You do not always need a groundbreaking story with terrific plot twists and tortured characters to actually appeal to an audience. Something simple can also do the trick if tackled properly. Read: avoid shortcuts and the abundance of clichés. Dragonar Academy started well, looking nice enough to be that anime you enjoy watching without asking too much out of it. And somehow, it lost its way somewhere. And pretty quickly, at that. Will there be a Dragonar Academy Season 2 despite the show’s big flaws? Let’s find out.
What Happened So Far In Dragonar Academy
The Lautreamont Knight Kingdom, small and right between two foreign superpowers, is the home of numerous dragons. There, a select few children are branded with a Seikoku by the Mother Dragon, proof that they are gifted enough to become Breeders. Each Breeder is connected to their own dragon, also called Pal, through the Astral Flow. The Breeders raise their dragons in hope of them becoming Maestro or Holy Dragon, allowing the Breeders themselves to reach nobility status.
At the Ansarivan Dragonar Academy, students are taught to ride and tame their dragon properly…except for our protagonist Ash Blake. The first-year is the only Breeder without a dragon companion; a confusing situation considering the fact that Ash’s Seikoku is the largest one ever seen, marking his whole left arm. Not only that, but Ash also has the peculiar power to be able to ride any dragon. Those two occurrences make him the butt of all kinds of jokes. Until his dragon finally appears to him during a challenge between him and Princess Silvia Lautreamont. But his Pal does not look like all the other regular dragons: Eco looks like a young girl and has quite the character and attitude. The road will be bumpy for Ash during his journey toward greatness.
What Is going on with C-Station?
Dragonar Academy premiered on April 5, 2014 and ended on June 21, 2014 after 12 episodes. The anime is directed by Shunsuke Tada and Tomoyuki Kurokawa, written by Noboru Kimura and Takasugu Wakabayashi composed the score.
We start on the right foot: the story is nice and we easily recognize the fantasy genre. And we get to enjoy it until, God knows why, the anime decides that focusing on the harem/ecchi tropes is way more interesting when it actually has a proper plot to focus on. Now, do not misunderstand: being a harem anime does not mean that you are bad. Ouran Host Club or Highschool DxD are proof of that. But when you decide to lower the actual value of your product by prioritizing elements that should be in the background instead of elevating your story, there is clearly a problem here. Sure, there is a public for fanservice-based anime, but then do not bait us with interesting premises, making us think that we will see a plot getting polished episode after episode. Only to end up with diverse pairs of boobies getting molested episode after episode. When your own episode commentary introduces your series with “it’s basically boobs, fan service and dragons!”, you know that the show itself is telling the audience to lower their expectations.
A shame too because the pace is just right: not too slow and not rushed. But the lack of direction and focus (and the pervasive ecchiness) completely killed that positive by injecting boredom here and there. The romance adopts an interesting angle that ends up being completely sullied by Dragonar Academy’s obsession with sex: what could have been a nice forbidden love story turns into the question “can Ash have loli-sex with his loli-humanoid dragon?”. The show has at most three good action scenes (if we are being nice) while the rest is made of basic comedy slapsticks, fanservice, world building in overdrive and fanservice. Plus, said fanservice is terrible. Best described as creepy. It mostly consists of sexual assault, molestation, gropping, people being stripped naked to be humiliated, people being stripped naked for comedy purposes, loli, tentacles…Pick a struggle, Dragonar Academy. Even for a typical light novel plot, it could have still been enjoyable. But they also decided to butcher the writing and here we are, watching characters making random decisions that do not make sense at all or do not align with their nature. When aired on TV, the show obviously censored all nipples and shots too close to female genitalia, but the uncensored version got some of y’all covered.
