Name: Dragon Half
Production: Kadokawa Shoten, Victor Entertainment
Directors: Sachiko Kobayashi, Masahiro Koyama
Original Aired Date: March 26, 1993
DVD Release Date: September 24, 2002
Genre: Fantasy / Comedy / Anime
Rated: PG-13
Running time: 26 min.
Number of episodes: 2

Dragon Contents:

This rating only indicates the dragon contents and importance they play in the movie/game/episodes reviewed.

R a t i n g :

This rating indicates how good or how bad was the movie/game/episodes reviewed. A rating of 5 stars on 10 is considered as the average which mean it is not good but not bad either.

Dragon Half originated from a manga of the same name written and illustrated by Mita Ryuusuke. The story is quite unusual since the art style constantly switches between normal proportions and super-deformed proportions (see the screenshots section).

As I’m sure most of you will know by now, there was only two episode made. Feel free to choose the reason for this from any number of stories currently circulating around the web since I am not knowledgeable enough of the series to make my own speculations. However, this is a shame because the books certainly contain enough material for a complete season...


Story line:
The real question: is there a storyline? There is one in the book version but the two episodes are a string of non stop randomness and nonsense. It was intended as such, probably as a form of parody of other anime series but since I must review the storyline, I will try my best to explain it.

Years ago, king Siva sent his greatest knight (Ruth the Red Lightning) to slay a red dragon (Mana). Mana has the ability to change her form from dragon to human as she wish but in the books it states that she changes into dragon form when she is angry. The story doesn't provide a lot of details about this, but instead of killing her, Ruth fell in love with Mana (in dragon form) and married her. Mink, the main character, is the result of this union.

Mink is a naive teenage half dragon girl (with wings, tail and horns), who is, like all other teenager girls in the epiisodes, highly infatuated with Dick Saucer; an the handsome singer and also dragonslayer. Through her encounters, Mink will realize this and will decide that the only way for her to be able to win the love of Saucer, is to become human. Thus, she goes on a quest to find a People potion. Such potion, as the story goes, was able to transform a slime (think of Nintendo's Zelda II or Dragon Warrior kind of slime) into a human and she (the slime) married a King who also happen to be same King Siva I have mentionned earlier. The offspring of this union was unfortunately not a human but also a slime (called Princess Vina) who had to master black magic to shape herself into a human. Note that this form can be undone if she gets hurt sufficiently.

Meanwhile, the King officially wants Ruth dead for treason for not having killed the dragon he was supposed to kill but we soon realize that he is more interested in having Mana than to settle a score with Ruth (the king is also oblivious to the fact that moving Ruth out of the way will probably not do any good to win Mana's heart, but most characters in the episode and in the books are short sighted). Mink soon find herself in the way of many people: King Siva because he wants to kill Ruth and get Mana, princess Vina because she sees Mink as competition for Saucer's heart, warrior Damamaru (who survived a stab wound to the head because his brain is very very compact), Dick Saucer because he was convinced by the King that Mink is a red dragon disguised a teenager girl and finally, the son of Azetodeth the warlock (a demon lord) whose gripe was written out of the first episode but who doesn't care about the story continuity and still want to kill Mink. All this in 2 episodes, not bad eh?


Images:
The image is what you would expect from a typical anime with frisbee sized eyes and the (over)use of chibis forms. Speaking about chibis, they are often stuck in that mode for several minute while in most anime this form only last a few second to add a comic element. of course they do this on purpose but it would have been nice to see normal characters a bit more often.


Sound & Music
The music is appropriate in most place but two episode is a little short to make a clear opinion on the subject. The end credits get some additional points just for the pure randomness.