And we come to a close of this Dragon Pilot show and I’m still indifferent on how this anime wraps up. It’s not a bad ending per se, it has a good emotional payoff and it does somewhat wrap up the story. The more it gets into the conclusion, however, the more I see inconsistencies in its world building that just throw me off even more. Hisone, as we suspected last week, after learning about the sacrifice, decides to defy the ritual and save the girl instead. She then, in her Hisone mood, sacrifices herself to put the dragon to sleep. But Masotan saves her at the end. It’s all fine and mighty, although I would be much more appreciate if HisoMaso explains me about the “stabbing” beforehand. It just feels as if they create that step to raise the conflict. Indeed a lot of “conflicts” in HisoMaso is designed that way. I know I’m mainly disappointed by the inconsistencies of its world building but it’s the first and foremost factor to sell me on the story as a whole. Failing that and it pampers my personal investment to the show and it makes me question the credibility of every plot’s progression.
At the end though, it saddens me to say that I don’t learn that much from the cast. Except for Hoshino and Sada who have a bit of development, all the side characters are under-written in general. The dragons are cute but again they are just that, cute. I do like the way they’re all confident that Hisone and Masotan will come back somehow in the end. The visual is still a wonder, which pains me even more that it can’t save the show from going downhill because of the weak writing.
Full review will come later but here’s some dot points of what get on my nerve in this finale:
-Grandma pilot Sada with her back story: if she feels that devastated how the hell she didn’t cause anastomosis to Masotan then?
-How comes all the back-and-forth exchanges between a girl who wants to save another girl is all about some other guy? It’s a under-representation of women role. Even with Bechdel test it fails fails fails miserably.
-Okonogi doesn’t fare any better. His childhood friend is on a verge of death and all he thinks of is Hisone
-At the end, even Natsume is more fleshed out than Kinutsugai and Hitomi, and I hardly regard her character as flesh out.
This show just disappoints me to no end.
Guess I was right dropping this with episode 4. My main problem was that I didn’t know what this series even wants and considering that they pilot dragons who transform into jets I expected more world building. These weird parts were just.. there and I didn’t even get why the directors decided to do so other than artificially make the series stand out a bit more.
Maybe it got better later but at the beginning it felt like the plot was going nowhere, especially when they suddently introduced three or four new characters that were just driving away attention from the two main ones who are supposed to be those getting the development.
This entire plot seems like it could be solved by a robot with a stabby appendage. Hell they could’ve reused that fake pilot dummy.