Can you guess which ones are the dragons?
Ryuuji Kisaragi is an Ordinary High-School Student, living a peaceful life. Until his second cousin Eriko comes home from America, forcibly enlisting him in Seven Tails, her (unapproved) organization dedicated to hunting down Lost Precious, powerful artifacts from around the world. One of these artifacts is being traded that night, and she wants his help.
After seizing the box with the artifact, the box opens to reveal a young girl (later named Rose) who's both attached to Ryuuji and able to throw fire. She is a dragon, and her very presence sets off a chain of events that will decide both Ryuuji and Rose's future.
Dragon Crisis! is a series of Light Novels written by Kaya Kizaki and illustrated by Itsuki Akata, which was published under the Super Dash Bunko imprint from 2007 to 2011 for 13 volumes. It was adapted into an anime in the winter of 2011.
The anime can be viewed legally at Crunchyroll here.
Tropes in Dragon Crisis! include:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The super-deformed Eriko (see Dancing Theme below); also used for various vehicles.
- Artifact Collection Agency: The Society. Eriko also started her own Lost Precious collection/recovery business called Seven Tails.
- Badass Transplant: Ai, whose powers are from a Lost Precious fused with her body.
- Bland-Name Product: The researcher towards the end of #7 uses a computer sporting a "Doors 7" wallpaper.
- Butt-Monkey: Masato's main role seems to be something for Mao to hit when things don't go her way, particularly with trying to hook up Ryuuji and Misaki.
- Car Fu: Eriko crashes a car into Onyx on top of an Airplane.
- Chained Heat: Ryuuji and Ai get trapped by a Lost Precious, which is only able to reduce itself to a pair of handcuffs. This includes when Ai has to clean herself off in the bath.
- Clingy Jealous Girl:
- Rose, towards Ryuuji, but in a totally adorable way. Rose gets jealous of Maruga when the latter mentions that they're not married, and gives Ryuuji a kiss (while blocking Rose's view of it with an umbrella) as thanks for him helping her resolve her issue in episode 5. Which then prompts Rose to repeatedly suggest they get married, giving poor Misaki another Heroic BSoD moment.
- Ai leans this way towards the end.
- Crash-Into Hello: Ai meets Ryuuji this way when he tries to catch her after she jumped off a tree branch to save a falling cat.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Onyx kills several security guards, breaks gates open, kills some more security guards and takes Rose for a walk.
- Curtains Match the Window: Practically everyone except Bianca, Rose and Saphie.
- Dancing Theme:
- A Super-Deformed number featuring Eriko with the rest of the cast.
- The ending theme itself, "Mirai Bowl" is an actual song with dance choreography by Momoiro Clover Z.
- Declaration of Protection: Part of Ryuuji's motivation for helping out the various women in the series, particularly Ai and Rose.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The intro Immortalist is sung by Maruga's seiyuu.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Ax-Crazy painter, who believes that all women are liars, even after the girls tell the truth to his questions (all of which involve Ryuuji in some way). Although they manage to escape, he's still convinced they're all liars, and tries to kill them anyway.
- Fantastic Arousal: Ai's ears and tail are very sensitive.
- Fantastic Racism: Onyx regularly and casually compares humans to ants and insects not worthy of any consideration, and yet oddly enough Would Not Hit a Girl who is human.
- Friendly Enemy: Sapphie. The worst she does to the main characters is get them wet. Then later she "attacks" Rose, but only gets herself wet, and the next scene is at Ryuuji's apartment where Rose is helping dry her clothing, giving her a bath, and feeding her. Even when Rose is kidnapped, she helps out the main characters and never truly acts intentionally malicious towards them.
- Ghost Town: In episode 9, several of the girls get sucked into a Cursed Precious painting of one. An Ax-Crazy murderer also happens to live in this painting and chases after them.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Averted because Ai is a half-wolf thing as a result of having a Lost Precious embedded inside her.
- Healing Hands: A dragon's breath can heal humans, like when Rose heals Ryuji after their fight with Onyx.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Ai, after reading her master's thoughts that he actually kidnapped her and was merely using her as an experiment.
