Alternative title(s): Dragon, Ie wo Kau
Manga Adaptation by Signal.MD
Streaming on Funimation

Premise

Dragons are supposed to be the most powerful creatures in the world, but Letty is very bad at being a dragon. Booted from his parent’s castle, he now wanders the land with a shady elf real estate agent, searching for a new home.

Jel’s verdict: Foreclosed

This is a perfect example of why good characters are so much more important to comedy than a good premise. Dragon Goes House Hunting is built on a funny idea and yet much of the focus is on its insufferable protagonist. Letty is not a plucky underdog, or an easy going dragon who just chooses not to do the usual dragon things. He’s a whiny crybaby who puts no effort into improving himself, despite apparently being born in a position of privilege. There’s one scene where he gets in trouble and literally cries, uninterrupted, for 30 seconds of actual screen time until his captors take pity on him. I just kept yelling SHUT UP at my monitor, which is never a good sign.

And so rather than draw humor from the ridiculous concept of a dragon buying a home, the joke is how Letty is supposed to be Mr. Big Bad Dragon but he actually sucks. Even that might be tolerable in itself, but they proceed to beat this idea into the ground until there is nothing left but fine powder. You could see the punchlines coming from miles away, and the only suspense was in guessing how quickly Letty would start crying again.

On top of that, let me just say I am very, very tired of every fantasy anime insisting on adding video game mechanics for no discernable reason. Letty literally has a status page card he carries around to show us he has terrible stats, and we get dumb dialogue like Letty saying he doesn’t have the “fly action unlocked” rather than just saying he can’t fly. At this point it’s just extremely lazy world building that adds nothing of value.

The only time the episode is remotely entertaining is when the shady elf guy is trying to sell a house in the first scene. Thinking about what a classic RPG monster like a slime would want in a home, through the filter of present day realtor lingo, is what I thought I was signing up for in this series. I suspect we will get more of that as the two main characters finally meet at the end of the episode, but it’s hard for me to imagine that will be enough to save the series. Humor is subjective, and maybe someone else will find this funny, but I don’t think I can take another minute of it.

Artemis’ verdict: Mildly Entertaining, Mostly Boring

I almost wish I enjoyed this show more than I actually did. It’s pretty harmless, and possibly some people will find it a charming watch, which on paper, it should be – and yet, my reaction throughout most of the episode was polite boredom. I mean, I got the jokes, and there wasn’t even necessarily anything wrong with their timing, but the whole premiere was basically about repeating the same couple of jokes over and over, so predictability became a major issue for me. Other than lampooning common high fantasy tropes, especially within JRPGs, there just didn’t seem to be a whole lot of material to work with; as a result, the comedy struck me as fairly limited. Sure, I smiled once or twice, but I don’t think I’d want to sit through an entire 12 episodes of this.