If there were be an absolute reference for crappy anime, this would be very close to it. Never mind the neutral review here, it's impossible for me to be neutral after watching this... and never mind either the cool word "dragon" in the title, it's more of a disgrace to this race of noble creatures (lol).
And why make one crappy episode when we can make two unrelated ones and sell them as a bunch? Here you are with Ryuu Seiki.
This is your standard delivery for 80s anime, with the funky fantasy outfit and swords even though we're in the future, Japanese half-long hairdo that would remind you of your high school pictures, and keyboard soundtrack worth a prize or two in the boredom department.
All your standard, less-than-believable-because-we-lack-substance-and-dimension characters are also present (to my utmost excitement, eh), to deliver yet another fantasy anime that simply doesn't make it out of the marathon:
- The tentacle/slush/glue/foggy demons and insects intent on destroying the world. Everyone hates them because they are ugly, why should we blame them for wanting to do so?
- The dumbest 15 year-old girl(s) any writer could think of, including you who never wrote a script. She was tagged as having "inherited a battle instinct" yet we don't see her fight ever, except for firing a gun (let me be impressed here, ooh ahh). She must have known she'd lost any fight if she lifted a single finger. She's good at screaming though, as are all dumb anime girls.
- The wannabe dragon supposedly fighting for honor, while the only conclusion you can come up with after this hour of crap is that he probably just wanted to grab those 15-year-old's boobs with his huge claws, both in 1990 A.D. and 297 R.C.
Why say more? The script sucked. They make new plots and create out-of-nowhere enemies after more than half of the 2nd episode (why?!), they create characters full of angst for no reason (why?!), there are demons for whatever need of gore they had to satisfy (watse of time!), no character development (let us have gore and demons instead!), no nothing was good about this. It's very rare that I give 1/10 on any aspect, but this earned it, and doubly. I'm sure there is more character development and story in Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! than in here.
Do I need to explain the low value I gave to this anime? Thought so too.
This one feels like you're watching a Johji Manabe flick turned real bad.
Crappily crapped crap. Sigh... It's actually sad to think some people put effort in this for practically nothing, and then someone thought somewhere it would be nice to translate it and then
I thought one day I could watch it and then review it :)
***
Someone asked me to compare this anime to 3 others. Here's what I answered, just thought it might be funny (and less rant-like) :)
Compared to Lodoss, the latter is a chef d'oeuvre (and I didn't like it), compared to RG Veda, well, RG Veda was at least nice to look at, it's CLAMP
and compared to Escaflowne, well Escaflowne was real good with character development and deep personalities, with excellent music instead of plain keyboards, eheh
