Dragonaut: The Resonance

Dragonauts is another anime done by Gonzo. This show shows some promise, but due to certain presentation of its characters and style, it pretty much falls back quite a bit.

Story: The beginning of the show starts off with a young Kamashina Jin as he witnesses his family's deaths as their space shuttle gets blown to bits by a mysterious falling object from space. The main plot then follows an older Kamashina Jin as he gets thrust into a world of government secrets concerning "dragons", envoys sent by a living asteroid... thing called Thanatos floating around the remains of Pluto. Enter the Dragonauts, an elite team ... of humans paired up with their own artificially born Dragon. Jin and the Dragonauts are on opposing sides at first, but a government conspiracy eventually leads them to the same objective. The plot progresses at a fair pace and even has a nice short timeskip to compliment its mid-climax.

Art: The character designs are done by the very same man who did the designs for Witchblade... so you can definitely expect lots of women with unnatural proportioned bodies. The show also makes use of CGI for its dragon battles. The CGI is not very good looking as it clashes with its 2D counterpart if you even dare to compare them. The dragons themselves all have unique looks to them but it is hard to determine if the dragons are suppose to be organic beings or some kind of bio-mecha. Other than that, the art is decent except for weird proportioned women but you can never forget Sieglinde's 6th finger. Good job, Gonzo.

Sound: The music in the show is nothing special. All the tracks are not memorable enough. There are your generic suspenseful themes and romance themes and of course your action themes. I can't even write anything about it since I forgot what music the show even had.

Character: Never has a show made me hate so many characters before. I will say that the main characters have their fair share of development but the supporting characters don't shine much.

Jin is one of those "I-don't-want-to-fight-anymore" guys that does nothing but tries to talk his way out of life and death situations and Kazuki is one of those annoying cretins that just keeps coming back to kill our beloved hero blind to the fact that he's a complete asshole. I hate Kazuki as much as I hate Kururugi Suzaku. Other than that, everybody just seems... completely flat.

Enjoyment/Overall: I had hoped this show redeemed itself constantly especially through its character department but is still fairly disappointed. If you focus solely on the story, you might enjoy it some but other than that, everything else just completely ruins a potentially decent shounen show.

This show had a lot going for it: good clean animation, a range of interesting-looking characters, a reasonable story line...and dragons (because we all love dragons...well, I do)
The problems arise because all, or at least most, of this potential disappears due to a lack of following through.
The characters reveal themselves to be pretty detestable. I said they were interesting-looking, but once they started opening their mouths, well, that's a different matter. The only ones I didn't hate or at least dislike were the ones that never really had enough airtime for me to build up a dislike for them. They were mostly flat and underdeveloped ... and just plain irritating, although nowhere near as irritating as the protagonists, who just seemed to be very very stupid. Jin and Toa couldn't see beyond how besotted they were with each other (which got really boring really fast), Kazuki couldn't get over his personal (and somewhat jarringly over-the-top) vendetta against Jin, and Gio took most of the series to figure out that three really does make a crowd (admittedly when realisation did eventually dawn on him he proceeded to instigate the highlight of the series by: blowing stuff up - lots of stuff.)
The animation was the other thing that really annoyed me. It was fine, there were no real problems with it - until the CG dragons came along (the CG looked very out of place amongst the otherwise perfectly fine artwork), closely followed by massively over-endowed ladies (as in serious spinal injury type bosoms).
The only thing that stood out for me above the rest was the music. It was a little generic, but I still enjoyed some of the themes.
Overall it was a bit disappointing to say the least, but if you happen to want to watch something with the single intent of picking holes in it and laughing at it, then this is right up your street.

Disappointing. One word to describe this series. The anime starts of well, drawing the attention of the viewers only to let us down in the end. Or should I say, from the second episode.

Story: Well, the idea of humans and dragons co-existing with each other really caught my attention. It manages to hold on to it, until everything went downhill, badly. The beginning gives the viewer a fresh feel of what to expect in the series, with an interesting plot to keep us entertained. It starts of with the protagonist being stuck on a space shuttle that is destine to be doomed, but the ... story doesn't the focus on that, but focuses on the love between a dragon and a human. It may sound pretty nice at first, but trust me; Dragonaut isn't very nice - not nice at all. The producers throw in a bunch of romance elements in the show, which was (mentioned by another reviewer) great in the beginning, which soon became very annoying and repetitive throughout the anime. The ending, sorry to say didn't end so well, and hopefully a second season won't be thrown in.

