Netflix's The Dragon Prince

I'm pretty curious about this show because of the A:TLA connection (and the "How do you do, fellow humans?" joke in the new trailer made me chuckle), but man, I cannot get over the janky animation. Is there enough A:TLAy goodness to justify a viewing?

I don't usually recommend stuff on the premise of "it gets better", but if you're gonna check it out, stick around till the second season. The animation improves, the dialogue is better, and a lot of the character arcs and plot points introduced in the first season finally pay off. The character dynamics and humour will be very familiar to an ATLA fan, though the story takes quite a bit longer to get on its feet.

It feels a lot like season 1 of ATLA, where the writers are sort of struggling to tell an introspective and morally complex story while also making it digestible for children. I'd say season 1 of TDP (9 episodes per season) is a bit weaker than ATLA season 1 on average, but season 2 of TDP is consistently as strong as the best parts of ATLA season 1.

As for the animation and general production value: yes, the entire show does become significantly more technically competent in the second season.

I do have enough faith that TDP will continue to improve as the series goes on. If "best of ATLA season 1" isn't quite a high enough bar for you, though, I'd suggest waiting and just checking opinions again when the third season airs.

I wouldn't say it's good as the best of ATLA season 1. The best of ATLA season one was The Storm, one of the GOAT western animation episodes.

A part that seems very strange to me of the second season, is that in a Flashback Viren tries to use himself as a distraction so that others can escape with the Magma Titan's heart.

Which would be very heroic, if it were not for the fact that his life was by far the most valuable of the group (Even above the king's), since he is the only one who can cast the spell that both kingdoms need.

If we assume that Viren lied to look more heroic, his lie would really make him look more stupid.

My guess is that he was genuinely touched by the queens sacrifice and made a rash decision without thinking. It's something of a paradox, if someone is willing to give their life then that makes more distressed at the thought of their death.

I was thinking about it actually. I was slightly bothered by the fact that everyone (in the show) seems to hate Viren. I mean, yeah, dark magic is part of reason for sure, and over show he proved to be overbearing, controlling, merciless and not exactly friendly to anyone but King Harrow.

So, while analyzing him, I noted that there are only two times he did something really heroic. Once, it was when he tried to save the queens. People don't really remember it since death of three queens overshadowed that. Plus, this horribly backfired on Viren, since it cost him his best friend's wife and probably worsened their relationship (I guess saving both kingdoms is heroic, but again, people recall queens as heroes. Spell casting is hardly a brave tough act once you have ingredients) Then there was other time, when he decided to give up his own life to save Harrow and was instantly rejected before he said anything. No wonder the man's bitter and focused on cold pragmatism.

With that said I'm still a bit bothered by everyone acting like Viren is some kind of power hungry manipulator. It like they didn't believe that he was ever Harrow's friend.

I assume that the reason people don't like him and think he's power-hungry is his haste to try to replace Harrow (even ignoring traditions to replace him quicker), and although very few know he wants the princes to die, well, he does want them to die so he can be crowned king instead. He overstepped his authority by using the King's seal, imprisonned a knight in secret, traps people's souls into coins and does... Things, to butterflies.

All in all, his good intentions are heavily overshadowed by his bad actions.

@Thrice: I'd also say show gets great around second season.

Yeah, he does bad things but most of them are done in secret. People like Amaya seem to act like they could just guess that he would turn fully evil sooner or later. Like if Viren was Jafar and Harrow was the only person who wasn't Genre Savvy enough to notice that he's Obviously Evil.

To be fair, we only have two scenes of his life to base ourselves on. Amaya has all the years between the death of her sister and the current events.

Also she might maybe feel that Viren is responsible for her sister's death, which could come off as resentment she's kept since then but didn't act on until now.

Plus the whole 'Leave the wounded behind' part probably didn't endear him to her.

Edited by Resileafs on Mar 1st 2019 at 12:40:21 PM

I don't remember how people responded to Viren in the early episodes before the elven raid, but I always thought this public distrust of Viren started with Viren breaking from the 7-days-of-mourning tradition and naming himself king, and later solidified when his statement about the princes was revealed to be false.

The only people I can think of who outright disliked Viren beforehand were Sarai and Amaya. I'd imagine Sarai didn't like him strictly due to their conflicting ideologies rather than any actual suspicion that he'd steal the throne. We don't know much about Amaya's stance on dark magic, but maybe she shared the same opinions as her sister, or maybe it's one of those cases where she trusted her sibling's intuition about Viren, and that was exacerbated by Sarai's death.

Its probably the fact he always goes for he pragmatic options, which when Dark Magic are involved, tend to end in escalating conflicts and more suffering, and the cycle repeating.

Like for her part Sarai felt if they were going to go through with sacrificing the Magma Titan, they need to treat it as it was: a sacrifice. Because they don't know if its sapient or not and casual disregard for others lives is a slippery slope. And Viren showed he was already like this when he had plans for Harrow to switch with someone else, but hesitated at his own life.

Rather than at least learn from his ephiphany to some extent, he doubles down on his callous disregard for peoples lives. Including his own son. Which Claudia, while willing to sacrifice to protect those she cares about, even shows she understands shes sacrificing a deer for her brothers life.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 2nd 2019 at 11:26:29 AM

@Milerun on the last page: To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with the Dark Callum? He wasn't very convincing. All he really said was: "You must do dark magic. It is your destiny!" and left it at that. It didn't even sound like Callum, really, in terms of word choice.