- Sapphie seems to do this as well. Then again, she never really seemed evil in the first place, and actively tries to help Rose out.
- Heroic BSoD: Misaki suffers one after hearing Rose mention being engaged to Ryuuji. It ticks her friend Mao off so much that she tries to hit Masato on the head during a watermelon smashing event at the beach.
- Ryuuji seems to suffer this about halfway through episode 11. It takes Misaki and Maruga talking to him to snap him out of it.
- Hopeless Suitor: Poor Misaki, it seems she never really had a chance with Ryuuji, since he was snatched up by his cousin within the first 5 minutes of being introduced, then Rose clings onto him before she ever gets an opportunity to express her feelings. It doesn't stop Mao from trying to hook them up however.
- An Ice Person: Margarite, aka Maruga, as well as a wielder of the Ice Rage.
- Idiot Ball: Ryuuji has the poor sense to believe everything Onyx says to him, regarding Rose's ailing health, so he helps Onyx to kidnap Rose. This happens despite he knows that Onyx is a lying douchebag and more importantly he didn't even try to ask help from Maruga.
- If I Can't Have You…: When Rose made it absolutely clear that she will never consent to being engaged to him, Onyx assumes his draconic form and proceeds to attack her and Ryuuji. He wanted the power boost he would get from the engagement contract. Ironically, he would have had better luck with his loyal subordinate Kai than with Rose, seeing as how the requirement for this particular magical contract is for both parties involved to TRUST each other.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Sapphie tries really hard to be an antagonist to Rose, but ends up as more of a Friendly Enemy.
- Interspecies Romance: Dragons and humans. But other than some markings on their hand, dragons look indistinguishable from humans while not in dragon mode.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Misaki seems to lean towards this at the end, but Mao refuses to accept this for her, and immediately plans "Operation Take back Ryuuji", much to Misaki's dismay.
- Limited Animation: The closing credits.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Ryuuji decided on Rose's name after seeing the scale markings on her hand.
- Learnt Japanese From Watching Television: Rose learned a few basic words from Ryuuji and Eriko, but by episode two she's able to speak Japanese pretty fluently.
- Love Makes You Crazy:
- Furumori who justifies his actions because he thought the society wanted him to perform dangerous experiments to merge Lost Precious items into human bodies. When a female friend of his got sick, he tried to get an item that would cure her, but was repeatedly denied by the society member who owned said item.
- The Ax murderer/painter fits this as well, since after being cheated on, he feels all women are liars.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Ryuuji, see the Idiot Ball for details.
- Mad Scientist: Tokura and Bianca. With Bianca, it only really fits in her introduction episode, what with firing a Ryuuji-seeking missile at him in a classroom, then having a giant robot attack him (which in a flashback apparently didn't work the first time either). After that, she more or less acts somewhat normal.
- Magic Contract Romance: Ryuuji and Rose.
- Making a Splash: Sapphie. She's so hilariously bad with her water-based powers that the best she's ever done is to drop a ball of water on someone's head. She's pretty obviously the Inept Mage as far as dragons go.
- Manchild: Eriko is irresponsible, messy, and can't cook to save her life. It seems Ryuuji is the adult most of the time, not Eriko.
- Marshmallow Hell: Eriko does this to Ryuuji in the first episode.
- The Masquerade: Considering Bianca fired a bazooka in the middle of a classroom, and then smashed part of it with a giant robot, it's startling how few people seem to catch on. Misaki notices, but only after being sucked into a painting, seeing Rose shoot fire, watching Saphi sprout wings, and even then has to be told outright.
- Meaningful Name:
- The "Ryuu" in "Ryuuji" means dragon, the "ji" means to govern or rule.
- George the Dragon slayer is an obvious allusion to Saint George, the Dragon Slayer.
- Mission Control: Tokura does this a lot, often providing information to Eriko.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Some of Eriko's outfits have plunging necklines, like her Little Black Dress in episode 6.
- Nice Guy:
- Father George, who is far too sweet and kind-hearted to ever be good dragon slayer.
