The Beauty of Kobayashi-san Dragon Maid

シUltimaシ ‍
Nov 12, 2021
7 min read

Disclaimer: Spoiler Alert!

The second season of Kobayashi's Dragon Maid brought me back to the melancholy feeling of watching a slice-of-life anime. Ignoring the big tiddy loli dragon, the story of this anime is worth praising. Why do I call this anime a beauty? And what stuff does stick out to me?

Looking at the history of this anime, the Kyoto Animation studio fire back then makes this anime stands out. I'm not saying that there has to be an accident and/or a compelling history to make an anime stands out, but a unique history does make something more interesting.

In case you didn't know, this anime was created by Kyoto Animation. The mangaka of the original manga is Coolkyousinnjya, who also published "I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying" and "Komori-san Can't Decline". This animation started airing in the Winter of January 12th, 2017 and ends on April 6th (for the first season) and Summer of July 8th until September 23rd (second season). With a total of 25 Episodes ranging over 2 seasons.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon

-Season 2 Poster

Premise

The premise of the first season of Kobayashi-san Dragon Maid goes as follows. Kobayashi, an office worker meets an injured dragon named Tooru while she's drunk. She saved the dragon, and walk back to her apartment. After waking up late the next day, she rushes off to her workplace only to be greeted by the dragon when she opens her apartment door. The dragon offered her pledge and long story short she became her maid.

The interesting part of the circumstances behind the dragon's arrival on Earth seems to be much more complicated than at first glance, as Tooru bears some heavy emotions and painful memories. To top it all off, Tooru's presence ends up attracting several other mythical beings to her new home, bringing in a host of eccentric personalities. Although Kobayashi makes her best effort to handle the crazy situation at hand, nothing has prepared her for this new life. So the story progress with Tooru's character development or an arrival of a new dragon.

The first season of the show does not leave me with any feelings. So nothing sticks out to me. Nothing spoke to me on a deeper level. But I think some things worth noting in the show is that the comedy is gold, the character design, and characteristic of each character in the show does sell the animation, and the animation quality is pretty good.

Don't forget that this anime is a slice-of-life anime. So there will be some scene that tries to speak to your heart. Just to confirm, this is NOT a romance anime Kobayashi is a girl. Because of that fact, the anime limit off the possibility of that cliché harem tag.

The new season of Dragon Maid, Kobayashi-san Chi no Dragon Maid S, starts with the arrival of another dragon, Ilulu. Now known as the 'controversial' dragon because of her appearance as a loli with a huge bust. After Ilulu's arrival, the anime focuses on Ilulu's character development before going into more of a slice-of-life anime.

The second season of the anime only introduce one new dragon, Ilulu. The rest of the second season focuses on the slice-of-life aspect of the anime. While watching the second season of the anime I often found myself lying on my bed or just leaning back on my chair having those melancholy feelings that I mention at the start. The slice of life aspect in the second season was more powerful than the first. It shows what message they want to emphasize to us. I don't recall the specific episode, but when Ilulu introduction finally settled down, the anime often (almost always I think) have a mellow moment nearing the end of the episode. But it doesn't mean that it'll make you cry, for me, I feel comfortable seeing the anime have that kind of moment.

It is also worth noting that the second season of this anime is more hype than the first season (in my opinion). The fight scenes are better and not just that, but the jiggle physics also improved. So is it worth the wait? I don't particularly expect that this anime will get a second season, but if I were to be waiting, I think it's worth the wait and the money.

Opening and Ending

Both the first and second season of this anime opening is sung by the same artist, fh à na. While the ending has different artists. The first ED was sung by 伊藤真澄 (Masumi Itou) and for the second season, it was sung by スーパーちょろゴンず (I think it's pronounced "Supaa Chorogonzu"). You could find the opening of the anime down below:

-Opening Season 1 by fh à na

-Opening Season 2 by fh à na

-Ending Season 1 by 伊藤真澄 (Masumi Itou)

-Ending Season 2 by スーパーちょろゴンず

Character

Let's divide the characters of this show into two factions. The dragon faction and human faction. In the dragon faction, there are six characters (in the 'main cast') in total (including season 2), Tooru, Kanna, Lucoa (Quetzalcoatl), Elma, Fafnir, and Ilulu. While in the human factions there is a lot more character, but what I consider as part of the main cast are, Kobayashi, Saikawa, Shouta, and Takiya because they're the one who comes and has a genuine relationship with the dragons. Because there are a plethora of characters, I will just review the human faction side of the character. Even that, I will still do it just briefly.

So, let's start with the lesser-known one, Takiya. Takiya work in the same company as Kobayashi, I consider him to be in the main cast because he's an otaku and later will have a good relationship with Fafnir (not romance!). The next one is Saikawa, as far as I can remember, Saikawa is the only character in the main cast that does not know the existence of the dragons. The reason I put her in the main cast is that her relationship with the 7000 years old loli dragon, Kanna. Next one is Shouta, for this one I don't know where to put this boy, the reason I put him here is because he's a human, but the reason I'm hesitant to put him here is because he's also a witch. In the show Shouta has a good relationship with the most powerful dragon, Lucoa.

Finally, the last one, Kobayashi. I'm sure I don't have to elaborate why I put her as the main cast (duh). But I do have a couple of things I wanna say about her. Despite being a human, she has a lot of knowledge and wisdom about human world. In the second season of the anime I remember that Tooru ask "Why human need sleep" (or something similar), then Kobayashi said "It's just part of being a human" (It's probably farfetched from what she actually say, but I hope I got it correctly). That shows that Kobayashi does have some amazing wisdom (idk where I'm going here www). In fact, that moment is my favorite moment from the entirety of the second season.

For the Dragon Factions, you could watch the video bellow by none other than the legendary Anime Uproar:

- Credit: AnimeUproar

Voice Acting

Not much to say here... I just want to say that when Kobayashi gives out her divine wisdom, the mood and atmosphere really suit with her way and tone of talking. It's not soothing, but when the mood start she goes heart to heart.

FAQ

Do you need to watch the first season before the second season? Well, I would appreciate if you bought both of the season, but I think watching a couple clip from Youtube is enough to prepare you for the second season because there's not really that much reference from the first season that connects to the second season.

Is it worth the my Money? If you're a slice of life type of guy, I think this is more in that generic slice of life anime, but I still think that this show is worth your money. But if you're an action or even a fantasy lover, I think this show is perfect to give you a little bit of color in the plain walls of your action anime collection.

Final Thoughts (Conclusion)

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon is a Comedy Slice of Life anime that I really enjoyed. The character in this show are drawn really beautifully, the character design of each character does portrait their personality really well. And of course, the most important things... Jiggle Physics is top tier.

The actions in this anime is also pretty good. But keep in mind that this is a slice of life anime so there'll be much more talking than fighting. To me, this anime is not boring, rather it's intriguing.

To me, a lot of the aspect of this anime will stand to an audience. for example, the character development. Both the main character and almost the whole known character in this anime does have a little bit of character development. And as I said multiple times, the show does not give you a boring narrative story telling, but it's rather intriguing. The pacing of the story does not feel rushed, and for me, by watching both the season for this anime has opened up a lot of ideas and a lot of my feelings. Compelling stories and fun narratives are inscribed within this anime lore.

There's a lot of things to unpack in this anime. So I suggest you going to another review of this anime in the link I'll provide at the very bottom of this post (before the comment).

Anyway, this review has been a fun time for me to make, I haven’t had many times to create any review these couple months because of school and stuffs like that. So yeah, for the one stranger that happened to come across this, thank you for reading until this far!