The Dragon Prince

Well, well, I guess I'm just on a kid's fantasy cartoon series binge.

I'd heard some good things about the Dragon Prince and, having finished Avatar: The Last Airbender (which was fantastic, and ended in a very satisfying way) I decided to check it out - only realizing then that some of the same people were behind it.

It's funny, I think that my fascination with fantasy as a genre (other than Star Wars) was really born more during my teen years, reading Lord of the Rings my freshman year of high school and then getting into Stephen King's Dark Tower when I was a senior. (I guess I shouldn't count out my growing up in the midst of the Disney renaissance that started with The Little Mermaid in '89, which might have been the first movie I saw in theaters.) But the point is, I think I've often discounted children's fantasy when thinking of my influences, looking more to folks like Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin - namely authors who write dark and violent fantasy stories.

Immediately, the nature of the Dragon Prince's world bears some resemblance to that of Avatar - rather than four elements, we learn of six primal sources of magic - the Sun, Moon, Sky, Earth, Stars, and Ocean. Way back, the land of Xandia was unified, but a human invented a new form of magic - Dark Magic - that so terrified the Dragons and the Elves that they forcibly drove all humans west, and a thousand-year-long conflict began. Most recently, humans struck down the Dragon King and, it's said, destroyed the egg containing the Dragon Prince. (No spoilers, but do consider the name of the show.)

So you have a world where there are humans on one side who fear and hate the elves for banishing them, and the elves who fear and hate the humans for their dark magic and dragon-killing.

To start, we're introduced to Callum and Ezran, the two princes of the human kingdom of Katolis. Callum is older, but is only the king's stepson, with his younger half-brother the heir apparent. Callum is bad at standard princely stuff like sword-fighting and horse-riding, but has an artistic talent and a fascination with magic. Ezran is a benignly mischievous little kid who has a silly little color-changing toad-thing named Bait that he seems to get along better with than other kids. Their mom seems to have died at some point, and King Harrow seems to struggle to be a good father to Callum, despite having no blood relation to him.

Meanwhile, a group of Moonshadow Elves have come to Katolis to assassinate the king as retribution for the death of the Dragon King and the destruction of the Dragon Prince. Among them is the young Rayla, who is skilled, but clearly inexperienced and not hardened to the violence expected of her. We're introduced to her chasing down a human soldier who saw their band, but when she has the young man at her mercy, she cannot follow through to deal the killing blow. Her moment of hesitation/mercy is what gives the humans the chance to prepare.

At the castle, Harrow's closest advisor is Viren, who is a mage and also the father of Soren and Claudia. The former is Callum's fencing trainer (and a bit of a dumb jock, but at least in the first season fairly good-natured) and the latter is following in her father's footsteps, learning magic, and is also Callum's crush.

Over the course of the first few episodes, Rayla breaks into the castle and tries to go kill Prince Ezran, even though she's conflicted about doing so, but as she chases Callum and Ezran, they discover that, in Viren's secret dungeon/laboratory, the egg of the Dragon Prince is actually intact. In an effort to stop the war, Rayla, Callum, and Ezran (with Bait) decide to go and return the egg, hoping that this will end the war.

Overall, I've enjoyed the show. It has a lot of the humor and humanity of Avatar, not to mention beautiful artistic design and worldbuilding.

There are two major flaws, as I see it, having watched through the first season this evening.

First, as apparent from that previous sentence, is that it goes so damn quickly. The first season is only 9 episodes long. While we can perhaps be grateful for no "filler" episodes, the best shows use those stand-alone stories to flesh out characters and allow them to develop. One of ATLA's best qualities was the believable way in which the characters evolved over time. For instance, (Spoilers for Avatar: the Last Airbender to follow:) Prince Zuko's transformation from "the main villain" in the first couple episodes to one of the show's most likable heroes happened organically and even had time for that heroic transformation to hit a major relapse, which made the arc so satisfying. I'm still getting to know the main characters by the end of season one with the Dragon Prince, given how quickly the plot flies by.

Second, and I think they might have addressed this in subsequent seasons, but the animation is distracting. The show is CGI, but it is shaded and the framerate is adjusted to make it appear as if it is hand-animated. While this often works fine, there are moments where there's a particular turn or angle that creates this kind of uncanny valley for animation.

I suppose a third complaint I might register is that I'm waiting for a bit more nuance. Clearly, the show is focusing on the way that people on both sides of an issue can have their perceptions of "the enemy" warped. But as we see Viren (and to an extent, his kids, particularly Claudia) perform some seriously spooky magic, I'm hoping to discover more complex motivations. While Zuko was a fantastic anti-villain/redeemed hero, his father and the series' main antagonist Fire Lord Ozai never seemed to have any redeemable qualities. In the case of Viren, it would be easy for him to simply be the ambitious, power-hungry manipulator, but I'm hoping we'll get a more complex character out of him.

There are, of course, two more seasons of the show on Netflix, so I'm sure some of these issues might be addressed. But I do want to see more character development - and really just more time to let the characters assert themselves, thus making future transformations something to be invested in.