Spring 2014 – Seikoku no Dragonar

I saw the Light Novel for this back then over at BakaTsuki, and I’ve been wanting to check this out ever since. But as the first volume has never gotten fully translated, I decided to just try out the manga version. I wasn’t enthralled with it. Let’s give the anime a shot, though.

Ash Blake is a student at the empire’s institute for dragon knights. There, all students have their own dragon partner, dragons born from a tattoo-like brand from their bodies. Everyone, that is except Ash Blake, whose dragon has yet to be born even though he has his whole left arm covered by that tattoo-like thing.

On the other hand, normally dragons will only allow their partner to ride them, and no one else. That is, except for Ash Blake, who seems to be accepted by all dragons. So no dragon of his own yet, but can use all other dragons. Seems like an okay deal.

Even better, during a certain dragon race which he took part in, he stumbles upon this masked fellow…

and ends up being chased by his loli assassin that eventually leads him to falling off a cliff and awakening his dragon. Even better, his dragon is a dragon girl.

So Ash Blake now has his own dragon, who is a loli dragon girl, and can ride other people’s dragon. You can have it all, apparently.

And that, in a nutshell, is the premise of this show. There’s also this flashback scene of an armless Ash Blake being magically treated by some dragon woman, presumably the source of Ash Blake’s being special, but we don’t really know much more on that. Future revelations probably.

But dragons are cool. Dragons are always cool, so that’s a good thing. Dragon girls? Even better. But the pilot episode doesn’t show much on the dragons yet, save a few scene of them running, flying, smashing their heads on each other and whipping at each other using their tails. Okay, there’s this flying dragon that shot out ice for a few seconds, but that’s it. I want more.

The action? Let’s see. We’ve got Ash clumsily running away from loli assassin. We’ve got loli assassin unable to strike a killing blow on Ash. And we’ve got the same loli assassin accidentally falling off a cliff. I am underwhelmed.

Characters? Ash seems fairly inconsistent, quickly swinging from anger over having his dragon dissed to being nice and offering a helping hand, both towards the same person. And one of the main heroines is annoying as hell.

So did the anime change my mind on the series? Nope, still quite underwhelmed, bordering disappointed. Heck, even the fanservice felt out-of-place and uncomfortable. Which makes me sad. I kinda like the premise…

Rating: 4.5/10

P.S.: When you’ve got your dragon race going through the city streets, you’ve got tons of problems.