- Location
- France
Somehow my Youtube algorithm churned out a video of this anime, looked at a few clips, then next thing I know I binged the two seasons in two weeks (my personal policy is no more than two episodes per day of a show, to make the experience last longer), and thoroughly enjoyed it as it filled my heart with wholesomeness, which is not a small feat since I'm not usually interested in slice of life animes, this one is actualy the second one I've seen from start to finish (the other one being Nichijou, by KyoAni too).
The design and animation were excellent, it was a little jarring at first to see the mix of detailed characters with everything else drawn in a detailed but "blurry" style (as if it was drawn with crayons), especially since my point of comparison is Nichijou, which had very detailed backgrounds (almost photorealistic in a few shots), but you get into it very quickly and was into it by the second or third episode. Again like Nichijou, the animation is top notch, the characters' movements are fluid, there enough animation in the background to bring life to the outdoor scenes (although I spotted some use of conspicuous CGI used here and there), the little detail that tells of the care taken in making this anime is how most of the time the characters' lips match the words they are saying, instead of abusing of "lip flaps".
Then of course there are the fight scenes where the animators flex as hard as they can with fight smoother than most animes centered on fighting. (although I'm aware that it's easier to do when you have two fight scenes per season rather than one fight per episode!)
All of this in service of a touching story of three (then four) lost and lonely people forming a weird but sweet ad hoc family. I was thinking during my viewing that Kobayashi is the dad of the family, then the anime drops any subtlety by having Kanna offering Kobayashi a gift for Father's Day. In fact, the most emotionally impacting scene for me where those centered on the "dad"/child relationship between Kobayashi and Kanna (like the scene in season 2 where Kobayashi and Kanna are going on a stroll outside, eating shaved ice while Kanna works on her school project? That oozed dad energy!), in fact one of the most moving scene for me is the one when Torhu is dragged back to her world and Kobayashi is left alone struggling to be here for Kanna, probably because it was the more "down to earth" situation as it's basically the plight of many single-parent families. (and I'm not even from one such families)
One of the funniest things in the story is how in a way it's a classical romcom about people finding each other, love, exploring the implications of a relationship as it become serious and you even get the parents' benediction, found a raise a family... except that it's completely out of order. At the point of the end of season 2 they are pretty much a family of four with Kobayashi as the dad, Tohru as the mom, Ilulu as the elder kid and Kanna as the youngest, while Kobayashi and Tohru aren't even in a relationship (yet?), hell, they even get the older "child" after the younger one!
Another thing that I really liked about the story is also what it doesn't tell you directly (or at least not immediately), maybe I'm just overanalyzing it, but I had the feeling that the story also subtly criticized the typical High Fantasy setting from where the dragons come from (which looks like your typical isekai setting used in so many isekai animes) as well as the Japanese work culture:
Kobayashi is an interesting variation of the typical romcom anime MC in that first she's a woman yet following the tropes more assigned to males in anime, and also that she's not a bland character that is only defined by her one gimmick (her love of maids) that plagues many MCs, but has a distinct personality and good and bad traits: she's a beast of work and a workaholic (and an alcoholic), had trouble socializing and expressing her feelings but is also great a reading people and their intentions, is surprisingly chill about how weird her life has become and takes in stride all this crazy shit about dragons and magic and other world to a point that could look like apathy, but is also often seeing reflecting about herself and the people around her and the implications of living with immensely powerful creatures for whom a human lifetime is the blink of an eye and came from a place with vastly different morals and value system, and has also a heart of gold that make her try to help anyone who needs it, coupled with how her bad habits that would only been brought as a joke in other animes has real consequences in that it's ruining her health ultimately make her a very realistic and compelling character, with her qualities and flaws, I ended seeing several traits from myself in her (not the alcoholism or becoming an enraged otaku when drunk, fortunately!), Kobayashi is one of my favorite characters in the show due to how I'm able to identify myself with her.
Tohru is the main source of funny faces of the show, and the strangest thing I've seen about her is the contrast between her past drifter cynical asshole self and the bubbly hyperactive Kabayashi-obsessed she's in the present, said change having happened literally overnight after meeting Kobayashi. But after thinking about it, what happened is probably the result of someone who bottled up her emotions and felt trapped by the expectations put upon her for centuries finally finding a way out and an outlet for said emotions, with explosive results. Another interesting aspect is how despite her character development making her not look down so much on humanity, she still keeps her own pride and sense of superiority (and how could you not, when you're a near-ageless magical flying nuclear reactor who can do anything a human can do ten time better?). Another weird thing is how she goes back and forth with her character development toward Kobayashi: she learns to respect Kobayashi's wishes and boundaries, and next episode she forgets all about it and prepare a surprise wedding for her. (but then again, a good part of the show's humor comes from Tohru's shenanigans, so...)