Art: Now, when I first watched the first episode, the animation was great. The CG didn't really fit in with the 2D animation but it was still enjoyable. However, like I said, that was the first episode. When the show continues on, the animation seemed butchered. Also, this may be added as a fan service, but why the oversized breasts? If this was meant to be fan service, I don't seem to see the service in it.

Sound: Watching how bad this anime was, I even forgot how the sound goes, however the sound was not off-tune or neither was catchy. The background music wasn't anything special, the OP and ED are at a reasonable standard. I would probably suggest that you would watch the OP 25 times than watch this rubbish.

Character: I must say, all the characters a pretty different from each other. The cast has a vast amount of characters ranging with different personalities. However, most of them are cliché characters; characters we seen from numerous animes. All the characters all have an impact on me, they all piss me off. Kazumi, Jin, Gio, Asim, yes all of them all play a good role in annoying the viewer.

Enjoyment: Enjoyment? No, not this anime. The only thing I enjoyed was seeing the show end. I can't say much more than this, I enjoyed the first couple of episodes which had me watching for more, however like I said, and like other reviewers have said, this anime does not deliver.

Overall: This anime seem to have a promising start, with great CG and pretty decent animation. This is one anime you don't want to watch. If you have already seen all of it, I suggest you give a pat on your back - you really do deserve it.

Story:
The story starts off really giving you feel of a "saving the world" type of story. There's these people called Dragonauts who pilot dragons and are trying to save the world from Thanatos. However, this plot basically gets thrown to the side as the love story between Jin, a human (not a Dragonaut,) and Toa (a dragon.) The romance between them is okay in the beginning, but it quickly becomes so annoying and bothersome. Also, the huge twist in the plot that occurs like a little past half way through the series was a pretty dumb idea.

Art:
The artwork and animation is okay, but what really ... just completely ruins it is the CG animation that they use for the dragons. I personally just don't even like CG, but I can usually tolerate it. However, this I couldn't tolerate very well. The dragons just looked so out place and too weird. It really would've been better if they just were normally animated, not CG animated.

Sound:
The OP and EDs are fine I guess. There's appropriate tunes for the series, so I can't complain there. However, the background isn't all that. I mean, it's not horrible, but they probably could've done a little better with it.

Character:
Character...oh man, what a disaster. Just like the story, it starts out okay. When you first see the Dragonauts they seem pretty cool and all, and Jin doesn't seem too bad, as well as Toa. However, this quickly changes as well. Jin and Toa and their relationship becomes so lame. Kazuki, Jin's best friend from years ago, who now wants to murder him, becomes possibly the number one most annoying anime character in history, and the other characters really just have no depth to them at all. However, I can't really complain about the character designs too much. Oh wait...yes I can. More than 75% of the females in the show had boobs bigger than Africa. Don't get more wrong, big boobies are great, but this show just kinda ruined it. You'll se what I mean if you watch the show.

Enjoyment:
The series starts off pretty enjoyable with some pretty decent action and all. However, all too quickly does it start to bore the viewer as it begins to revolve solely around Jin and Toa's horrible relationship and undying love for one another. It just gets so tiresome to watch after a while.

Like said in other reviews... it started off good then went downhill from episode 2... seemingly like its saying I'm getting worse... stay with me... it was a decent story to begin with... but the horrible CG just ruined it 4 me.....

story:
overall it was a nice story....if not typical... but hey... how many ways is there to make this kind of genre... anyways it started out good... but as it progressed it became diluted with plot holes and things that seemed just thrown in here and there... overall it just didn't add up for me... in the end it was the characters that seem ... flat and each episode didn't seem to line up in terms of development... mainly with the main characters Jin and Toa... from their first meeting they in love and the rest of the time its just repeating the same scene over and over from my perspective....

art:
the art was very nice for me... nicely drawn characters and backgrounds... but when the CG comes in close your eyes because its like throwing water over a beautiful water painting... the CG is just horrible compared to the other animation.... in itself the CG isn't bad.. but when its added to this show it becomes an eyesore... i generally skipped through the CG scenes because it just seems like it doesn't fit.... if the battle scenes were drawn in regular animation it would have been much more enjoyable...

