A pretty solid episode of Dragon Crisis this week, though nothing spectacular. This one is about as squarely in the middle of the pack as a series could be, so far.
What did we learn this week? Well – Ryuuji is a “Level 10 Breaker”. We don’t know exactly what that is, but we do learn from Dragon Researcher Tokura that there are only seven of them in the world. We also learn that Rose, as a dragon, can apparently sense that about Ryuuji and that Eriko is somewhat pissed at only being a Level 7 Breaker herself. But that’s not the reason Rose liked Ryuuji so much – no, that’s because of something that happened ten years earlier in the mountains of Albania (which is the first Albania mention I’ve heard in an anime). He stumbled upon a dragon’s egg while treasure hunting with his parents, and like a bird Rose imprinted on Ryuuji as her parent.
Rose may be an immature dragon who may or may not have wings, but Onyx isn’t – and he’s the resident baddie of the moment. He’s a full-grown dragon with a black dragon mark, and he comes to Tokura’s research clinic looking for Rose and calling her his “fiancee”. After laying waste to most of the staff and security he tracks Rose down to the lab, beats up on Ryuuji and Tokura and knocks Eriko unconscious with some kind of noxious gas and drags Rose off in his limo.
On balance, this is a fairly interesting premise. I still think this is an exceptionally interesting-looking show by DEEN’s standards – the animation is nothing special but I like the backgrounds and character designs a lot. Ryuuji was a little less spineless this week, though he was kind of pouty when he got angry at his mother for calling him for the first time in a year and only asking about the dragon. He took it out on poor Rose and was getting ready to ditch her, though of course once Onyx showed up he was ready (if helpless) to jump to her defense.
All in all the jury’s still out on this one – it didn’t improve substantially in the second ep the way Yumekui Merry did, but it didn’t tank either. I don’t see much chance of this becoming an elite series but I still think it has a chance to be a solid if less than challenging diversion.