Kanna... well what more can be said about her that wasn't already said? Kanna is love. Kanna is life. Kanna is the most adorable anime character I've ever seen, they have nailed absolutely everything to make her adorable: her design, her childlike innocence, the way she can convey so much emotion despite having a constant bored expression, her voice actress, everything is top notch. And her dragon form is also unique and gorgeous. 11/10 most adorable 9 years old multi-ton electric flying fluffy lizard shapeshifter.
Elma, well to be honest I found her character in the first season to be quickly boring since she only revolved around food jokes and those got old rather quickly, but season 2 made me like her character more by expanding more on the rest of her personality (becoming a genuine part of Kobayashi's workforce, her sincere desire to help humans, her past friendship with Tohru), and how it also contextualize her obsession with food by not just making it a funny trait, but a genuine flaw that corrupted her ambitions for peace and ruined her friendship with Tohru
Fafnir didn't really worked for me. The idea of transposing the trope of the evil hoarding dragon to modern day Japan as a hardcore grinding gamer is funny, but there's no much more to his character aside from that, although maybe that's the point, that he's happy with his life and want to try what this "living with humans" thing is about out of curiosity, but that won't make it a life changer.
Ilulu's story is basically about a traumatized war orphan and child soldier trying to reclaim her missing childhood, and KyoAni managing to make it heartwarming is quite the feat considering her rather... divisive character design. Ive read that KyoAni changed her design to make her look more like a teenager, after checking it out, I can confirm that her original design in the manga is even worse as she looked like she was around Kanna's age while still having her giant torpedoes bigger than Lucoa, which is all kind of fucked up. Which serves as an excellent transition to the last one...
Lucoa, Lucoa, Lucoa... clearly the black sheep of this anime. Or rather, Lucoa when she's with Shouta, because the worst is that she's actually great as a big sister figure in the scenes that aren't about her creepy obsession with Shouta, like when she explains to Kobayashi how Tohru is much more happy since she moved to Earth, or her talk with Ilulu about past sins (since it's heavily implied that all of the dragon except maybe Kanna racked quite the kill count in the span of their life) before helping her becoming friends with Saikawa, or her talk about her weakness to Shouta, revealing that the past incident with the cursed liquor making her sleep with her sister wasn't just a running gag referencing a tale from Aztec mythology, but a genuine mark of shame that durably marked her... but it's all nullified soon after once she goes back to try to seduce a 11 years old boy. (they even managed to give her eyes so striking and unique that your gaze is genuinely more drawn to them than her body when she open them!)
And we can't say that this a misunderstanding because she's an ancient South American dragon-goddess, the show makes it clear that she knows exactly what she's doing. Truly the worst part of the story, but since 90% of Lucoa's story is about her relationship with Shouta, I suppose it was impossible for KyoAni to take it out without basically axing her from the story.
I've read that the anime is quite different from the manga source in its tone and that it severely tone down the fanservice, so I checked the manga by curiosity, and indeed, the anime is more about the Kobayashi household's makeshift family while the manga is more a comical one with sexy scene, and also when they said that it toned down the fanservice, it was severely understating it! Put it simply, the manga is basically a softcore comedic manga, and I'm not exaggerating, as there are several pages showing the boobs of the female cast on close-up and completely uncensored. (including Kanna's)
There are a few chapters that are pretty much impossible to adapt in anime without heavily modifying them, like "Tohru's in-growth scale" or "Shouta's growing pain".
The design and animation were excellent, it was a little jarring at first to see the mix of detailed characters with everything else drawn in a detailed but "blurry" style (as if it was drawn with crayons), especially since my point of comparison is Nichijou, which had very detailed backgrounds (almost photorealistic in a few shots), but you get into it very quickly and was into it by the second or third episode. Again like Nichijou, the animation is top notch, the characters' movements are fluid, there enough animation in the background to bring life to the outdoor scenes (although I spotted some use of conspicuous CGI used here and there), the little detail that tells of the care taken in making this anime is how most of the time the characters' lips match the words they are saying, instead of abusing of "lip flaps".
Then of course there are the fight scenes where the animators flex as hard as they can with fight smoother than most animes centered on fighting. (although I'm aware that it's easier to do when you have two fight scenes per season rather than one fight per episode!)
