Monday, December 31, 2018

The Dragon Prince Season One Review

The Dragon Prince review

The Dragon Prince is a Netflix original fantasy animated series from the head-writer and several other creatives behind Avatar: The Last Airbender. I discussed this series on my blog when it had a teaser out at San Diego Comic-Con. It released around September and I watched it then, I'm only writing my review so much later, because that's how I roll. The fantasy world is good, but isn't up to the standards of the likes of Tolkien, Narnia, or The Last Airbender. The series starts with a short summary on the background of the world which will help explain the series going into it, "Sun. Moon. Stars. Earth. Sky. Ocean. Long ago, the two nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the humans attacked. Only the Dragon Prince, raised by both Humans and Elves, could bring balance to the world." I think the show is strong in characters and narrative for the most part, but the fictional world is still an aspect that I question. For example, and forgive me if I may have just forgotten, but I believe the dragons and elves are different kingdoms, then why are the elves so very attached to the dragons and their eggs and why do they hold such animosity towards the humans over it? One very strong point in the series, I felt was the cool action and fight scenes and I think that the animation lends itself very nicely to those scenes. One of the best characters with fight scenes is an elf and former assassin Rayla, who was sent to kill two young human princes, Callum and Ezran over the dragon prince egg. After finding out that the egg is still in tact, she teams up with the princes to stop their kingdoms from war. Rayla had a magic unbreakable band put on her arm that would only fall off once she killed Ezran or waited long enough to lose her hand. I like that Rayla, once realizing that the humans really aren't all bad doesn't try to still kill the princes even though she is in pain and in danger of her hand falling off from her binding oath. That's pretty nice. One thing I don't like is that Rayla and several other characters have a heavy Scottish/Canadian accent that started wearing on me even by the beginning of the series. I would say that other than not having the strongest world and not being a perfect show, the worst thing about The Dragon Prince is that it can be sort-of childish at some points.

This series did spawn the mage meme and an amazing online community. Netflix is very involved with series like The Dragon Prince with it now being renewed for a season 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender being rebooted as a live-action television series and several other popular and upcoming fantastical movies and TV series. Netflix is doing well in this department of fantasy including The Dragon Prince.
I say for my overall recommendation that The Dragon Prince is a good but not great fantasy world that can be expanded upon and is a good starting point for a possibly great series. If you have Netflix I would recommend viewing The Dragon Prince.