who the hell are you?
Summary: Learning to ride and tame dragons comes easy to most students at Ansarivan Dragonar Academy, except for first-year student Ash Blake, who is known as the "Number One Problem Child." Ash is the laughing stock at school because despite his large star-shaped brand that marks him as a future dragon master, he has nothing to show for it. His dragon has not appeared despite his making it to Senios at the academy. Until now. One day, Ash's dragon awakes in full glory, but appears different from any dragon ever seen before: in the form of a human girl! What's more, Ash soon discovers that this new dragon has attitude to spare, as she promptly informs him that she is the Master, and he the servant. Ashs problems with dragon riding have only just begun, while the peace treaty with the Empire looms over the academy.
First Impression: It's fairly interesting, but it likes its ecchi-styled humor...alot. The manga's an eye opener for just what is allowed over in Japan as the minimum line. You get a nice full facial exposure to this in the first episode during the dream sequence.
First Opinion: I've been keeping up with the Manga this is made from, 'Seikoku No Ryuu Kishi'. You either have, or will notice that there is a handful of the manga I keep up with being made into anime this season. Some, I'm more enthusiastic about than others. Not precisely this one to be sure. Oh, yes, certainly it's going to be a fair anime, and it will be nice to see some of the scenes from the manga animated, I grant that. But this story has an issue with...exposure. If the first episodes to be believed, then they're going to try and stay true to that with the anime, in as much as they can. Normally I would be fine, if not thrilled to watch the absurdity of this unfold, but I've never quite been able to decide in my mind whether Dragonar is, or is not, a Harem style manga, and now, anime. Certainly there's ecchi-edged stuff all over the Manga, and from the first impression of the first episode, the anime as a follow up, but that doesn't inherently make it number among the shallow Harem genre. Having been keeping up with the manga, I can promise all of you that read this, Dragonar does in fact have an interesting story and plot in it. Maybe you won't feel it's the most original plot you've ever heard, but it is still well made, and personally I stopped caring about originality a few years ago, I grade by interest and entertainment these days. What additionally kills my interest, is the first scene of the anime that we're given. I don't know who the hell that dragon/lady/glowy-whatever is, because I've never seen either of her forms in the manga. As a matter of fact, we've not been shown Blake's, or anyone else's for that matter, ceremony for receiving a dragon. Maybe this is accurate to the story. Maybe it's from a part of the manga that just hasn't been translated yet. Maybe not. Either way, I always take points away for animes adding additional fluff to a story, because it's almost always for clipping the story short in some contrived way. Some anime are shorter than others, that's fine. They don't need to shoot themselves in the foot by manipulating the story to cut it short faster.
Making a manga into an anime involves changing many things, because of the transition from one medium to another. That's fine, I've seen such things add to the anime. (note how I said I was going to read Noragami's manga? I did. All the way up to where the translations are still being worked on. I loved some of the changes the anime made to the manga, it made the phantoms a lot creepier than they were in the manga). Changing visuals, actions, and minor events is fine. Shoehorning in characters and story events is not, that's suspicious as all hell.
In short, there is going to be a lot of pandering in this show, some of it's...meh, kind of explainable, with the whole "I'm a dragon, not a human" thin-as-paper reasoning, and in the manga later on they even get off some absolutely hilarious jokes with it, that I'm looking forward to in the anime...but most of it felt like cheap pandering in the manga, and I have a feeling its going to be even more insufferable for me in the anime.
By all rights though, if pandering is your cup-of-tea, line up and get ready for your good time with this one. There's going to be an, at minimum, interesting story in here, if not outright great for you, depending on your tastes and interest.
Just be prepared for maximum pandering, and a show that seems to have a mission statement of pushing the limits of what Japans industry will allow on the topic of nudity and exposure.
On a more positive note, off the top of my head, I don't recall any of it being very sexual in nature. So at least there's that.
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