Dragonaut: The Resonance

ThatAnimeSnob May 15, 2012

3.5

Nice visuals, dreadful storytelling and terrible CGI. Hm, I must be talking about GONZO. (1) Dragonaut is about some boobs surrounded by robotic dragons… in space. (2) No, wait, it actually is about alien dragons invading and a boy teams up with a girl and along with their mecha dragon go to stop them. (3) No, wait, there actually are a lot more things going on in this anime. Too bad I forgot them all because of point (1).The story is typical in its concept but with proper directing they could still have pulled something decent out of it. Nothing of masterwork level but at least not boring or forgettable. Well, shucks, looks like that is all we got because the animators were more concerned about throwing in as many boobs as possible and completely neglected the storyboard. So although the scenario is about some conspiracy from another planet to take over the solar system and there are dragons here and there, and the pilots need to resonate with one another to stop all that, plus some shady organizations and secret agendas here and there… the only thing you end up remembering is booboobooboobs. That is the only thing they cared about. The rest of the plot ends up being random things happening around random times and random people. Do you know what’s funnier? This is not a strictly ecchi comedy; it is also mecha, adventure, action, romance, mystery, conspiracy. Too bad they shelved all the rest for lame and tired fan service. Plus it is not a 12 episode series but a full season one; you end up feeling double as bored if nothing is going on for so long. What exactly were the producers thinking while making this? Were they even thinking? Did they think it would work with just that? It’s not like the market was starving for animated porn back then or that there weren’t good shows airing at that time. Were they even from planet Earth or maybe they were Martians like the dragons, unable to see the obvious from all the way there on their planet? Whatever the reasons may have been, the story is plain BS.The art is very good as long as it stays 2D. Spaceships and characters were nicely made, backgrounds had cool sci-fi settings to stare with awe. But unfortunately, they had to throw in as much as CGI as possible, believing it would make the action more likable. Those Martian directors once again missed the point as the 3D models were terrible to stare for more than a few seconds. And to think most of the action is around CGI dragons, your interest is murdered right there. What you are left with besides them is … boobs. Meh… The sound department is … ok I guess. The main theme is good and it somehow reminded me of Persona games. Not a good thing to say if the show needs to stand on its own. Voice actors were again ok for what they were left to work with but the terrible story and the blunt characters sure didn’t allow them to make a great job even if they wanted to. The cast seemed like an interesting bunch at first but terrible visuals and lack of direction ruined them. None of them develops or matures. None of them makes sense half the time. Plus, there are so many females in this show and they all have boobs they love to giggle. How interesting… not. They were as alien to me as the producers of the anime.So down to it, is there anything worthy in this show? Boobs? We have lots of anime around that. Three dimensional dragons? Even the first Digimon series had better looking than these. The story? What story? My 10 year old niece can do a better job. The characters? I hardly remember them because of the terrible storytelling and focus on boobs. They weren’t special to begin with. There is nothing humanely likable in this anime because the directors don’t understand the emotions of our species. So I recommend we stuff them and every copy of Dragonaut in a space shuttle and send them to Mars. I’m sure the little green men there will enjoy this feature more than we did.

FringeBenefits Apr 9, 2011

2

Dragonaut: The Resonance is one of the most hilarious anime ever made. The problem with it is, it's not trying to be funny. What we have here is an anime series that tries very, very hard to set up a deep, meaningful, dramatic plot, and shoots itself in the foot almost every step of the way. From the characters displaying massive amounts of ANGST over comparitively trivial things and treating potential apocalypses with little more than indifference, to the absurd amounts of fanservice and biologically impossible anatomy from the female characters, it's impossible to take this show seriously. However, I'm not in any way implying that it's not worth watching. The average anime fan will bust a gut laughing. A highlight has to be the wild screaming of names from the four main characters, which happens around three times per episode: "JIIIIIN!" "TOAAAAAA!" "GIOOOOOO!" "KAZUKIIIIIIII!" "JIIIIIIIN!" "TOAAAAAAA!" "GIOOOOOOO!" Imagine the overacting in Code Geass taken up to eleven. How the voice actors didn't suffer laryngitis is beyond me. And then there's my favorite episode, the name of which escapes me but which I refer to as "Hot Spring On the Moon". A set of contrived circumstances land most of the cast on Earth's moon, which has a bustling colony on its surface. To avoid their pursuers, Jin and Toa decide to visit the moon's natural hot springs... because apparently the moon is the perfect place to build a resort. Said pursuers get wise to the plan, but say they don't want to cause a panic... so they decide to infiltrate the hot spring by buying bathing suits. You can probably guess that nearly all the pursuers are female, stacked, and gravitate toward the skimpiest bikinis they can find. Hilariously, no sooner do they get inside the springs than they see Jin and Toa, and they promptly launch an all-out attack, completely forgetting "infiltration" part of the plan discussed no more than five minutes before. And then there's the dialogue. One line that had me laughing so hard I had to stop my DVD player was: "You cannot change your fate, but you can change your destiny!" It's not all unintentional comedy. There are some nice fight scenes, some of the CG Dragons are kinda cool, the music is catchy, and it has an all-star cast, including almost everyone from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya... I can only conclude that Aya Hirano et al. must have recieved big fat paychecks for starring in this thing. In closing, if you're looking for an involved sci-fi plot with realistically flawed characters, go watch Evangelion again. If you're looking for something that tries to be Evangelion but misses by a mile, or if you just want a lot of cheap laughs at the expense of very stupid characters, Dragonaut: The Resonance is just about perfect. - FringeBenefits

ZetsumeiTsumi Nov 8, 2009

4

Personally, I did not like Draonaut for a number of reasons that should be fairly obvious.Most of the characters (females) were a DD or twice that.  That's just plain repulsive and, quite frankly, unattractive by any means.People getting emotional over stuff WAY too fast.  Toa and the guy never really developed a relationship; it was more like, "Hey, she wants to kiss me even though she only just saved me. Sweet!"  Everything was jumped into way too fast.  The main character and the other guy being childhood friends and then getting all worked up over a dragon neither of them even knew very well.  No, no.  You just do not jump into stories and plotlines like that without developement.  That just fails.Almost none of the characters are believeable.  It is just not very possible to get into a character's story when none of them are realistic or have much thought-out background.I will say, though, that there are some good elements that I liked about the series.  It is simply that I beleive it is a bit too poorly written to care about.