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I loved this series.
A series like this with a premise like that doesnt ordinarily make my radar and it seems like the trend for the past couple of years has been around the monster girl subgenre of stories being animated in Japan. However Meidragon is bit different than something along the lines of 2015 SummersMonster Musume no Iru Nichijouhttps://anilist.co/anime/21093/MonsterMusumenoIruNichijou Demichan wa Kataritaihttps://anilist.co/anime/97592/DemichanwaKataritaiwhich Ill be reviewing later or the offering from this season 2017 Summer Centaur no Nayamihttps://anilist.co/anime/98519/CentaurnoNayami. In this series rather than the characters being outwardly obvious as to the nature of their being Tourus transformation is done with the intent to hide that nature outright. That adds a layer of comedy to the series thats missing in the others all of which seem to simply accept that Monster hyrbids or Demihumans exist and are therefore receive governmental administration in some fashion.
The other aspect of this show that I thoroughly enjoyed was the fact that it is a predominantly female cast of characters engaged in the overall plot. Any other similar premise would involve at least one male central character to give the heteronormative approach typically seen in these cases. In Meidragon however we have an adult woman being the central character which Touru finds herself hopeless devoted to much to Kobayashis chagrin was utterly refreshing. I enjoyed watching that play out over thirteen episodes and also appreciated the divergence from one of the triedandtrue settings of a high school or that Kobayashi wouldve been hypersexualized in some fashion.
In fact we see Kobayashi being a contributing member of society doing her work and overcoming the adversity presented by her projects and the overbearing balding boss who seems to only speak in ALL CAPS all the time. Her closest work associate is a closeted otaku Makoto who doesnt seem to be interested in her other than as a confidant in their shared sociologicallyshunned hobbies. The relationships and conversation surrounding Kobayashi definitely pass the Bechdel testhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdeltest which is pretty unusual for most anime.
As a character I found Kobayashi to very interesting given the unusual living situation that she finds herself in as a result of her drunken expedition. Shes levelheaded kind warmhearted keeps her cool in tense moments and often is the single voice of clarity and reason. She is an ideal in terms of whats needed for the purpose of telling this kind of story but in that presents a strength of character not often seen in female anime characters. She is neither tsundere or yandere she doesnt react disproportionately violent to comedic misunderstandings in fact the complete opposite she doesnt spend a majority of the anime pining over someone else and she is perfectly fine with living alone and keeping her own company. Over time her typical desire to live alone is altered as she comes to enjoy the company of her new maid and friend in Touru. The development of the Kobayashi character from the beginning to the final episode had me investing emotionally and I cared enough to see the whole thing through to the end to find out what happens.
Where Kobayashis appearance is lowkey Tourus is not. Between the two central characters Touru is definitely sexualized in that shes busty and curvy as you would imagine an anime dragongirl to be. In fact three of the five dragons transform into supersexy human analogues. The other two are a butlerlooking guy Fafnir and an elementary schoolaged girl Kanna. Over time though even that visual becomes less of a factor for me until Lucoa shows up and she went with a structurally unsound level of endowment. The comedy surrounding the physical attributes is more in line with the comedy Id find in a series like Oruchuban Ebichuhttps://anilist.co/anime/1060/OruchubanEbichu than anything else.
Touru and Kobayashis relationship form the core of the series and in this it begins as a standard fantasy component of the meetcute between two people. Tourus upbringing as a dragon often serves as the basis for most of the comedy which is fantastic because it shows the aforementioned coolheaded nature of Kobayashi in dealing with a dragons solutions to everyday human life in urban Japan. In the very first episode Kobayashis meeting with Touru before work results in her being late. Tourus solution is to reform into a dragon and fly Kobayashi straight to work while casting an invisibility spell to prevent those on the ground from looking up and seeing a huge green dragon flying overhead. The visual tickled me and Kobayashis thoughtprocess is revealed as shes coming around to seeing the virtue of having Touru around.
Speaking from a technical perspective I enjoyed the animation style a lot. I thought it matched the style of the story perfectly and the direction remained on point in presenting each episodes halves. The overall feel of the average episode reminded me of Azumanga Daiouhttps://anilist.co/anime/66/AzumangaDaioh which forced me to go online to find out if Meidragon was also a yonkoma four cell manga or newspaper comic strip. It turns out that its not its still a monthly running inMonthly Action. I loved the interstitials they used to separate the individual stories like the animated version of the horizontal line to make it clear that this is a line of demarcation.
Musically I loved the themes. Upbeat numbers both beginning with the opening in Aozora no Rhapsody by the band fhna and matched with the ending Ishukan Communication by the seiyuu of the seriesYki Kuwahara Touru Maria Naganawa Kanna Minami Takahash Lucoai and Yki Takada Elma. The slate of background music for this series delivered as well composed by Masumi itou.
While this is supposed to be a sliceoflife genre series the nature of the life being sliced changed from episode to episode. I felt that at its core Meidragon was almost a love letter to its manga fans as a lot of the subtitles of the episodes seemed to indicated injokes to stories presented in that format. Even under those circumstances this was a highly enjoyable series and accessible to wide variety of fans looking for an offthewall concept grounded in a sound premise.
90
/100