sound:
I don't generally care much for op's and endings because generally they have nothing to do with the story or anything else for that matter....but generally speaking the sound was good except for the generic sounds during the CG battles... the background music was nice during serious scenes but the flat characters seemed to ruin it...

character:
only thing i will say here is the characters were horrible..from the first few episodes i expected the characters to grow and develop along with the story... well i was madly mistaken.... from the first time they are introduced... nearly all of them never change from the first 10 seconds... i found that rather annoying....

enjoyment:
the first half was very enjoyable... the a rather UN-enjoyable plot twist and time skip.... then it's down hill from there and you almost have to force yourself to keep watching... if you like this type of genre than by all means give it a try and you might find it very enjoyable overall....myself i enjoy anime based on the characters...

overall:
overall this is a great show if you like this kind of genre... as for me i like shows based on characters and the interactions of them.... so this show for me only gets a 6 overall... don't get me wrong... for its genre it was a good... as for overall taste its very lacking in ways of character and romance and such....

if you like then genre then by all means give it a try because you are probably going to enjoy it... but if you are looking for great characters and romance and a good overall plot... this show isn't for you... and don't waste your time.....

Maybe I've said this before but I have this theory about [modern] anime. That it's become such a commodity now. These production companies just churn them out at such a fast pace they don't care too much about the actual quality. It's like McDonald's popping out Big Macs, the product is there, it's completed and the presentation certainly looks nice.......but there's no real value. Dragonaut would be such an example of this “anime fast food” phenomenon: it has a nice looking cast, decent artistic representation, it satisfies on a very superficial level with it's quick and easy character templates and fan-service, but there is no ... real substance to this series. Each of these elements are a dime a dozen, pick up any anime title now-a-days and you can find all of these same characteristics in those titles as well and at least [with a lot of them] they have a better, more cohesive concept resulting in a nice, consistent story that leaves a lasting impression on the viewer. Now eventhough Dragonaut DOESN'T do this, the show isn't a complete waste...like I said before, the art is quite nice, there's enough hot-looking characters to suit everyone's tastes and the story is moderately entertaining.

Nothing new with the art and animation. Everything is as it should be....for the most part. Everything is drawn nicely, lot's of CG used for the dragons and the fight scenes. I dunno. I know we are in a new era with animation but I just would rather be WOW'ed with regular 2D animation which I know the Japanese are VERY good at this anyway. CG is like the “auto-tune” of the animation world. They care so much more about the CG fight scenes than they cared about the human combat scenes...and it certainly showed. The human figures looked rushed, they were all kinds of stretched and distorted looking when they were fighting.

I loved the music of this series, especially the two ending songs and I think it fits the series just fine. I watched the series in English dub. They did a fine job....no complaints there.

Let's talk about the romantic elements of the story first since that's what this series is primarily about. I find it very irritating [not to mention unbelievable] this relationship between Toa and Jin. Within like, the first 2 episodes Toa goes out of her way to find this guy, Jin. She's rescues him a couple of times and in the next instant they're holding hands and sucking face. And all this while, no reason has been given as to WHY she's pursuing him.......OK fine, the viewer is just kinda forced to go along with this for a couple of episodes but then she suddenly flips the script and she hauls ass. WTF? Suddenly they “just can't be together” even though just a while ago they were holding hands, sucking face and swearing not to part with each other? That whole relationship is a sham! It's absolutely ludicrous to think two people are just going to fall so deeply for each other without knowing absolutely ZILCH about each other. But not only do they know nothing about each other....the viewer is in the dark as well, except to know that Jin is in some kind of depression over his family's death and she's a dragon. Yet we are to believe these two love each other? On what basis? Where is the commonality? Where is the explanation?

But the romance between Jin and Toa isn't the only spontaneous element in this series, most everything seems simply brought about by the seemingly arbitrary emotions from one character or another. Some seem to love for no reason while others want to hate and destroy for no [or for some very flimsy] reason. Why was Asim so devious as he was or why Baumgarde is so bitchy as she was except to perhaps keep the story going? Same for poor Kazuki, whom everyone basically ignores, even his supposed best friend....but how does that turn you into a homicidal maniac? You don't need a psychology degree to know personalities can't just do a 180 like that, you either had those feelings lying dormant in your psyche or you've experienced some SERIOUS TRAUMA to make you flip a switch like that, I'm talking stuff like rape, child abuse, watching a friend or loved one get killed in front of you. Not just cuz your supposed best-friend left your hi-5 hanging in the air like a dork or cuz he took your very hot-looking boyfriend [um….I meant “dragon”] that you keep obsessing over.

