Ah, sisters.

What They Say:
Princess Veronica’s visit has Silvia trying to prove her Dragonar mettle, but it may also have drawn unwanted attention from an undercover assassin.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While Dragonar Academy continues to be a fun series that hasn’t won me over fully, mostly because it feels like the world isn’t fully designed here in a way that I can connect with, it is one that’s working well enough as enjoyable entertainment. And while you do want series that move you and make you think, sometimes you want ones that just have a good sense of fun and character. Having gotten some decent character material recently, and working an angle that doesn’t have Eco dominating each episode, it’s proven itself firmly in that area. Now it’s shaping up to expand things a bit with the arrival of Silvia’s relative, the princess Veronica, and that helps to fill in a few more areas while providing a little sibling material as well.

With it being four years since the sisters last saw each other, there’s obviously a bit of testing that has to go on at first since there’s obviously issues to be had. Amusingly, what we get from this initial encounter is the way that Veronica dislikes the way that Silvia covers herself up since it’s a lack of pride in one’s body and it becomes something that can be taken advantage of in battle, which show shows her quickly and easily enough. There’s some interesting bits that does come up as the whole thing progresses, including some common room bath time that happens where Ash and others talk positively about Silvia in an effort to get Veronica to realize that she is a pretty good person. But you also know that Veronica isn’t looking for her to be a pretty good person but rather the right person for her position in the world.

To make matters worse, when Silvia does her combat performance in front of her sister and the crowd as part of her training, she ends up getting defeated and even knocked out. That certainly doesn’t sit well with Veronica and you can see why she’s being singled out as not being properly trained or capable for handling her position as princess, something that goes back to her family past with the way her brother had killed a dragon before which lead to a variety of issues. There’s a lot of good dialogue, even if some of it is just exposition, that has Ash being caught up on things and Silvia trying to be as proper as she can even as she realizes that she’s failing in the eyes of family and her sister specifically. Of course, there has to be a quirk in it all as well as towards the end, a new attack has arrived from a different venue that will in all likelihood make Silvia take a commanding position in the next episode to right things.

In Summary:
Dragonar Academy is admittedly pretty predictable but it’s the kind of show that executes it well overall while looking good and being enjoyable. It’s easy to lambast a show like this as just being easy and obvious, but sometimes the way it’s handled can allow it to rise above that. I’m still finding it to be a fun and enjoyable show with what it’s doing but I can see the flaws easily enough because of the predictability. But thankfully, for whatever reason, it’s not causing it to fall apart but rather to work off it well enough. This episode plays the family “my sister is a stern princess” with issues thing that gives us more about Silvia, but it does it without forcing both Ash and Eco to take stronger roles in it, keeping them as supporters in a good way. Fun, light and enjoyable.

Grade: B-

Streamed By: FUNimation

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.