Fridge / Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid

Fridge Brilliance

• The often maligned dub line of "I'm not into women or dragons" is painted as Miss Kobayashi being rewritten as a straight woman in the English version. But... does it though? Though Leah Clark's delivery comes off as "putting her foot down," Kobayashi could be just saying things to dissuade Tohru's advances since her dragon maid had yet to grow on her as a potential romance partner. Another look at it could be that she thinks herself as "straight" without giving much thought to her true sexuality... outside of being totally schnockered, that is. Basically, it doesn't actually rule out Miss Kobayashi's true sexuality.
  • In addition, the original line that translates to "But I'm a woman" wouldn't really sound right with Miss Kobayashi. She clearly knows what homosexuality entails as an adult so this cliched Yuri line... doesn't really work with her. She's also not one to concern herself with what others think of her aside from helping the dragons keep their cover.
    • Not if "But I'm a woman" is meant to be taken as part of the Running Gag about Kobayashi being mistaken for a man.
  • The Funimation dub also makes a lot of weird character changes, so this can be said to be one of them.
    • Not that the other spinoffs had any consistent characterization anyway, so it's at least excusable.
• Whether it was "Feminist Propaganda" or otherwise (it really wasn't), Lucoa knowing of the word "patriarchal" and its modern implications makes about as much sense as dragons being able to speak the human language. That said, it does come across as two aliens to human culture making sense of the new world they've arrived in. Basically: the overall shtick of the dragons' comedy.
  • It is also shown that the Dragons are easily influenced by what they read on the internet, so Lucoa could have probably just picked up some slang she read without fully understanding the controversy behind it.
  • Part of the problem, is even more then the above, the original line makes her come across as not caring, and naive. Lucoa is one of those characters who is very secure in her sexuality, at least in the manga.
    • But she'd still be considered naive if she tried to use words she randomly saw in the internet in conversation like this, and the tone of how she says it indicates she doesn't particularly care.
  • In fact, it could even have been intended to be an ironic gag that fell flat due to the controversy of the topic.
• A lot of Tohru's behavior makes more sense if you remember that the world she comes from is far more violent than our own. For example, when she tries to convince Miss Kobayashi that she is useful by saying she can turn the city into a sea of fire or curse people to death? That's completely useless (and probably terrifying) to a human from our world, but for someone living in a world with powerful magical beings? Tohru would be the ultimate bodyguard!
• Since Elma is a Harmony dragon who is all about order, rules and laws, she has difficulty with choosing human foodstuff, things that have no clear-cut 'correct' choices.
• Why does Kanna eat so much? Although she's a dragon, she's still a growing child.
• All of the female dragons shown so far display a fair amount of breast sway whenever they move. This is because they are not actually wearing anything under their clothes, or actual clothes in fact, as the "clothes" that we see them wear as actually just their scales transformed to look like human clothing. This is also why despite the superpowered dodgeball game they played, none of them showed extensive Clothing Damage as dragon scales are pretty durable.
• It would feel odd to some that, in the anime version of Tohru's confrontation with her father, Kanna is the only other dragon that gets involved in the situation (i.e. flying to reach Tohru before her father drags her back to the Dragon World, taking Kobayashi to where Tohru and her dad are fighting). However, the others not getting involved makes a lot more sense when you consider that Tohru's conflict is all about family, and whereas the other dragons are more like friends (or in Elma's case, a rival) of Tohru's, Kanna can be seen as part of a family unit that consists of her, Tohru, and Kobayashi.
  • Elma is Harmony-aligned, Lucoa Spectator-aligned, and Fafnir is too strongly aligned with Chaos to care or help.
  • In fact, this is demonstrated and explained explicitly when Iruru attacks.
• For the sizable camp that people wished to see "Kobayashi live with a gigantic dragon"... well, there is a simple reason. It wouldn't WORK as a series! Just from the start, there is no space in Tokyo to have a gigantic dragon hang out (as shown in the apartment-hunting episode). Futhermore, by making Tohru an inhuman dragon? She wouldn't be able to interact with the human cast any (and it would be hard to get her to emote...) Essentially, making her shapeshift means that the show can be more then a one-shot gag. If she was a gigantic dragon? It would, essentially, end up being the "You gotta be hiding a cow in the apartment" sketch from Sam & Max: Freelance Police!
• When Kobayashi offers a drink to Lucoa, the ex-goddess sternly remarks that she needs to check if the alcohol has any curses in it. This change in attitude would seem rather strange, given that she is usually an extremely laid-back dragon. For anyone familiar with Mesoamerican mythology, Lucoa's mention of cursed liquor is a reference to the incident when the god Tezcatlipoca had coerced Lucoa into getting drunk and sleeping with her sister, which resulted in the goddess's loss of divinity.
• Once you understand the reason she became The Exile in the first place, Kanna's initial distrust towards Kobayashi's offer to have the young dragon stay with her and Tohru makes more sense. After all, Kanna had recently been tricked by a dragon-hating wizard into destroying a Dragon Ball, and thus assumes that Kobayashi would do the same type of manipulation.
