Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling – Episode 1

What’s it about? An unnamed protagonist is reincarnated into a fantasy world as a baby dragon.  He doesn’t remember who he was before and is basically thrown into his new environment without a clue on how to survive.  He’d be lost without the divine voice in his head, and he’s determined to evolve into a stronger dragon for the sake of his survival.

Perhaps, I mentioned So I’m a Spider, So What? too soon in my last review, because the story beats here are very similar—except the hero doesn’t have nearly the same spunk and charisma that Kumo had.  For Kumo, leveling up was extremely hard and it nearly took half the season for her to become strong enough to leave the cave she was trapped in.  While the hero in this premiere does struggle to level up, he’s ultimately able to progress much faster and even meets a human magician who’ll eventually become his ally.  Overall, it makes it feel like less of a triumph and more of a shrug when he gets out into the world.  

There isn’t much to be said about the nameless hero since he’s mostly confused about his circumstances, but he isn’t above killing and eating his targets if it means he’ll get stronger.  His dragon design is really cute and reminds me of Dragonite.  The rest of the monster designs look really good and it’s obvious that some effort was put into making them look distinct from one another.  The divine voice is also surprisingly hilarious and loves making fun of the hero by creating silly title names like “klutz” in order to annoy him.  Normally these voices are more neutral and mainly inform the protagonists about their stats and information about their surroundings, so it was nice hearing a divine voice have some personality.  I suspect she’s probably some goddess who’ll reveal herself in time, but for now, I’m glad she’s the source of some humor for this show.  

It’s also interesting that the politics of this world remain a mystery, which helps build up some anticipation that maybe the plot won’t be a completely generic B-tier fantasy show.  I’m hoping he doesn’t learn how to speak right away, mainly to keep the show from just handing everything to him on a plate.  I just wish he wasn’t so naive as to think humans wouldn’t attack solely on the basis that he thinks he looks “cute”.  It should have been obvious that humans would see him as just another monster, but I supposed it served as a good reality check for him to remain cautious.  

Overall, it’s a decent reincarnation story with a competent protagonist.  If you want a better version of this story then I highly recommend you watch So I’m a Spider, So What?, but if you’ve already seen that then this isn’t a bad way to spend some time.