- Ryuuji too. He even stops a guard from hitting Ai with a nightstick, even though she was stealing stuff at the time. In fact, almost every main girl is attracted to him due to this trope, with the exception of his cousin.
- Nuns Are Mikos In a broad sense, anyway. The business with George and the sword and the mysteriously crossless church doesn't actually fit very well into major Christian denominations, but does seem to match depictions of Shinto tropes.
- Official Couple: Rose and Ryuuji, but the end of the anime hints that the other girls aren't going to give up that easily.
- Onion Tears: Episode 10 starts with Ai, Rose, and Misaki all crying because they're chopping onions.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Ryuuji chooses to be this, at least until Rose shows up. Played straight with his two female and one male classmates however.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Except for the scale markings and the superpowers, dragons look like normal humans. Until they transform.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Ai is some sort of werewolf-like creature, though she never goes full wolf.
- Parasol of Prettiness: Maruga almost always has a parasol with her, even at night.
- Pretty Freeloader: Rose for the most part. Eriko sometimes, although she does drive Ryuuji around once in a while too. Interestingly enough for a harem anime, it's averted for every other main girl, as they have their own places to live, although they do show up at his apartment from time to time.
- Red Right Hand: All Dragon have scales on their hand.
- Really 700 Years Old: Maruga and Onyx. Maruga knew her uncle, who died a hundred years ago, so she has to be over a hundred years old despite appearing to be in her late teens/early twenties. Onyx and Maruga were childhood friends so he has to be over a hundred as well.
- Secret-Keeper: Ryuuji and Eriko have to keep the existence of dragons a secret from their human friends.
- Shipper on Deck: Mao is trying to ship Misaki and Ryuuji. Even when it seems obvious Misaki doesn't stand a chance, Mao still attempts to do this.
- Shout-Out:
- In episode 9 the killer bears a slight resemblance to Michael Myers
- The town itself in Episode 9 is a reference to the Stephen King novel Desperation.
- Sinister Scythe: Ryuuji's dad was seen with one in Bianca's traumatic flashback.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Bianca seems able to vanish and appear to characters no matter if they're in a classroom, or on top of a flight control tower.
- Super-Deformed: The characters in the closing credits.
- Supporting Harem: Rose and Ryuuji are "engaged", magically and otherwise. The rest of the harem does stand a fighting chance, but none of them live with him.
- Tempting Fate: When the girls escape from the painting in episode 9, Eriko comments that if this was like a horror movie, something bad should happen next. Cue the Ax-Crazy murderer escaping into their bathroom mirror.
- Tickle Torture: Eriko uses this on a captured Ai to get her to find out more about her.
- The Big Damn Kiss: In the final episode, Ryuuji and Rose kiss and activate the Love engagement and destroy Onyx
- The Power of Love: dragon "engagements" require both parties to trust each other completely and have feelings for each other, and give both a massive temporary boost in magical power. At one point this power was even used directly to disintegrate Onyx.
- The Reveal: Ryuuji is a Lost Precious. Later subverted because, Fang lied.
- Those Two Guys: More like that one guy and girl, but Masato and Mao, Ryuuji and Misaki's school friends, are this.
- Title Drop: Onyx says that Ryuuji is a Dragon Crisis. He lied.
- Tomato in the Mirror: According to Onyx, Ryuuji is apparently a human like Lost Precious that is dangerous to dragons. He lied.
- Vapor Wear:
- Bianca is clearly not wearing any normal panties.
- Literal example is Maruga's Melting Bikini-top in the Beach Episode (...don't ask).
- Eriko doesn't always wear a bra either, such as her dress from episode 6.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Rose doesn't like it when Ryuuji is threatened.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ryuuji hates them it seems. He even gets warts just by holding onto a box with a picture of them on it.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Ryuuji. Subverted with Onyx, who claims this, although he does try to attack Rose and Ryuuji. However, he does only use a spell to knock out Eriko.
- Younger Than They Look:
- George is only nineteen.
- Dragons themselves upon hatching are, based on their physical development, around 12-14 years old. So their entire SPECIES starts out this way.
