At first glance, the premise and characters of Meidoragon are nothing special--and I'll admit that they stay so. Kobayashi starts as a dead-eyed OL and stays one, Tohru is a dragon who's a maid and continues to be, and the rest... you get my flow. The premise, though interesting, doesn't stick out much either. What's truly captivating about this show are the relationships.
No, don't get me wrong, I don't mean the KobayashiTohru yuri action. I meant the bonds between the characters and how you see them growing as the series progresses. It's done nicely and subtly so that you barely realize it happens at all, but when you compare the first episode to the last, you'll see the difference between how the characters interact. One scene in which this really stands out is when Shouta practices banishing demons on Lucoa, and Lucoa runs out. There're a lot of scenes in between of different characters (as this is the storytelling style of Meidoragon), but when we cut back to Shouta we see him panicking and running out to find Lucoa (she's out there petting a kitten, don't worry). This is significantly different from how Shouta treats and sees Lucoa in the start of the anime: a demon succubus that he must get rid of.
Back to what I said about the characters staying the same. The thing about Meidoragon is that the characters don't necessarily grow, they discover. The characters (especially Kobayashi and Tohru) are invited to dig deeper into their inner souls (is this an exaggeration? I hope I'm not exaggerating it too much) and discovering things about themselves that allows them to unlock parts of themselves they never knew existed. I think this is called development, but I seriously wouldn't call it that in this case. Call me stubborn, but the characters don't get over, say, a fatal flaw that allows them to progress further in life. They learn to get the most from the current situation, and even though that's staying where they are, it's nice to see them having a good time from it.
The animation and art are amazing as always, nothing less than what I'd expect from Kyo-ani.
Now to the controversial part. This show fully shows Kyo-ani's abilities to adapt because it was so drastically improved once it was animated by Kyo-ani. Many of the order of events were changed to increase the meaning of them (eg. Shouta was introduced earlier), and new gags were rightfully placed to enhance the viewing experience in general. Kyo-ani also added the humanity into it, in my opinion. The original manga was about 60% fanservice, 30% plot that is also fanservice, and 10% actual character interaction and development. Kyo-ani changes this 30% so it takes up more of the pie that is Meidoragon (taking away some from the 60% of fanservice). As a result, characters got better, character motives were clearer, and the emotional impact from the last few episodes got insanely larger.
Call me biased, but I totally bought the whole sweet domestic fluff thing (and how Kyo-ani adapted source material in general), which is why I'd give this anime a 10.
