The anime Dragon Raja was released in April 2024, but I didn’t have the chance to watch it. However, since I found the time to give it a go and finally watched it, why not review this first season, that’s what I thought.
This brings me to this article.
Please bear with me as I rant from my point of view about this anime.
I didn’t know while watching this series that it was originally a Donghua named Long Zu, which debuted in August 2022.
But since that was much before, and was streaming on other OTT platforms, that I’m not subscribed to, I had no choice but to watch the Japanese dub on Crunchyroll.
Well, the overall experience wasn’t bad, but what I’m here to do, is to tell my overall viewing experience, so let’s delve into that.
Table of Contents
Synopsis Of Dragon Raja Anime
Lu Mingfei is an average teen you would find anywhere and everywhere just finished high school and was waiting for the arrival of the acceptance letter from a renowned college in Chicago.
However, that acceptance letter never came, instead another invitation or acceptance letter from another college to which he never applied, came.
That college was named Cassell College, and Lu Mingfei couldn’t find any valid details about that college on the internet, but his only friend Lao Tang assured him that it was a genuine college.
On his way to the college, he learned from a professor guiding him, that the college only operates to make dragon hunters, and hunt dragons, to protect humanity from dragon’s threat.
At first, he was skeptical, but with enough proof he had to believe that fact.
After he learns about the hidden war between humanity and the dragon race, his concept of the real world starts to break, thus starts his life at Cassell College.
What Kind Of Anime Is Dragon Raja?
At first glance, it may seem like any other anime of adventure, fantasy, and action, genre, but it is much more than that.
The story begins by focusing on the protagonist Lu Mingfei, and all the events surrounding him, then it takes as much time as necessary to explain the story backdrop to the viewers.
Next, it focuses on the character development, of the protagonist Lu Mingfei, by placing him in many different situations, although I would say this stage took more time than needed.
All the time it took to develop the character of the protagonist is tremendously much more than it took to develop other main characters, this made the story imbalanced somewhere.
More than its fantasy and adventure part, it focuses on the protagonist’s mental state, and some action sequences with him involved, and some not involving him.
This season of Dragon Raja anime neither involves the protagonist in all of the events nor relates all of the happenings with the protagonist, this approach makes the story easy to digest, unlike those stories, where the protagonist is the center of all.
As for the story’s goal, like what it actually wants us to know or focus on, it is somewhat unclear to me, as even if we strip down all the action elements from the story, there still remain enough points to prevent just focusing on a single one.
How Is The Protagonist In Dragon Raja Anime?
The protagonist of the story Lu Mingfei is more generic than the other so-called “normal” protagonists.
He has a general background, and no major loss or tragic backstory.
No sudden personality changes happen in the mid-story nor does any grand cause drive him to take action.
Like any normal teenager, he is interested in romance, unlike those dense protagonists, who don’t have any lack of potential suitors.
What is unique in this character may be one of the negative points, the low self-confidence.
Like any other real-life person, Lu Mingfai has all the flaws, that make one more humane, and close to reality.
So in summary, Lu Mingfei is a person, with a simple goal, a generic personality, and with close to reality character.
How Does The Story Progress In Dragon Raja Anime?
We have discussed, the story type and protagonist type, now it is time to know how the story progresses.
The story begins with a pinch of humor and a lot of expectations, and it manages to answer those expectations to some degree, but soon takes the story towards a school life story.
From there, progress becomes slow, as the story of Dragon Raja mainly focuses on the protagonist’s character development and, on the other hand, focuses on the origins of the dragons, so even though the other main characters get enough screen time, their character development seems rushed.
Protagonist Lu Mingfei seems to get involved in some serious event at a very later part of the series, so he remains missing in the majority of the action sequences.
But later half put in some effort to compensate for that, though it wasn’t enough.
The story started to spread in many directions after some episodes which initially made it very difficult to keep track of the storyline, but soon you will get accustomed to it.
Due to this spread-out manner of the story, none of the characters except the protagonist gets enough attention from viewers despite having enough screen time.
In short, the story progresses at a slow pace while spreading out in many directions, involving many characters and events in the same timeframe.
How Is The Conclusion Of The First Season Of Dragon Raja Anime Is Like?
As the story progresses, the conclusion of the story comes very suddenly.
The series takes up its time to build up its characters and events to make the story flow smoothly, the protagonist starts to get more deeply involved with the story’s major events, but after everything is said and done, the story gets cut short.
I had some expectations just like any other story, it would also show the protagonist’s multiple feats or at least let him stay involved with the core subject matter of the story for a little bit longer, but that expectation was in vain.
It seems like as soon as the protagonist Lu Mingfei gets involved in the main event, of the story, the story starts to rush toward its ending, but it also doesn’t forget to tase its viewers at the end.
In short, before, the entire story is played in front of viewers as some collage picked together, but as soon as all the pieces come together as the protagonist gets involved, the story concludes early.
How Good Is The Dragon Raja Anime?
After taking all those points mentioned above into account, if you ask me how good is Dragon Raja anime, it can’t be just answered in a single word.
Now let’s analyze all those points.
- First, according to story type, this anime is indeed more unique than other anime of the same genre. However, in the process of making it this way and not involving the protagonist in almost all of the events, it was necessary to concentrate more on his character development, which made the story imbalanced since other characters didn’t get that much attention.
- Secondly, the protagonist is abnormally normal, which makes this story more digestible.
- Thirdly, the story’s progress seems slow, which may bore some viewers, and the story is also spread out in different directions up till some point, which makes it difficult to keep track of.
- Finally, The story ends very quickly as soon as the protagonist gets involved in the main event, but the story keeps food for our thoughts at the end also.
After analyzing all those points, and using my own judgment, I can say, it is a uniquely average anime, which made me excited about its second season.
Final Thought
Finally, all that remains is to score Dragon Raja anime according to its performance, but be warned that, it will be scored after being analyzed by my subjective view, so after watching the series, others could have some other impression about the series.
So I score it,
If You are interested in mystery and horror themed anime then don't forget to check my blog post, Mysterious Disappearances: An Anthology Of Mystery And Horror.
