight. And if that ends up being the plot twist I will probably end up liking this anime a lot more. Quite frankly the only character I like is Eriko who I’m sure is secretly laughing to herself as she watches her younger cousin in a state of puppy love. It seems like everyone is so hung up on relationships that they can never have fun. Characters who are no fun are not fun to watch.
I’m also curious what the actual plot of the anime is. I felt like dragons and mystical weapons could provide a very good story with heavy action. Instead I see the anime going for mini-arcs, and I’m pretty sure they don’t tie in together at all. Unless they pull a Toaru Majutsu no Index I don’t see this anime ending well. I think the anime would have done a lot better with a single story arc that built a relationship between Rose and Ryuuji, instead of cutting up into mini-arcs and accelerating character development. Now there are still a few episodes left so this all might change in the next episode or two, but for now I don’t see anything interesting happening.
Final statements: When I first started watching Dragon Crisis! I was really excited, but that soon faded because of my dislike of the main characters, and horrible plot/character development. I’m hoping it will change though and the action isn’t horrible so I will keep it on watch. As for everyone else, I wouldn’t suggesting picking it up and to wait for the final review.