All of this in service of a touching story of three (then four) lost and lonely people forming a weird but sweet ad hoc family. I was thinking during my viewing that Kobayashi is the dad of the family, then the anime drops any subtlety by having Kanna offering Kobayashi a gift for Father's Day. In fact, the most emotionally impacting scene for me where those centered on the "dad"/child relationship between Kobayashi and Kanna (like the scene in season 2 where Kobayashi and Kanna are going on a stroll outside, eating shaved ice while Kanna works on her school project? That oozed dad energy!), in fact one of the most moving scene for me is the one when Torhu is dragged back to her world and Kobayashi is left alone struggling to be here for Kanna, probably because it was the more "down to earth" situation as it's basically the plight of many single-parent families. (and I'm not even from one such families)
One of the funniest things in the story is how in a way it's a classical romcom about people finding each other, love, exploring the implications of a relationship as it become serious and you even get the parents' benediction, found a raise a family... except that it's completely out of order. At the point of the end of season 2 they are pretty much a family of four with Kobayashi as the dad, Tohru as the mom, Ilulu as the elder kid and Kanna as the youngest, while Kobayashi and Tohru aren't even in a relationship (yet?), hell, they even get the older "child" after the younger one!
Another thing that I really liked about the story is also what it doesn't tell you directly (or at least not immediately), maybe I'm just overanalyzing it, but I had the feeling that the story also subtly criticized the typical High Fantasy setting from where the dragons come from (which looks like your typical isekai setting used in so many isekai animes) as well as the Japanese work culture:
- As I said previously, the world of the dragons looks like your typical generic high fantasy world of the kind seen in so many videogames and isekai stories... and through the different recollections of it by the dragons, show us how horribly fucked up such a world would be: civilization has been around for tens of thousands of years (inferred from the mention that Fafnir spend tens of thousands of years guarding his treasure), yet it's still stuck in the Middle Ages, warfare is constant, humans have to bow down to callous and lazy dragons and gods (who looks down on them as inferior creatures) as their only efficient mean of being safe from mass murdering dragons able to obliterate entire cities just for the hell of it. Things like selective breeding for rice and vegetable are seen as magic for Kanna and Tohru, while it's a thing we have been doing since the down of agriculture 10 000 years ago! One of the most telling moments is when Tohru and Elma first met: Elma is a Harmony dragon who actually helps people and doesn't ask for people to eat in exchange, while Tohru is a Chaos dragon who is willing to engage in a conversation with a Harmony dragon and isn't constantly in "KILL MAIM BURN" mode, and that makes them the oddballs of their respective faction! Is it any wonder that pretty much everyone who ends up in Earth for an extended period of time decide to settle here without looking back?
- As for the Japanese work culture, it's seen in Kobayashi, who's the quintessential Japanese salary(wo)man: extremely hardworking (to the point of workaholism), a beast of work able to do twice as much work as her colleagues and yet always available to give a hand, doesn't complain about her hierarchy or workload, do absurd amount of overtime, in short, the perfect Japanese Corporate Samurai... and she was absolutely miserable before Tohru and Kanna entered her life, she had nothing to live for beside work, compensated with unhealthy amounts of drinking to forget her loneliness and was already with a shitty health despite being in her mid-twenties. As funny her first meeting with Tohru was (Kobayashi: meets by accident a fucking dragon and a sword forged by the gods that will mind rape any mortal who touches it. Also Kobayashi: literally too shitfaced to be affected), the fact that she treats her drunken escapade as nothing too out of the ordinary says a lot about how unhealthy is her life. Without her life changing meeting with Tohru, I could had seen her one day keeling over dead from overworking since she didn't had anything else in her life. Then, once again, the anime drops any subtleties comes the second season with Kobayashi's monologue about how being a "functional member of society" grinded her to dust and left her alone and miserable and that meeting Tohru is what made her start to change. I don't think it's a coincidence that she started to fight back against her abusive manager only after meeting Tohru.
Kobayashi is an interesting variation of the typical romcom anime MC in that first she's a woman yet following the tropes more assigned to males in anime, and also that she's not a bland character that is only defined by her one gimmick (her love of maids) that plagues many MCs, but has a distinct personality and good and bad traits: she's a beast of work and a workaholic (and an alcoholic), had trouble socializing and expressing her feelings but is also great a reading people and their intentions, is surprisingly chill about how weird her life has become and takes in stride all this crazy shit about dragons and magic and other world to a point that could look like apathy, but is also often seeing reflecting about herself and the people around her and the implications of living with immensely powerful creatures for whom a human lifetime is the blink of an eye and came from a place with vastly different morals and value system, and has also a heart of gold that make her try to help anyone who needs it, coupled with how her bad habits that would only been brought as a joke in other animes has real consequences in that it's ruining her health ultimately make her a very realistic and compelling character, with her qualities and flaws, I ended seeing several traits from myself in her (not the alcoholism or becoming an enraged otaku when drunk, fortunately!), Kobayashi is one of my favorite characters in the show due to how I'm able to identify myself with her.