The characters are cookie-cutter and the girls in Ash’s harem can be defined by the usual traits (kuudere, tsundere, dandere). However, because they are part of the main cast, Eco and Silvia actually enjoy more background and personality. May they rejoice as most characters do not even have an arc. The anime makes it a point to repeatedly throw in our faces that Ash is hot-headed. But we do not really see that. He gets angry when people make fun of him, ok. And? What is the point of insisting so much on a trait you are not actually using in a way that would make the viewers go “he sure is like that, it’s gonna cause X and Y situation”? They keep insisting on something that has no impact at all on the story. And it is not even something they visually demonstrate. They missed the opportunity to do something great with him because, otherwise, Ash is bland. If it were not for him being the main character, he could have been an extra in the background, that would have changed nothing. Eco is the resident loli, a package that comes with extra nudity. She clearly acknowledges the fact that she is the “pet” and Ash the master, but she keeps rejecting that idea by asserting herself as the one in charge, and calling Ash her servant. Interestingly, it is not because she is a tsundere but rather because of not only her pride, but also due to the nature of her feelings for Ash and the way she wants him to feel about her. It is a nice take on her character that is completely wasted on the abundance of clichés she keeps spouting and how she keeps getting kidnapped when she is supposed to be a dragon. Silvia is a tsundere though. Through and through. Something that is exacerbated by the fact that she is in charge of moral conduct in the Academy. As the heir Princess, she takes being a Breeder really seriously, as it is also a dream she has cradled since she was a child. That dream of hers is actually linked to Ash, in ways both of them actually forgot. The rest of the cast is anecdotic and there is really nothing unusual jumping out of them. They appear when needed, fulfill their role as plot-tools and then leave.
The animation is average. There is really nothing to it. The fights do not capture the grand scale on what dragons are fighting. So instead of fluidity and aerial choreography, we get still frames with dramatic angles and lasers fired at a distance. However, the studio made sure to work with care and attention on the slimy tentacles, their movements and the, of course, the jiggling breasts.Priorities. If you really wanna have a quick look at some well animated dragons and a bit of a fight, just watch the opening several times. The character design is painfully generic, going for a moe style with sharp lines. Female characters are divided into two categories: the flat chested ones and the balloons & melons ones. Those unnaturally inflated breasts contrast with the slender frames in a mockery of proportions. The girls are often naked in this show, so you will notice rather quickly.
C-Station is a studio specialising in subcontracting for other studios, therefore its catalog of personal projects is not that extensive. For example, they have nothing listed right now or for 2022, but you can be sure that they are busy working on a specific aspect of some other studios’ projects.
What do we know about Dragonar Academy Season 2 so far?
Chances to see a second season look bleak. The anime ended ages ago and nothing, not even a hint, made its way to the public. The Blu-ray sales were actually weak and it does not look like the anime helped in boosting the sales of the light novel or the manga. Which is usually the role of that medium when based on a light novel.
What are fans saying about Dragonar Academy Season 2?
People are still discovering that anime nowadays, but most people who know about it are not dwelling on the idea of a second season. There is literally no conversation about it and to find one, you have to dig pretty deep. The subreddit is almost deserted, with most of the recent posts receiving no answers at all or just the one. Said subreddit is even pretty small with barely any updates. The same can be said on Twitter where you will not even find the usual fanarts, pictures of goodies and whatnots. Dragonar Academy received mediocre scores on IMDB, MAL and AniList.
Will there be Dragonar Academy Season 2?
The light novel is written by Shiki Mizuchi and illustrated by Kohada Shimesaba. Publication started in June 2010 and ended in November 2015 after 20 volumes. It was also adapted into a manga written by Mizuchi himself and illustrated by Ran. 13 volumes were released from Octobre 2011 to December 2016. Seven Seas licensed it in english for North America. The light novel was not, but it is possible to find really good fan-translations on the Internet.
Funimation released a boxset (DVD + Blu-ray) in 2015 of the complete series. In Japan, the sales have not been great, decreasing after each Blu-ray volume released. A CD drama consisting of 2 episodes was released in October 2012.
The selection in goodies is pretty limited (tapestry, straps, keychains, badges, etc), but let’s remember that the anime is from 2014 and it did not meet great success. The fact that it is still possible to find something is a miracle. Based on Google Trends in Japan, the title is still looked up on the Internet, but the values are not that high and there are periods where it just stays at 0 for a while. For the rest of the world, we can also down periods but they are shorter and the search queries score pretty high on the graph. Nothing new has happened for Dragonar Academy over the last 12 months, so it is difficult to find an explanation.
When will Dragonar Academy Season 2 be released?
No date is available. A petition was even started two years ago, asking for a new season or a reboot since the light novel reached its conclusion in 2015. It did not manage to reach the 1,500 needed.
What can we expect in Season 2 of Dragonar Academy?
It seems obvious that a new season will never be on the table for Dragonar Academy. But fans can still read the manga and the light novel, thanks to Seven Seas and fan-translations. Both are now finished so you can find the answers to your questions in one go, no waiting time!