To me it's quite apparent the story is heavily reliant on emotions: obviously the emotions from the characters but also the [expected] emotions from the viewer. Another such example of how this series relied heavily on an emotional response from viewers is how they constantly held off on the explanations with the hopes of a big payoff with all these great big revelations near the ending. Which in my opinion backfired, I think more people would have enjoyed this series if they had weeded out some of these transparent plot devices, emotional tactics and surprise revelations and actually worked on developing the characters a bit more, they might have appeared more credible and then we would have genuinely been more emotionally attached to them.

Yes, the characters are attractive! All of them have nice fit bodies....even the old people which made me wonder if the artist was even capable of drawing any other body-type, like fat people. Not that I'm complaining too much, they made sure they catered to everyone. Whether you're into males or females, fair-skinned or deep tanned, flat-chested to A-Cup to M-[as in mutant freak]-Cup breasts, from the subservient to the bitchy loli-types, and of course my favorite...the bishies. Yes, they made sure to cover a wide range of fetishes very likely to appeal to a wide range of people and get a large fanbase. But mixing all of these character types together doesn't gaurantee you'll draw a lot of viewers or that the show will be successful. Actually it's likely to have the opposite effect because certain characters correspond to certain specific genres of anime and if you take them out of that context or try to mix sub-genres of anime you'll wind up with a clusterfuck....as is the case here.
You have characters that take themselves and the situation they're in quite seriously but yet we have large breasts bouncing everywhere so it's sexy moment and not so serious anymore but then we've also got light-hearted slapstick people in the mix...so now it's a comedic moment and maybe sexy too but not serious anymore? None of which I took seriously anyway because I dunno too many people that handle crises by going to a hot spa and I eventhough it's an anime I still expect soldiers to look the part....especially military officials, that one chic who's supposed to be a “MAJOR” looked more like a pornstar and pole-dancer in my opinion. Hard for me to take you as a serious military killing machine with your ass in a g-string and thigh-high hooker boots.

So my verdict is: lots of eye-candy, nice looking characters but the story itself is unoriginal and irregularly paced. Way too many random and haphazard emotions running amok....and the finale was tremendously anticlimactic.....but again, the character are very hot!

When I sat down to watch this anime, I was aware of the reputation it had gotten. Lots of people had said it was terrible, lots of people said it was completely unwatchable. So I decided to sit down and try and see if they were right. I think some people may have over-reacted. Granted, I will say that Dragonaut is not the greatest show in the world. In fact it suffers from poor pacing, I think I fell asleep watching this show around seven times, now partly that may be because I watch my anime at night and I'm lying in bed but really ... a story should not be paced that poorly. Then there was the part about, I had trouble bringing myself to actually watch the show, because at times it Bored me. It's really hard to say when this anime finds it rhythm but needless to say it's not good when it takes almost 18 episodes to find it's voice. Episodes 18 and after happen a year later from episode 17. These episodes from 18 and on are really well done, the story significantly picks up in plot and it actually starts to catch the viewer's interest. It was when I reached this part that I could not put this show down. However, the damage had already been done.

I know people like to get angry at whiny characters in anime like Jin. But you know what, there are times where people feel like they are alone in the world and in some ways yes I can relate to him, now I didn't have the misfortune of having something happen like he did, but nonetheless his pain could be understood. Most of the main characters are really well written but there are maybe two weaknesses. One of them is the abnormally large breasts on characters like Machina, Garnet and yes even Toa to a certain extent. What were the creators thinking? This is a serious show and for the most part there isn't too much comedy in it, to throw in a breast size like that kind of kills the mood. It's hard to take the plot seriously when I see Garnet have two Bowling Balls on her chest, not to mention I wonder if she's suffering from Backpain. Secondly, Kazuki has got to be one of the most annoying characters ever in a show, he eventually comes around but I stress eventually. For most of the show he seems to be a Grade A Prick and just a general a$$hole, his sudden conversion near the end of the show is just really unbelievable.

