Changes made to content

... have to be subjected to either of them. ⏎Dragon Crisis! ⏎ Rating: 0.5 (of 5) ⏎ Review: ⏎ Like many of this season's bottom-feeders, Dragon Crisis! is powered by nonstop clichés and genre-driven plot points that make no sense. Or, let's put it this way: anime trends have shown that schoolboys make good main characters, and fans enjoy seeing busty mature women kick butt, but they also like vulnerable little girls with special powers, and everyone loves goofy sitcom antics. So Dragon Crisis! melts all these ideas into a foul-tasting stew where a schoolboy (Ryuji) teams up with a busty woman (Eriko) to retrieve a "Lost Precious" treasure, except that it's not an object but a vulnerable little girl (Rose) who is a humanoid red dragon. No, that's not a code word for anything, she's just a scaly wing-flapping fire-breathing dragon. In cuddly moe form. And of course Rose is barely mentally functional, so she repeats Ryuji's name over and over and wreaks havoc around the apartment (there's your sitcom material, are you happy now?) like all mysterious, special-powered little girls do. ⏎ If you detected anything original in that plot summary, your senses are stronger than mine, because this is little more than a patchwork of popular anime ideas slapped together. It inexplicably transitions from classroom slice-of-life to car-chase action to slapstick moefest with a vague fantasy twist. And that's just one episode! What do you think will happen by Episode 4—will Ryuji meet up with one of his school buddies for some tasty yaoi action? After all, that's a fairly popular genre too. ⏎ What's even more maddening is that none of these disparate genres are handled well at all; the car chase is especially horrid due to the choppy framerate that looks like an attempt to recapture the style of Speed Racer. Even when not in high speed motion, though, the characters are still an eyesore, with bland designs that have trouble remaining consistent from scene to scene. And how about the loud, overbearing music that seems to play everywhere in the background? While this show ostensibly has the elements of what one may call "an anime series," it is barely one at all. ⏎ Dragon Crisis! is available streaming on Crunchyroll. ⏎ Level E ⏎ Rating: 3.5 (of...