I’ll admit it up front – there’s not a whole lot that’s original about Dragon Crisis. There’s nothing that’s going to change your life, or the way you think about anime. It doesn’t possess spectacular animation or background music. But in spite of all that, I rather liked it.

I don’t think there’s any question that the strong cast helped elevate this series beyond what it might otherwise have been. There was some awfully good work here – Hiro Shimono, Emiri Katou, Yui Horie, Yukana… They brought the right sense of whimsical energy to the material. Although it’s nowhere near expansive, I enjoyed the look of the show. The character designs were interesting and the backgrounds had a definitive sense of style that generic series usually lack. The characters were likable, with Ryuji and Rose providing a nice anchor at the center and the supporting characters – especially Eriko, Ai and Tokura – providing a lot of nice moments. The premise, while hardly groundbreaking, was at least somewhat distinctive and coherent.

For all that, I’ll be the first to say this is not a great show, or even a very good one – just decent. But like Wagaya no Oiniri-sama – to which I’ve already compared it – the final product ended up appealing to me more than the sum of the parts. It’s pedestrian, yes – but just a bit more quirky, stylish and likeable than it had to be. I certainly don’t mind a series here and there that doesn’t require much from me to follow it – I wouldn’t want all my shows to be that way, of course, but you can’t be passionate about all of them. Dragon Crisis is certainly less ambitious than many of it’s competitors from the winter season, but it’s also totally unpretentious about it. In the end, that’s enough to earn a mild recommendation from me.