Dances with the Dragons First Impressions

“Tsevellen Year 223. Using the Event Induction Computer, humanity, for the first time, succeeds in creating a space-time bubble. The law of conservation of energy is broken within the space-time bubble by changing the fundamental laws of physics, including the Planck constant, resulting in the emergence of matter derived from quantum field instructions. The hyper-physical phenomenon that allows matter to extract matter from vacuum fluctuations at will-” (This is the opening line of the show and it goes on for a while)

I’d be willing to bet I spent as much time debating whether to review this as I did watching the damn episode. On one hand, there are many big titles coming out. I should probably be ensuring that I get to as many of them as possible. On the other hand, I’m trying to pay attention to the less notable releases in case there is a hidden gem in there. Ultimately I decided to just bite the bullet and write up a review of this just so I could end the debate which raged in my head throughout this episode. So, I suppose we return to a basic question. Is Dances with the Dragons a hidden gem that you want to ensure you seek out? Of course not. It’s a complete mess. It reeks of the most obnoxious aspects of fantasy light novels with overly complicated worlds, poorly designed characters and enough fantasy terms that it should come with a damn glossary. Before I move onward, I should make it clear that while I am being harsh, this is not exactly a bad series, just an uninspired and derivative one. I’ve seen plenty of truly awful light novel adaptations, and this isn’t that. Still, Dances with the Dragons is far too lackluster for anyone to be wasting their time on it.

When I saw the Japanese title, Saredo Tsumibito wa Ryuu to Odoru, on my list of things to possibly review, I honestly had no recollection of it whatsoever. Within less than two minutes of starting the episode, I was certain of what I was dealing with, though. Our main characters are- You know what? No. I can’t be bothered. There’s Red-haired one and Grey-haired one. I’m sorry if this seems lazy, but they made the names rather complicated and I just can’t be bothered. Hell, Grey actually has a half dozen names, so I’m just sticking with this approach. Anyway, they’re operatives, named Jushikists, that hunt dragons. The reason there are dragons involves quantum technology and matter manipulation, and frankly there is too much backstory in this first episode for me to parse it all out. Our two leads are your standard pair of mismatched leads. Red is practical and focused on his finances while Grey is focused on the rituals of his people and the glory of victory. I don’t know who all will actually remember this series, but I had the thought several times while watching the episode that this was Getbackers but with dragons. That isn’t exactly a kind comparison, by the way. Grey is probably the more annoying of the two, mainly because he keeps throwing around the very terms that make me pine for a glossary. He also has a ridiculous weapon that looks like a buster sword from Final Fantasy VII had a child with a gunblade from Final Fantasy VIII.

The design for this series served as swift indicator of what I was in for. The show is not quite ugly, but it comes close. The shadows and darkness are annoyingly unlit in this show. One may assume the reasoning behind the poor lighting is to hide limitations in animation during fight scenes or to provide censorship, but I’m not convinced by those explanations. There are dialogue based scenes that also suffer from this problem, so I think it may come down to basic incompetence. The character designs are bland. Red and Grey continue to be set up as a blatant contrast with Red wearing a long white coat, and Grey wearing mainly black attire. Neither one is designed in an impactful fashion, but I suppose they fare better than the secondary cast who are universally unmemorable in their designs. The animation is generally mediocre as well. There are a few moments where I thought something looked good, Grey’s cat was well designed, but, in most scenarios, I was left noticing aspect in which it was lacking, like how I could blatantly tell which door Red was going to open, because it was the one with appreciably less detail.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• There isn’t much plot in this first episode. They kill two dragons. Red complains to Grey. Red hangs out with his girlfriend. And there is someone who is out killing Jushikists whose primary target is one or both of our leads. That’s it. And almost none of that feels like it connects at all.
• Just wanted to list a few of the words I’d need to learn to understand this show: Tsevellan, Jushiki, Aini, Draken, Altar, Proke, Alsok, Lapetodes, Oujes, Ilum, Vaisen, Kenryu and Eridana. Those are all from the first half of the episode! Plus, that’s not accounting for all the meaningless terms that I can at least understand, like ‘The Great Wise One.’
• I do somewhat like the relationship between Red and his elven girlfriend. There isn’t much of it, but I figured I should say something nice. I’m getting annoyed.
• The production studio, Seven Arcs Pictures, isn’t one I’m particularly familiar with. They’re apparently best known for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Night Shift Nurses… There is a joke in there somewhere, but this wore me out and it’s late.