My collection of short anime reviews

An action shonen title will not be complete without its emo poster boy.

Another day, another review coming up. Today, it will be for Dragonaut – The Resonance, yet another 2007 anime that will vie for the Best Anime of the Year 2007 title. Let’s see if this anime has that extra special ommphhh that will be able to unseat Nodame Cantabile from its throne.

Story:-
Set up in a futuristic setting where interplanetary travel (and warfare) is common, our unassuming hero loses his whole family to an accident. Two years later, he is engulfed within a serial killing case and he eventually found out about the secret project of a shadowy organization that aims to save the world from being destroyed by an extraterrestrial being that can devour planets.

This is your typical shonen storyline, and when I say typical, it is for sure will not be a masterpiece. Anyway, the anime started very well, filled with action and actually has good plot and character developments plus fluidly flowing storyline. I watched nearly 20 episodes in a day and by the time the Mars arc finished, I actually thought that this anime will get at least 9 out of 10.

Unfortunately, the story takes turn for the worse after the burning Mars arc, and the anime headed towards that train-wreck that is called the ending. The ending is full with typical shonen clichés and is too predictable; I started contemplating going to Japan and shoot whoever wrote the ending.

As mentioned above, character developments are done very well, and that’s about it. It is also very nice for this anime not to have any noticeable filler episodes and putting important flashbacks before the OP theme in every episode is also a nice touch as they will not get in the way later in the episode.

Too much boobs is not exactly a good thing.

Character Design:-
Let me get my complaint first, and that would be the blatant overuse of large boobs in many of the female characters. It was nice in the first couple of episodes, but it started to become irritating after that. As the anime goes on, I just blank them out of my mind or else it will really ruin this anime. Anyway generally, character design in this anime is good in general, with that prince from Mars and also that blonde computer genius (hahaha, blonde and genius in one sentence) being outstanding.

Moving to the designs for the dragons, they are largely very well done, with one important exception; the design for the female protagonist. When she transformed for the first time into that HIDEOUS PINKISH DRAGON, I thought to myself “Oh God, does this mean I have to watch the hero mounting her for the whole series?”. Thankfully, she is a little bit emo, thus she likes to run away (or being kidnapped or arrested or just being stupid) from the hero, and the hero has to mount a much cooler-looking dragon instead of her for most of the series.

Voice acting:-
With such a good roster of voice actors/actresses lining up for this anime, you may have thought this anime will have an excellent voice acting quality, but unfortunately this is not the case because in general this anime’s voice acting is just average. Fortunately, there is one exception, and that would be that prince from Mars. Voiced by the same person who also does L.A. in el cazador de la bruja, he makes the the prince sound very evil, and his gig is so much better than the prince’s subordinate that was voiced by Hirano Aya. In fact, he is so good, he alone may have scored one point extra for the rating of this anime despite the crappiness of the rest of the cast. I for sure will keep my eye (or ears) for this Mamoru Miyano bloke in the future.

Music:-
This anime has great OST, but why or why none of the OP/ED themes is any good?

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is superb, even in fast-paced scenes. Choreography of the action scenes can be bewildering and confusing at first in the beginning of the series, but it moderates itself as the series goes on. Integration between CGI and 2D scenes are also done seamlessly. The directing is more of a mixed-bag, as it excels at doing one thing while doing terribly at another.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. That ending ruins it for this anime. Nodame is still the undisputed king for 2007.

An action scene from when the anime is still good.