Dragonaut: The Resonance — The Complete Series Part 1 — anime dvd review
I’ll admit, I was drawn to the advertisements for Dragonaut, even if they didn’t make that much sense. The web ads depicting the fetching female lead and promise of abundant eye-candy (“Real Dragons have Curves,”) sparked an adolescent curiosity the likes of which I probably shouldn’t admit to ever possessing, but nevertheless made me elevate it to the top of my review queue. Long story short, having actually attempted viewing Dragonaut, the most positive thing I can proffer is that the series is one giant pile of suck. The series offers next to nothing in the way of originality, story, action, or even mere guilty pleasure.
The story of Dragonaut is essentially a mash-up of your standard mech and magical girl fare, brooding youth, romance, and ecchi titles, but with none of the fun of any of those. In fact, just to save myself the unpleasantness of writing my own overview for the storyline, here’s the plot synopsis from wikipedia:
Twenty years prior to the story’s beginning, an asteroid headed for Earth destroys Pluto. Due to Pluto’s destruction, the asteroid, which is dubbed Thanatos, becomes temporarily stagnant in Pluto’s orbit. Now, in order to avoid Earth’s impending destruction, the International Solarsystem Development Agency (ISDA) works on the “D-Project”, and secretly creates weapons called “Dragons” after finding a dragon egg under the ocean. However, they soon find out that the asteroid is not their only threat, as powerful, destructive dragons from Thanatos appear on Earth.
After witnessing what looks like a murder by a strange creature, Jin Kamishina, a lonely 18-year-old boy who lost his family in a shuttle accident two years ago, gets involved with the ISDA and their efforts to battle the dragons from Thanatos. Helping him is Toa, a mysterious girl who saves him from falling to his death after the creature attacks him. As they delve deeper into the mysteries of the dragons, they encounter new friends and enemies, and also develop a closer relationship.
What the synopsis doesn’t tell you is that the dragons share some psychic connection with a human “handler” that can control their actions (a phenomenon called resonance), and thereby wield their might in battle. It’s kind of like Evangelion, only with effeminate boys and ludicrously busty ladies as the EVA pilots – and lest you think I’m spinning that as a positive, know that each and every battle in Dragonaut lacks the danger, urgency, and polish that made Evangelion’s so fascinating to watch. In fact, despite all the trappings of “adult” titillation, the tone of the show is much more in line with your standard Saturday Morning children’s programming. You’ve got your wonky cg behemoths, your inconsequential battles, your outlandishly naïve progression of conflict and romance… To put it bluntly, it’s just plain boring.
That all said, there’s still a possibility that Dragonaut’s at least nice to look at, right? Sure, the show is pleasantly colorful, and the characters maintain a decent distinctiveness from one another, but you can’t seem to shake the sense that not too much effort has gone into the Dragonaut package. Fans of Witchblade will undoubtedly notice quite a sizable overlap in the Makoto Uno’s character designs for the two shows. In fact, there are a number of characters that seem to be appearing in both shows, in mere palette-swaped form. Because of this, I found the sheer presence of certain characters on screen tended to grate on my nerves, no matter how pleasing their impossibly ovoid shapes appeared to be.
What with its wonky storyline, tepid action, blatant repackaging of character designs, cheesy cg work, and complete lack of a single original idea, it’s no wonder Dragonaut’s American distributors have had to market it the way they have. If it wasn’t for the “curves”, there’d be no way to get anyone in the door. As it stands however, there’s nothing to keep them from leaving once they’ve discovered the real product. Skip this one at all costs.
The DVD
As usual, Funimation does a nice job with their DVD set. This Season 1 part 1 collects episodes 1-13 in a slim two-dvd set. Picture quality is amazing, voice acting decent (I actually ended up listening to the English dub on this one), and the menus themselves are pretty slick. The second disc contains extras in the form of a commentary track for episode 10, textless opening and closing songs, and the usual collection of Funimation trailers. It’s not that much compared to their individual 4-episode special edition treatments, but you are getting a lot of episode-bang for your buck.
All in all, a pleasant package for a very sub-par show. Pick it up only if you really need a Makoto Uno fix.
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