Where are the Cheetos?! And the Mountain Dew?!
What They Say:
Based on a table-top roleplaying session involving Gen Urobuchi (Psycho-Pass,Fate/Zero), Ryohgo Narita (Baccano!, Durarara!!), Kinoko Nasu (Kara no Kyōkai, Tsukihime) and more, Chaos Dragon tells the story of two countries locked in a never-ending war. In the middle of this chaos lies Nil Kamui, an island country that lost its independence after a guardian god known as Red Dragon spiraled out of control. Desperate to put a stop to Red Dragon’s rampage, a small group of heroes rise up to bring peace back to their world.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ah, the realm of tabletop games. Where you and your closest buddies become wizards and soldiers, spending half your time fighting monsters in catacombs and the other half fighting amongst each other about which party member has to store the dead body of their bounty in their Bag of Holding or whether or not you can survive putting a mist-form vampire in a pipe and smoking it (which apparently to my DM’s surprise when I tried it, you can). The realm of tabletop games can create worlds that can transcend the game board and become entertainment in other mediums. Sometimes these projects can be amazing (for example Record of Lodoss War, or the web series Critical Role), others not so much (for example, the Dungeons and Dragons movies). I’m not sure where exactly Chaos Dragon lies on this scale. Because despite the laundry list of A+ talent in the Japanese entertainment industry contained within it, the show is a bit of a hot mess.
The land of Nil Kamui was peaceful and at balance with nature. That all changed when the Fir…I mean the nation of Kouran attacked and Nil Kamui’s ally D’natia sat on the sidelines to see how it all played out. To make things worse Nil Kamui’s patron deity, the Red Dragon went berserk and left a massive path of destruction in its wake. As a result, Kouran plundered a third of the land while D’natia occupied a third of their own without lifting a finger to aid the citizens. The rightful heir to Nil Kamui’s throne, a naive child named Ibuki (created by Simadoriru, a member of the Stripe Pattern doujinshi circle) spends his days helping out at an orphanage, believing his absence from the outside world will keep the fragile peace created by Kouran and D’natia’s ceasefire in place. He is however proven wrong when a misunderstanding in the marketplace with Kouran soldiers fuses him with a legendary artifact that allows him to communicate with Red Dragon. After learning of the powers it has bestowed upon him and receiving aid from a mysterious girl bonded with a demon Eykha (created by Izuki Kogyuku, a well known light novel author), he’s forced to sacrifice his childhood friend to Red Dragon as an equivalent exchange to kill a Kouran general responsible for the whole mess. It’s also revealed that by killing his closest friends, he gains the power to take any life he chooses.
Still with me? Thought not.
That is the general plot of Chaos Dragon’s first episode, and boy howdy was it a mess. I didn’t even mention the appearances of two of Ibuki’s future party members. The first is the D’natian black knight Seallow (created by Type-Moon’s Kinoko Nasu), a young man cursed from birth to destroy any tool he attempts to use, and thanks to this curse driving his noble family into bankruptcy he’s forced under the watchful eye of an accountant named Meryl Sherbet. The second is an assassin priestess of a Kouran religious sect named Lo Zhen Hua (created by Gen Urobuchi of Nitroplus), whose sentient sword consumes the souls of those it slays and causes any who gaze upon it to covet it above their own lives. Joining them on their quest later is the immortal (and steam-powered) trader and mayor of his own city-state Kagraba (created by Ryohgo Narita of Baccano! and DuRaRaRa!! fame) whose past with Red Dragon offers a little insight as to why it suddenly went berserk.
It takes a full five episodes for the party to even formally begin their quest to find Red Dragon, and each of them are filled with enough tell-don’t-show exposition to choke a Bonded One. The trick the show uses most often to get away with these info dumping, Sweallow’s poor memory, is atrocious. A little info box would have been more helpful than this. The eye-catches in the middle of the episode also dump important info at you, but they come and go so fast they’re almost impossible to read. The one in the first episode took FUNimation three entire screens worth of subtitled text to translate and they all passed in the blink of an eye.
The final couple episodes suffer the opposite issue, spending their entire time on major fights that by the end major plot points introduced in previous episodes that could have serious implications on the world and the nation of Nil Kamui are ignored entirely. In particular, the existence of a Black Dragon (which actually gets a little screen time and a role in Sweallow’s backstory) and a Yellow Dragon in Kouran (and the eyecatches also speak of four more that aren’t even mentioned in the show itself at all for a total of seven dragons) are brought up for the purpose of introducing Wedges, which would shift the balance of magic in Nil Kamui to one of the other two nations, both Sweallow and Lo carry at least one of their nation’s respective color and they both use them. There’s mention of devastating impacts on Nil Kamui’s crops and wildlife when these shards are used, but after Red Dragon is calmed in the final episode these consequences are never brought up again, even though the balance of magic is never actually restored. There’s also the introduction of Ibuki’s sister as the main villain in the final act, who was never mentioned or even foreshadowed at all before then. I am pretty thankful that any sort of incest storyline could never really be implemented, but her interactions with Ibuki do border on the creepy side on more than one occasion.
On the technical side, animation was smooth and character designs stayed on point throughout. I did, however, have issue with the character’s eyes with their huge scalera and almost no pupil to speak of. Red Dragon and the brief appearances of Black Dragon were completely rendered in CG, which did not mesh well with the 2D animation though. Actions scenes also seemed choreographed well enough, but there were too few of them considering what this series was. I think another cour worth of episodes to space out the exposition and introduce more character development and action would have helped it tremendously.
In Summary:
In all, Chaos Dragon seems like an average tabletop RPG session. The experiences had on the table don’t particularly translate to other media very well thanks to the dysfunctional nature of getting multiple people together to tell their own story. It’s not by any stretch of the imagination unwatchable, but the feeling of not getting what you paid for lingers throughout. Sadly I cannot recommend it unless you really enjoy watching a tabletop RPG session and not playing one yourself.
Grade: D
Streamed By: FUNimation (US), Hulu (US), Viewster (UK, Ireland), AnimeLab (Australia)
Review Equipment: Honeywell 50” LED 1080p television, Roku box running the FUNimation app