Tohru is the main source of funny faces of the show, and the strangest thing I've seen about her is the contrast between her past drifter cynical asshole self and the bubbly hyperactive Kabayashi-obsessed she's in the present, said change having happened literally overnight after meeting Kobayashi. But after thinking about it, what happened is probably the result of someone who bottled up her emotions and felt trapped by the expectations put upon her for centuries finally finding a way out and an outlet for said emotions, with explosive results. Another interesting aspect is how despite her character development making her not look down so much on humanity, she still keeps her own pride and sense of superiority (and how could you not, when you're a near-ageless magical flying nuclear reactor who can do anything a human can do ten time better?). Another weird thing is how she goes back and forth with her character development toward Kobayashi: she learns to respect Kobayashi's wishes and boundaries, and next episode she forgets all about it and prepare a surprise wedding for her. (but then again, a good part of the show's humor comes from Tohru's shenanigans, so...)
Kanna... well what more can be said about her that wasn't already said? Kanna is love. Kanna is life. Kanna is the most adorable anime character I've ever seen, they have nailed absolutely everything to make her adorable: her design, her childlike innocence, the way she can convey so much emotion despite having a constant bored expression, her voice actress, everything is top notch. And her dragon form is also unique and gorgeous. 11/10 most adorable 9 years old multi-ton electric flying fluffy lizard shapeshifter.
Elma, well to be honest I found her character in the first season to be quickly boring since she only revolved around food jokes and those got old rather quickly, but season 2 made me like her character more by expanding more on the rest of her personality (becoming a genuine part of Kobayashi's workforce, her sincere desire to help humans, her past friendship with Tohru), and how it also contextualize her obsession with food by not just making it a funny trait, but a genuine flaw that corrupted her ambitions for peace and ruined her friendship with Tohru
Fafnir didn't really worked for me. The idea of transposing the trope of the evil hoarding dragon to modern day Japan as a hardcore grinding gamer is funny, but there's no much more to his character aside from that, although maybe that's the point, that he's happy with his life and want to try what this "living with humans" thing is about out of curiosity, but that won't make it a life changer.
Ilulu's story is basically about a traumatized war orphan and child soldier trying to reclaim her missing childhood, and KyoAni managing to make it heartwarming is quite the feat considering her rather... divisive character design. Ive read that KyoAni changed her design to make her look more like a teenager, after checking it out, I can confirm that her original design in the manga is even worse as she looked like she was around Kanna's age while still having her giant torpedoes bigger than Lucoa, which is all kind of fucked up. Which serves as an excellent transition to the last one...
Lucoa, Lucoa, Lucoa... clearly the black sheep of this anime. Or rather, Lucoa when she's with Shouta, because the worst is that she's actually great as a big sister figure in the scenes that aren't about her creepy obsession with Shouta, like when she explains to Kobayashi how Tohru is much more happy since she moved to Earth, or her talk with Ilulu about past sins (since it's heavily implied that all of the dragon except maybe Kanna racked quite the kill count in the span of their life) before helping her becoming friends with Saikawa, or her talk about her weakness to Shouta, revealing that the past incident with the cursed liquor making her sleep with her sister wasn't just a running gag referencing a tale from Aztec mythology, but a genuine mark of shame that durably marked her... but it's all nullified soon after once she goes back to try to seduce a 11 years old boy. (they even managed to give her eyes so striking and unique that your gaze is genuinely more drawn to them than her body when she open them!)
And we can't say that this a misunderstanding because she's an ancient South American dragon-goddess, the show makes it clear that she knows exactly what she's doing. Truly the worst part of the story, but since 90% of Lucoa's story is about her relationship with Shouta, I suppose it was impossible for KyoAni to take it out without basically axing her from the story.
I've read that the anime is quite different from the manga source in its tone and that it severely tone down the fanservice, so I checked the manga by curiosity, and indeed, the anime is more about the Kobayashi household's makeshift family while the manga is more a comical one with sexy scene, and also when they said that it toned down the fanservice, it was severely understating it! Put it simply, the manga is basically a softcore comedic manga, and I'm not exaggerating, as there are several pages showing the boobs of the female cast on close-up and completely uncensored. (including Kanna's)
There are a few chapters that are pretty much impossible to adapt in anime without heavily modifying them, like "Tohru's in-growth scale" or "Shouta's growing pain".
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