Review of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S

I know that boob physics are part of this series’s identity and everything, but, out of curiosity, has there been anyone on the production staff that thought maybe it’s a little too much? Food for thought now that Ilulu is a character that exists. Story: As the story of coexistence between dragons and humans continues in this relatively sleepy Japanese town, another of the chaos faction of dragons descends upon the world and causes destruction of varying magnitudes on Kobayashi and her various friends that also seem to have connections to various dragons. This new one is named Ilulu, who for all intents and purposes is reallythe only significantly new thing this show brings to the table in terms of new potential plotlines.

Much like the first season, Maid Dragon S is much of the same fare, boasting slice and life stories that can take anywhere from half an episode to a third of an episode, to even 5 minutes of an episode until the show transitions into something else. Compared to the first season however, the series constantly swaps not only scenarios, but also cast members as instead of stories mostly focusing on Kobayashi and Tohru, the brunt of the show is focused on the interrelationships between the various dragons and their human compatriots, as well as the relationships between dragon to dragon since there’s a lot of history between the now 6 dragon characters that wasn’t previously explored. S definitely does a lot, and a lot of what I like about S comes from the variety of character moments, backstories, and emotional beats that the show focuses on in order to build up the genuinely interesting perspectives that the dragons have in relation to the human society that they find themselves in.

Despite that, I still have gripes with the pacing, and it’s something that unfortunately carries over from Season 1. The sporadic nature of these 4-koma like stories makes each episode feel inconsistent on account of the random amounts of time that each ministory takes up. Things can be a whole episode-long thing where the dragon in question gets a big character backstory that necessitates the whole episode, whereas other times the dragon just kind of comes in, does a thing that seems kind of important, but resolves it fast enough so we don’t sit on them for too much longer (looking at you Ilulu). Personally, I’d like it if the show sat on some of these moments a little longer since it often feels like these more personal stories end up half baked and need more time in the oven longer. Especially since this time around they talk more about the ‘other world’ where the dragons come from, and some of those story sections feel a lot more rushed than they should’ve been despite being key worldbuilding that helped shaped the perspective of our fellow dragon friends.

In spite of that though, the show is still an enjoyable watch. The dragon angle still provides a unique enough part of the series that it manages to overturn the typical slice of life into something the feels different. The fresh perspectives from the 6 dragons manage to make the show engaging still, and the myriad of story types that this show has manages to keep the viewer on their toes as episodes can either be a dramatic, emotional story beat, a more laid back slice of life scenario with occasional battle elements, or just absolutely nothing as the characters laze about and enjoy their lives and boredom instead of needing excitement.

Characters:

Kobayashi is oddly enough the least interesting character in the main cast this time around. Which is mostly due to the fact that the story branched out beyond her and her relationship with Tohru when her dragon maid first arrived in her deluxe Japanese apartment. She definitely has her moments, bringing some perspective to the lives of the dragons around her, something that’s helped by the fact that the coexistence she feels being with them has a kind of feedback loop as she’s similarly been influenced by the dragons as well. Aside from that though, she doesn’t really change, which is a surprising thing to me considering practically everyone else in the cast changes in some significant way in comparison. There is a bit of focus that she gets in the very last episode, but it feels rather cheap considering it’s mostly just a reflection of what’s happened in the season rather than significant internal change. If possible, bring the story back around to Kobayashi even though to an extent, there’s not really that much she needs to change given how she’s able to support a stable family of 4 in spite of some obviously bad work conditions that consistently hamper her quality of life.

As for the dragons of the series, the original 5 that we were introduced to: Tohru, Kanna, Lucoa, Fafnir, and Elma all get a substantial upgrade from their S1 counterparts as the entire season is practically dedicated to them. S has dedicated sections and episodes for all 5 of these scaly friends, ranging from exposing vulnerabilities about themselves to talking about their relationships with both each other and their respective human partners if available. Out of all of them, I think Fafnir still draws the short stick in terms of characters since he both has the least amount of time dedicated to him and is the most removed character out of the entire cast. Hell, Lucoa is seen more often, and she got just as much personal time as he did. A shame too cause he’s the only recurring male dragon in this series, and it sucks that we don’t get to see more of that.

And then we get to Ilulu… Personally I think Ilulu was ‘rushed out the door’ so to speak and serves as a really good example as to some of my personal gripes with Dragon Maid as a whole. Introduced as the sixth dragon, Ilulu fills in an interesting missing gap, being a character in her ‘teenage to young adult’ years that’s trying to reclaim their lost childhood and ease up on her previous draconic aggression in exchange for a life where she gets to choose what she wants to do. For the most part, this is largely successful, as ,many of her later story beats help solidify her own personal goals and the kind of character she wants to become. But there’re two major problems with that. Namely the show speeding up her initial development and pacing in order to get to other things, as well as her overall appearance and demeanor that creates what I find to be an awkward dichotomy that doesn’t really work. Ilulu’s design is a point of contention for me because, putting aside her massive, ill-fitting breasts (which we will get to), she has more of the appearance of a child, which is something that contrasts her personality, her character interactions, and her ‘lost childhood’ angle. I feel like it would’ve been more beneficial to make her look more like a teenager or a young adult to show that despite her desires, she had to grow up. But now that she has the opportunity, she can backpedal and enjoy a childhood despite her appearance. I feel like that would’ve been a much better way to go about things from a design perspective, especially since she’s mostly paired up with the child characters in this show, and has most of her later scenes involved with a teenage boy who when you put the two side by side, looks really awkward because she’s like the height of an average 10 year old girl, and the two have the scraps of a romantic subplot going on in the background.

