By Daigo Murasaki and Kayahara. Released in Japan as “Dantōdai no Hanayome: Sekai o Horobosu Futsutsukana Tatsuki Desu ga” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kiki Piatkowski.
I almost wish this was worse. If there was something offensive about it, something that made me want to scream in rage (still looking at you, Livid Lady), I’d have no issues writing this review at all. Unfortunately, this has the misfortune of being bad in a bland, flavorless way, and so I’m reduced to looking down at my word count and see I still have 400 words to go. I joked on Twitter that this was a novelization of a harem anime from 2002, and it really felt like one… in all the worst ways. And, of course, it ended up being a cancelled series, so we’re not even getting any more of it. The author apparently also wrote Demon Lord 2099… which I didn’t even start to read. We get three love interests here (plus the childhood friend, who I fear suffered most from the cancellation as she’s barely in this), but none of them have the personality or pizzazz to carry a series. It’s just so… meh.
We open on a kangaroo court condemning a teenage girl, whose dragon powers can apparently destroy the world, to be executed, despite the efforts of the girl’s one friend. We then cut to a typical high school student council, where our hero Ryuunosuke is the vice president, and tends to do all the work. He has an assistant, a beautiful girl who’s in love with him. He has a cute childhood friend. The president is a cool beauty. Then he walks home, and a dragon girl, who had been blown out of the sky from the helicopter taking her to the execution, lands in front of him. Now he not only finds himself drawn to the girl, as he has the power to control her “destroy the world” shenanigans, but also his student council are far less normal than he expected.
So. Rinne is the dragon girl, and… she doesn’t have much of a personality beyond “loves Ryuunosuke and argues with Mari”. Mari is Ryuunosuke’s assistant in the student council, a vampire, and doesn’t have much more of a personality than Rinne, though I will grant it is a little more. Ranko is the student council president, cool scientist type, and mistress of exposition, and she doesn’t get much to do here except get shot and have a last minute surprise that doesn’t matter as there isn’t a second volume. And it’s not much of a surprise. As for Ryuunosuke… he’s Touma. He’s Tenchi. He’s Keitaro. He’s the sort of hero that Araragi and Hachiman are there to deconstruct. He is also boring as hell, and naturally when Rinne tries to strip and seduce him, his reaction is more “Whaaaaaaaaat?” than anything else. Even the final fight is kinda boring.
So yeah. Dunno why this was licensed. Anime coming? It might actually work better as an anime. It’s mind-numbing in print.