This is the last review of the month. I won’t get into it here, but I’ve got some things on my plate that will take up a good majority of my time. As I said in my last review, the anime of this month are quick & easy watches. Shows that don’t take too much time to absorb & understand. So to not waste anymore time, let’s look at the short but highly quirky Dragon Half. Let the review begin!
Story/Setup
Mink is like every other teenage girl. She’s got a crush for a pop idol (Dick Saucer.....let that name sink in), has loyal friends, and is quite pretty. Actually, she not like every other teenage girl. Her father was a legendary dragon slayer, and had quite a career until he met his love....a red dragon. The pairing of these two resulted in Mink, a girl with dragon wings, horns, and a tail. This doesn’t suit well with the king, who wants revenge because Mink’s father retreated from the armed forces. Along with his daughter (A “Slime-Half”.....again, I’ll let this sink in), they conspire to make Mink’s life unbearable, and will do everything in their power to do so.
As you can tell, Dragon Half.....doesn’t have the most serious of storylines. If anything, this show practically never takes itself seriously. Hands down, this OVA is balls-to-the-wall, apeshit insane, slapstick hilarity. The bad guys are bumbling idiots, and the good guys are well meaning but goofy, or silly & sweet. I like stories like this. They’re simple, and don’t take too much brainpower to absorb into one’s conscious.
Animation
Cute & Chibi! That’s how I can describe things. Oh, and colorful!
The amount of cute that’s in Dragon Half is enough for someone to get cuteness diabetes. Everybody in this little show has a form of cuteness with them. Even the bad guys are adorable in some weird way. Just about everybody’s eyes are large & attention, and movement during the comedic moments are very over-the-top & exaggerated. At the same time, it’s very apparent that the animation in this OVA is incredibly outdated. I’ll give credit where credit is due: when this first came out in 1992, this was stunning. Today, however, it’s still attention-grabbing, but when compared to computer-animated show, it looks very primitive.
Voice Acting
Ah, the voice acting. Yeah......it’s not that good.
Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of a stretch. The voice work is certainly not one of ADV Films’s best, but it’s not horrible either. There are certainly some characters that have okay voices, but there are other characters that have voice acting that’s.....questionable. Mink herself is the culprit for blech voice acting. 9 times out of 10, whenever Mink talks, it sounds like the howling shrieks of the damned. Luckily, there’s a handful of tiny moments where she actually sounds okay. Maybe not good, but bearable at the least.
Characters
Characters are a strange thing in Dragon Half. Everybody in this OVA has the most barebones background, and due to the show’s length, nothing ever develops. In a strange sense, I don’t exactly have a problem with this. The meat of this show is comedy, and everybody will make you laugh (Or at the very least chuckle). Mink is definitely the one who makes me laugh the most: she’s cute, bratty, and her physicality provide a lot of the humor. She often comments on her wings, horns, and tail to humorous effect. Her Mother & Father are fighting constantly over silly things, the king & his servants are constantly trying to take Mink and her family out, and the king’s daughter forms plots that are just dumb. Again, there’s not much to the character, but the humor makes up for this in spades!
Availability & Pricing
For the longest time, Dragon Half was out of print. Considering that it was released by ADV Films, this is to be expected. What’s not expected is the pricing: used copies on Amazon start at very respectable 8 dollars in price (This is among the 2002 original & 2004 re-release). New copies are criminal as far as pricing is concerned (Especially where there’s so little content), with the range starting from 42 to 45 dollars for beginning prices. In a surprise move, this was re-released as recently as March of this year. Pricing in this is quite fair: used copies start at 10 dollars, while new copies begin at 11 dollars.
You can also find Dragon Half on Best Buy & FYE’s websites also. It’s 15 dollars at the Best Buy webpage, while FYE is slightly more expensive at 17 dollars. At little more expensive than Amazon, but these two are still a reasonable option.
Overall Impression & Rating
Much like Call Me Tonight, Dragon Half is a timekiller of an anime. Only an hour long, it has the power to stay stuck in your hand for quite sometime. Whether it’s because of how slapsticky everything is, the animation, or the over-the-top voice acting, you’ll be thinking about this series at the strangest of times. Sure, there’s some annoyances here & there, but the warped nature of this bite-sized OVA shines right through!
Dragon Half gets a 7.2 out of 10
Well guys, this is the last review of the month. I’ll be taking a break, getting my Christmas shopping done early, wrapping said purchased presents, and celebrating Thanksgiving with my parents & family friends. I’ll get some content ready to put up in December, so there’s that to look forward to. See you soon!