The other human characters in the show mostly get their screentime when being paired up with their dragon counterpart. Of the lot though, I think Shouta is the one that stands out the most, whereas most of the other ones remain as supporting cast members. By comparison, Shouta actually does things in the story, and works towards his goals in a significant amount of story sections while Lucoa just kind of creeps on him from a distance. Saikawa and Take, the human partner to Ilulu, don’t really do much, in part due to the fact that Take is still very new, and Saikawa’s entire character is just being horny for Kanna. Which while cute, doesn’t exactly make for a very compelling character. I hope there’s more to the humans later on because as of right now, a greater majority of the relationships between the humans and their dragons still feel a little lacking and have the potential to be far more polished than they are now.

Aesthetics:

I think KyoAni overproduced this show. Like…I’m certain they overproduced this show. I don’t really remember Season 1 having so many little animation details, effects, and movement, but my god they pulled out all of the stops on this one. Everything from fight scenes to the subtle movement of hair has just that much extra bit of animation to it, and it really makes this show feel more alive than it should be. Characters bounce with so much extra animation and personality that if nothing else, the look and movement of the show alone is enough to warrant a watch.

On the note of character design…well- yeah, we’re gonna talk about Ilulu. I already went in length about my gripes with her design, but the extra animation that this show has really cements how much this show really likes to put effort where it didn’t need to be. Every female dragon in this show aside from Kanna already has a significant amount of detail devoted to their upstairs department, as every little movement is accompanied by boob jiggles and an accompanying sound effect to let you know that breasts are moving on-screen. Ilulu having half her body mass be her chest just exasperates this problem because she just looks comical looking the way she does, something that’s not helped by the fact that the show makes the executive decision to make her a walking boob joke most of the time she’s on-screen. Which is something we really didn’t need because Lucoa already took up that comedic/character space, and having two characters like that feels redundant. Hell I’m certain that they actually reduced her size later on in the series because as a human, she just looks ridiculous having those airbags attached to her, so they slimmed her down slightly in order to make her not look as dumb.

“Ai no Supreme” is a song that is honestly…kinda inferior to the first season’s OP. Despite fhana taking the reins and doing the opening again, Ai no Supreme just isn’t as catchy given the song’s less abrasive hook with stylings more akin to what the main singer of the band usually brings to the table. Although what does save this opening is definitely the bouncier animations because man KyoAni really put their all in this one. Similarly, ‘Maid with Dragons‘ is kind of just a generic VA song, being sung by the voices of all 5 female dragons in the series. (Which if you’ve ever seen the official video for the song, has all of them cosplay as their respective characters.) Again, not a bad song, just not very memorable, and is only really aided by the visuals of the song.

Final Thoughts:

Given the 4 year gap between S1 and S2, a part of me expected something a little grander in presentation regarding Dragon Maid. But, considering what KyoAni had to go through during the time between S1 and S2, not to mention the bouncier visuals of S2, they’ve genuinely surprised me with what we ended up getting. And for all intents and purposes, I think the overall presentation of S2 is better than that of the first breakout season.

My biggest complaints, that being of the involvement of all of the other dragon characters, were mostly resolved as Elma for one got a lot more time devoted to her and wasn’t just a side character tacked on at the end of the series, and even Ilulu despite all of my criticisms towards her design, overall presentation, and pacing of her story is still a welcome edition in the cast even though I’m almost certain that her inclusion was a result of the author wanting to make an oppai loli for shits and giggles, and they just couldn’t help themselves and made her center of gravity fucked in every way. (In all seriousness, we have enough breasts and jiggle physics as is. Why do you need to keep adding more?)

If I had to choose something else to make note of, it would probably be more of an involvement with the human characters since Kobayashi, Takiya, Elma, Saikawa, and now Take serve surprisingly minimal roles despite being the humans that these dragon characters have formed attachments to and have gotten influenced by. Like sure, the show is called ‘Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid’, so the Dragon Maid is important, but Kobayashi herself is also in the title, so what’s up with that?

If you liked S1, S2 is more of the same thing. If we ever get a 3rd season, I’m sure we’ll get largely the same kind of content that we got here, so in that situation I don’t think the audience really loses out. I just hope we tune down the amount of boob jokes in this show because honest to god, every frame of this show already reminds me that a majority of the dragons have large, inflatable breasts with numerous scenes focused on the girls either self-fondling them or pronouncing them in some way; we don’t need to focus on them any more.