I don't know if that makes it more or less likely to be a manifestation of Dark Magic itself, though *shrug*

If the plot decides to turn Callum into a powerful wizard, I think a time skip is necessary.

So far each season represents as a week within the universe of the series. And even if Callum is a prodigy, it would be very exaggerated if he becomes too good at magic in a few weeks.

Even Aang took almost a year to master the earth, fire and water. (In-universe time.)

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Mar 4th 2019 at 7:45:11 AM

And Aang at least came with excuse of "My previous lives had learned this already"

I somehow doubt that they will go the "he will be a great magician"....I suspect though that him being able to use this kind of magic will go straight against the world view the elves have.

I just finished season 2. Obviously I loved it. Some scattered thoughts:

Aunt Amaya's new name is General Can't-Hear-You-Over-How-Awesome-I-Am. A week is a really, really short amount of time. They sure expect this newborn dragon to fly fast. Lujanne is kind of a racist and not very good at advice, but quirky and well-meaning, and she gives pretty good exposition. I didn't think Soren was actually going to make (Wil-E Coyote-esque) attempts on Ez's life, I thought he was better than that. Claudia and Callum's not-date was kind of adorable before she dropped the ball. Glad that's out in the open now, though. I LOVE how they justified not "taking the eagles to Mordor" or Phoe-Phoe to Xadia. Though now that we know moon phoenixes are endemic to the moon portal, I gotta wonder what the ecology is like, how large the Moon Phoenix population is, their behavior, etc. I adore Villads and Berto. I love sailing episodes in general. LOVE the extended flashback and deep lore. Queen Sarai was kind of a perv. Queen Loli's parents' makeup game was on-point. Killing a rock-monster is definitely worth it to save 100,000 people from slowly starving to death. The scene with Ez and Zym mirroring each other's movements in their sleep was very cute and gif-able. I didn't cry when Callum read King Harrow's final letter...but I got my dad into The Dragon Prince when I visited for Christmas, and he probably will when he catches up. I'm guessing Rayla DIDN'T kill two people to save a dragon who just laid waste to a village full of innocent people when she could have just flown away. But it sure looked like she threw a spear through a man's head. But I guess she didn't. Rayla, stop chewing Callum out for helping you carry out your dumb idea without getting anyone else killed. Dark Magic is a hell of a drug. Corvos is actually a pretty chill dude. Ezran takes after his father. It is BADASS that Callum managed to forge a connection with the Sky without the use of a primal stone and I love it so very much. Wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't crushed that worm...Possibly even cooler than Toph learning to metalbend. I have never advocated the death of an adorable baby deer as much as I did in episode 9. As a vegetarian, I have to say, using the body parts of innocent creatures is 1000% worth it to save thousands of people from starvation or cure paralysis from the neck down. Unless that creature is a cat or a donkey, nothing is worth sacrificing a cat or a donkey. I'm totally down for dark magic if the situation requires it.

I've changed best girls. It used to be Rayla and she's still amazing, but I've jumped ship to team Claudia. She's just so pure and she really, really, really cares about her friends, and her brother, and she's so smart and funny and powerful and my daughter and I love her so much.

The creepy mirror scenes with Virren and ...Aardvark? ...Aaravos. I'm never gonna remember that. Were my FAVORITE part of the entire season. I loved the spooky music. So much. And I cannot wait to read all the horrible, horrible slash fiction. I think the whole moral of that plotline is going to be "don't listen to strangers on the internet." Always very topical.

Thats kinda hypocritical if you are like "Killing things is perfectly okay, unless its something I personally love"

In general though, ye are getting dangerously close to "Next I shall say its okay to kill intelligent creatures to save much more people. If we can sacrifice a baby to save million people, all hail satanic rituals" :D

Anyway, didn't she knock them out by throwing blunt end of spear at someone?

Edited by SpookyMask on Mar 4th 2019 at 5:53:18 PM

I'd be more fine with dark magic if people just stuck with animal parts but as we've seen with Claudia and Soren after they tied down the dragon that sapient magical creatures have much higher magic quantities and they fully intended to chop her up for spell fuel, you have to admit that's kind of f@#ked up.

In Claudia's defense, the dragon appeared to be dead.

Although if it weren't and it wasn't...she probably would have wanted to use it for parts anyway.

Also ALL animals in this setting are sapient, the parrot is completely fluent in English and Bait may or may not be able to read.

Eh, I wouldn't say all animals in TDP are sapient. The Amplified Animal Aptitude trope tends to only apply to individual animals that are treated as "characters" for narrative purposes, not all the animals in the setting.

I'm not surprised there's a trope for that, but I've never thought about what it would be called.

Yeah, she turned it around and threw it blunt end first.

Watched second season a couple of days ago. Loved it more than first (and I already loved first). I'm bothered by a couple of things, especially the fact that they took all ruling monarchs of two countries on a dangerous hunt. I can understand taking Viren, he is probably the best and most knowledgeable mage, so he is kind of necessary. But why couldn't he only take skilled troups with him? Why endanger the King and Queens of a foreign country? Even if they were necessary (for morale or whatever else), why take all four of them? Surely there would have been less problems if at least one Queen and one of Katolis rulers were left to rule in their partner's absence?