I really want to like this show. I find the character design and art style immensely charming. This first episode was very slow though. This is probably the least exciting dragon fight I have ever seen. To me, this came across like the first chapter in a manga; set up the world, some characters, and then end the chapter with the twist to keep people reading into the next chapter.

I am hoping that I am right because it would mean that the story will hopefully pick up as they go at a quicker pace, adapting more than a single chapter per episode. I don’t find the first chapter formula as annoying in manga form, probably because I can read at my own pace, so I don’t have to sit through a whole episode’s worth of time.

As an aside, I saw @zabadoh@ani.social mention vagina dragons in the general thread about this show and was really confused. I was questioning myself, like I am pretty sure I know what vaginas look like and I don’t see it in these dragons. But, then, the vagina dragon does appear halfway through the episode. It was a pretty good description. There is probably a reason vertical mouth openings are not that common on fictional monsters, the comparison is easier to make than a Georgia O’Keeffe painting (even though she hated that comparison).

In any case, I am willing to give this another episode. I mean, I love Nicola’s design and the bold lines/shading in this art style, so I am hoping it picks up the pace from here now that they got the hook out of the way. @rikka@ani.social

I’ll paraphrase what I said about this first episode in the weekly discussion:

Jeebus, that was boring. Really boring. Awful direction and editing. Took too long to bring up the twist.

I actually kind of liked the derpy dragon design, except for when the supposedly scary sweaty vagina face emerged from the “mega dragon”'s mouth.

But for some strange reason, this was #5 on the JP Twitter charts last week, so the source material must have a lot of fans?

I’m not feeling motivated to watch another episode of this.

I can’t even give this post an upvote because I hated this episode so much.

Can someone more familiar with the source material tell us if it gets any better?

Animators, please. You’re ruining the show :-/

I was rather excited at it, the manga is good, so why the hell do you need to do things so slow? It’s fine to abridge things for the adaptation, anime requires a faster pace.

As everyone else has said, this was painfully slow. The storytelling seemed to be there, just at an abysmal pace, enough that I don’t think I could sit through more of it.

I give the premiere a 2/5, but I may check out the manga instead.