Now that’s an impressive dragon.

What They Say:
Heading to the volcano to restore the hot springs, Leviatan and her friends encounter the Fire Drake. However, weakened by disease, he says he cannot even move. In order to create a medicine to cure him, Leviatan and her friends split up to gather ingredients.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the hot spring episode has ended, the girls are still tied to it as they head off to the volcano in order to try and figure out why the hot springs aren’t getting the kind of water they used to get. This helps them avoid the bill for a bit but also plays into their wheelhouse of helping others when there’s trouble abound. The previous episode offered up a touch of characterization and some decent moments, and surprisingly little fanservice for a hot spring episode, but it did play to a lot of the other tropes and that took an already weak show and kind of just dragged it through the mud a bit more just to reassure you that they do know there’s not much here to work with.

What they discover at the volcano is that it’s hard to call it one ecause it’s pretty much hardened at the top and isn’t all that hot at all, considering they can walk right across it. But there’s still lava bubbling under the surface, which is something that Syrop is able to call forth and try and communicate with. The master of the volcano is a pretty badass looking dragon, but it’s also one that’s just a hair bigger than Syrop is, which makes for some amusing theatrics. But the dragon is useful as it reveals that the volcano is, in essence, sick and the girls have to do something to try and heal it. That has them now dealing with the cure, which is getting the necessary medicine for the dragon to take. Side quest – go! And with that, the girls have to get three separate ingredients that the dragon tells them about and their locations, since he’s just too ill to be able to do it.

Not surprisingly, the girls go off on their individual adventures and they’re all vibrant in their own ways and filled with challenges that are difficult yet easily met when you get down to it. There’s certain cute moments to be had with each of them, but also a real predictability that is just draining in a lot of ways since it moves so slow and deliberate with what it’s doing. The individual aspects are cute, but I like what it did with the Fire Drake as the cure is returned and given and the results of it, if only because it’s supposed to be this kind of goofy and silly resolution material.

In Summary:
More of the same, more of the same. There are different challenges to be had here as the girls go on their adventure, but you can see it from a mile away once the setup is just started to be touched on. While there are cute moments along the way, it is pretty much no different from the rest of the show for the majority of it, though I did like the dragon Fire Drake and the way he’s presented. Not unlike other episodes though, Zettai Boei Leviatan has a hard time keeping me interested – and even awake it seems – as it just doesn’t stretch itself in the slightest and moves forward only on the smallest amount of inertia. Which is all that’s keeping me watching at this point to the end.

Grade: D

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.