  • Following that explanation, you can also understand the reasoning as to why Kimun leaves Kanna in Kobayashi's dimension instead of putting her under the care of her best friend (Tohru). Volume 4 reveals that before the story starts, he along with all of the other chaos faction dragons knew she was busy battling a god. Volume 1 reveals that about 3 weeks after the story began, Kanna's friend was rumored to be dead, as only 2 of her other friends (Fafnir & Lucoa), knew that she had survived. So with her friend unavailable to take care of Kanna, for the time being, Kimun had no choice but to deposit her in another dimension, and hope somebody would come along to take Kanna in & care for her.
  • Also, for putting Kanna in another dimension? There is basically nothing on Earth that could hurt her, and he was probably planning to pick her up eventually. The comparison to 'being put outside the apartment in a safe neighborhood' is quite fair.
• Elma's complete and utter obsession with food may be strange, but think about how modern food is created. Even if you ignore all the added sugars in pretty much everything, we've had the ability to cross and selectively breed pretty much every foodstuff we eat these days, to the point where most people have never seen any truly natural food product. For example, originally watermelons were actually fairly bitter. In a world constantly at large scale war, any agriculture at all would be difficult let alone to breed for the tastiest results. Our food is simply better.
  • This is actually explicitly mentioned in the afterword manga in Elma's OL Nikki Vol. 2 as to why it was so much easier to get good food in our world.
  • The reason Elma can eat a lot of food without getting fat or sick is also easily explained when you look at her dragon form. That form is a giant snake, and snakes in real life have a high metabolism in addition to having a long digestive system. So like them, she also has a high metabolism & long digestive system and therefore can eat as much as she wants without having to worry about getting fat or sick, and the excess energy from the food is turned into Mana.
• Fafnir's love of games makes a lot of sense when you remember a key part of many video games is the collection and hoarding of vast amounts of gold, loot, and treasure. He's just taking his draconic obsession with expanding his treasure hoard into the virtual world, and it lets him satisfy that natural urge with a safe "not burning down whole cities" outlet. And if something in those games tries to steal from him, he can obliterate them from existence without harming anyone and have his draconic instinct for revenge fulfilled.
  • On a similar note, it also makes sense that his human form is tall, thin and moderately handsome as opposed to looking like a dwarf. It's mentioned in Season 2 that the human forms of the dragons are, essentially, what happens when you take the concept of that dragon and apply it to humanity (So Tohru and Lucoa look like attractive women in their human forms because they're attractive dragons, by dragon standards). It stands to reason that the same applies to Fafnir, because he's taking a human form as opposed to a dwarf one, and he'd look attractive to dwarfs in similar ways if he took such a form.
• Tohru's tendency to Glomp Kobayashi becomes a lot sweeter when you remember the very first thing Kobayashi ever said to her...
• Fridge Brilliance in the first episode of Season 2! Why was Lucoa dancing every time Shouta played the flute? You'd think it's just Lucoa being Lucoa, until you realized... Quetzalcoatl is the Feathered Serpent. Shouta was just Snake Charming her by accident and because Lucoa was in her human form, it looked a little weird!
  • In truth is that when a snake charmer "charms" a snake, isn't the music that makes them dance, for you see, they can't hear really well, is the movement of the charmers that the snake imitates, but maybe it has to do with the music, since Lucoa is Quetzalcoatl, a really important Mesoamerican God, who was revered in a lot of regions of today Mexico, she could be dancing to the "La Bamba" song, just hear what Shouta is playing, and sounds a little bit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjGHe-TyfQ0 From 00:41 - 00:52. And the notes that Shouta plays are this: A4, F3, G3, E3, A4, A4, F3, F3, G3, E3
• Before Fafnir came to Earth, he shared a seemingly rather small cave with someone he grew to care for (Tohru). Takiya's place looks rather small or at least, cramped with things to the point that it seems small. He's staying with at least one person he enjoys, albeit without the "fighting for territory" part. He's essentially staying in a cave with lots of treasure and company that he can enjoy, "hoarded" by Takiya, nonetheless. Furthermore, Takiya acquired his "treasure" legally, and without strife, which seems to healthily align with the reason as to why Fafnir came to Earth in the first place. Could this be part of the reason as to why he enjoys staying over at Takiya's place?

Fridge Horror

• Episode 12 reveals that Kobayashi met Tohru after getting really drunk and wandering off into the woods. Two rather frightening observations:
  • 1) Those woods were not only somewhat remote, a warning sign revealed that they were populated by bears, meaning she could have just ran off and never been seen again.
  • 2) Kobayashi got blackout drunk on a public train and apparently the only thing remarkable about it to her was that she met a dragon while she was drunk, leaving some unsettling implications about both her life before she met Tohru and her current drinking habits. She's not even concerned that she ended up in a forest on a bender, just that she has a massive headache and still has work.

Fridge Tearjerker

• Tohru states that it's the norm for one of a dragon's parents to foist the child off on the other and ditch them as soon as possible. The fact that both Ilulu's parents stuck around to raise her shows what Good Parents they were. No wonder she was so affected by their deaths.