(Based on two episodes)
Summary: A normal high school boy Kisaragi Ryuji’s peaceful life is turned into an adventure by the return of his second cousin Eriko. Ryuji and Eriko seize a relic box from a black broker. In the box, they find a red dragon girl Rose. In order to protect Rose from the black organization, Ryuji decides to fight using his power as a relic handler.
Review: Dragon Crisis suffers from some dumb storytelling. The characters are a complete mess and for such a complex world the audience is being thrown into there is almost no world building. There are hints and whispers about how things work but without the information it is hard to know what the characters are even talking about. Although, this is a somewhat welcome change from the normal strategy of world building through expository dialogue (*cough* Infinite Stratos *cough*) it goes way too far in the opposite direction. Eriko wants to start her own organization but needs to get permission from a larger organization in order to hunt treasure, which they call the intolerable name “Lost Preciouses.” They are something called “Breakers” which are given out in ten levels and Ryuji is one of the few people in the world that is a level ten breaker but never once is it even hinted at what a Breaker is…
The narrative suffers from some of the same problems, the show reveals information at illogical points, as if the ideas were coming to the writer and he doesn’t know about the concept of editing. In the first episode, Ryuji is baffled by the idea that the Dragon knows his name and yet it comes to him in the second episode that he suffered a traumatic event when he witnessed a Dragon being born. An event no one in this world had ever witnessed! Dragons are the rarest being on the planet, according to the show, and Ryuji forgets about meeting one?
The show isn’t all bad, the character designs are cute, even if the animation seems inconsistent, and this world has a lot of potential if they ever get to revealing what the exactly the large treasure hunting organization’s role in the world is. The plot with the Dragon is compelling especially framed by Ryuji who has absolutely no interest in “Lost Preciouses.” There is a surprising amount to like about Dragon Crisis and I just wish the concept was in more capable hands.
Verdict: I’m two episodes deep into Dragon Crisis and I do want to see what happens in the next episode, if just too finally learn what the hell it means to be a level 10 breaker. However, making the audience watch just to get information they should already have is not a good way to structure a show. I suggest avoiding it unless you feel overwhelmingly compelled by the basic outline. There is some good here; it’s just buried under a mountain of bad.
(Summary from myanimelist.net)
Otaku In Review 