Dragon Crisis!

Whether fleshing out familiar tales (Toradora!, Asobi ni Iku yo!), inventing something new (Spice and Wolf), or simply going batsh*t insane (Kyōran Kazoku Nikki), in recent times light novels have given us some of our finest romantic comedies. They've also given us plenty of mediocrity. One day at school, regular guy Ryuji Kisaragi is abducted by his long-absent cousin Eriko. He isn't terribly flustered; Eriko, a hunter of supernatural artifacts, is basically a D-cup Indiana Jones, so an abduction or two is nothing unusual. She drags him to a dock where a black market exchange of supernatural goods is planned, and quite naturally proceeds to rob the robbers. In the ensuing shootout the artifact's case is opened and, also quite naturally, a girl pops out. All she can say is "Ryuji," and she can incinerate a fleet of cars with the flick of wrist, so Eriko and Ryuji figure she isn't normal, but they don't figure on her being a real-live dragon. Or being pathologically over-attached to Ryuji.

Between its tried-and-true premise and dispiriting dearth of male characters, Dragon Crisis! doesn't exactly bleed promise. Ryuji is nice, but bland; the girls are pretty, but prefabricated; the plot is fast, fun, and refreshingly action-minded, but clichéd as all hell. The series is pleasant, but also completely undistinguished. It's a good-looking show, with nice rounded character designs and some surprisingly slick animation, particularly during the car-incinerating and magical-butterfly-swarming parts of the action scenes. There's plenty of harmless fan-service and even a bit of cute puppy-love thrown in for good measure. But you'll be hard put to remember any of it when the episode has run its course, except possibly for the irresistible way that Rie Kugiyama, as the dragon girl, says "Ryuji." And all that does is make you want to watch Toradora! again. Give it another episode to separate itself from the crowd, then dump it.

There might be a story here worth watching, and this is certainly a different take on the classic image of dragons, but the preposterous business about the treasure-hunting organization and the seeming compulsion to force fan service in wherever possible stand against a first episode that was already pretty weak on the writing front. It does have an unusually catchy soundtrack, but its technical merits are mediocre and these characters and situations are just tiny variations (if that) on content that we have seen innumerable times before. In other words, the biggest blow against the series so far is that it's as stale a two-week-old bread. Even Rose's cutesiness - arguably the series’ biggest draw at this point - cannot compensate for that.

Originally posted by Carl Kimlinger & Theron Martin at animenewsnetwork.com

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