So I have to give it a compromise grade. The first 17 episodes were nothing special. The last 8 were really well done though.

So First 17 Episodes earn an D
The Next 8 earn an B+ giving it around a C, and that's what this show is. Another average anime.

[This review contains minor spoilers] I've already done a full review of Dragonaut: the Resonance in the past, so giving this anime a fair grade wasn't necessarily racking my brain. What was racking my brain, however, was how much of a waste this anime was.

First off, the story. I actually really liked the idea of creating dragons and having them bond with masters to combat an unknown enemy that threatens to destroy mankind. It can allow for interesting ideas to be played with. What was unfortunate however, was how often it went off track (which can be fine, except that the detours this anime took ... were not all that interesting). The idea was great, it just floundered a bit in execution.

The characters, for the most part, were quite boring and bland, or just average. The main two of Jin and Toa were both fine enough for their parts, they weren't terrible, but there wasn't much to them to draw me towards them. Their romance was also pretty weak, and it was focused on a lot. It made some of the motivations just seem unimportant. Then the other main character, Gio was just painful. I've never seen a character I didn't care about as much as him, and so much of the plot revolves around him. He didn't have any definable traits or interesting moments that fleshed him out, he was just there, and I didn't care. And it was a waste of a great voice actor with Christopher Sabat (yes, I watch dubbed anime, hate all you want, it's what I prefer). Kazuki, for a large portion of the anime, was an annoying little twat that continued to chase the trio to get back Gio (who was supposed to be HIS dragon). He was obnoxious and I really wanted him to die. The only other character worth discussing was Sakaki, who was probably the most compelling out of all of them. He had some great moments and was actually a pretty good character. Most of the other characters were very forgettable, so it's barely even worth discussing them, since I cared so little.

The animation wasn't very great for the most part. Sometimes the fighting could be interesting and fluid, like in the first episode, but that was only when it used traditional animation. All the dragons are animated with CGI once they're in dragon form, and boy does it fail and look pretty bad. The designs are actually pretty good, but the models move awkwardly and are very untextured, and they are used a LOT. So, a lot of the animation looks awkward and clumsy, which really bogs it all down and makes it suffer a lot.

Dragonaut: The Resonance started out alright, but it slowly went downhill, barely kept afloat by some pretty good elements, as the other ones, like poor characters, not very good animation, and a forgettable sound track tried drowning it, and pretty much succeeded, depending on how you look at it. I'd say you should probably skip this one.

8. Continuing from my Death Note, Bleach and One Piece reviews, I am still documenting my anime journey.
There are much worse shows than Dragonaut yet I truly hate this show with all my heart.

To be honest, this show is not that bad, at most it is MEDIOCRE.
But that is the issue here.

I have encountered great anime and I have encountered trash anime, but never have I been so disappointed with mediocre anime.
Since then I consider 5/10 to be the worst possible score.

Shows can be bad, you can hate-watch them and make fun of them with your friends while drunk. Similar examples are infamous movies like ... Tommy Wiseau's "The Room".

I still remember how bad Tokyo Ghoul, Sword Art Online and Promised Neverland Season 2 were. I learned from the mistakes and only further developed my taste.
But Dragonaut was just mediocre and thus forgettable.
So forgettable that I want my time back that I wasted on this show.

I watched it back in 2007, what is the story about? Who are the main characters? What was even going on in the show?
I remember nothing.

I can name every character of Naruto and One Piece. I know every episode of Death Note by heart. I will never forget the amazing Ghibli movies like Princess Mononoke.
But Dragonaut, I absolutely erased everything from my memory...
...and it had 25 episodes! That's 10+ hours of my life!

If something is just bad, I can drop it at any moment, I am not that completionist about it.
But a mediocre show tricks you into watching it, giving you just a little bit of hope that it might get better.
Back when I was a teenager in 2007, I was foolish enough to eat up that lie.

In order to never again fall into such a trap, I needed to develop my taste like a wine sommelier to never again ingest such cheap garbage.

Hence why I have no tolerance for trash like Captain Marvel, Ghostbusters, Japanese live-action anime movies or anything overrated like "Your Name".

This show taught me an important lesson and since then I never again settled for mediocre shows no matter how much rabid apologist fanbases defended them.

I don't remember anything about this mediocre show, yet whenever I remember it, my hate grows only stronger.