Dragon Half
Dragon Half is a seven volume Ecchi fantasy manga, starring the titular half-human, half-dragon teenage girl Mink. It was made into a two-episode gonzo comedy anime. Basically, the story is an Affectionate Parody of fantasy as a genre, with plenty of Fan Service and self-referential humor.
Mink goes on a grand adventure as she pursues the man of her dreams, singing idol Dick Saucer. Unfortunately for Mink, Dick Saucer is a dragonslayer as well as a singer... and further complicating Mink's pursuit of the studly Saucer is Princess Vina, the daughter of the king, who also desires his attention. While a powerful sorceress, the princess has an unfortunate tendency (inherited from her mother) to turn into small blob of intelligent slime at inopportune times.
Prodded by his daughter and seeking revenge on Mink's father (a royal dragonslayer who "betrayed" the king by running off and marrying the dragon he was supposed to slay), the king sets several plots in motion against her, including sending out as an assassin a brain-dead, underfed knight who stores his lightsaber in his head; and hiring Saucer himself to slay the "disguised" dragon. Ultimately, Mink overcomes these obstacles, and finds herself competing in a fighter's tournament just for a chance to meet her idol.
Although the anime is mostly silly, the manga is both silly and epic. It also features some very strong Art Evolution.
Not to be confused with Dragon Pink, even though that story does have an expy of this story's protagonist as a cameo character.
- Accidental Kiss: How Mink first met Dick Saucer, her future husband.
- All Genes Are Codominant: Mink
- Art Shift: Accompanied by the voices becoming higher when the characters (bad guys included) go into their chibi appearance.
- Awesome but Impractical: Rogue's robots are this at best, and flat out useless at worst.
- Big Bad: Azatodeth.
- Border in Bloom: Vina's introduction features her elegant self-image as a princess in the flowers, but she's a bit too busy trying to kill Mink for us to believe that impression.
- Butt Monkey: It sometimes seems like most of the cast qualifies, but Rosario in particular stands out. Damaramu would, too, but he's completely oblivious.
- Catch Phrase: Damaramu made a blunder (of a lifetime). Sometimes rendered as "I, Damaramu, shall regret this."
- Clothing Damage: This happens to Mink in the Tournament Arc scene.
- And lots more in the Manga.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment. Mig's torture spells are strangely specific, creating effects like the sensation caused by chugging ten bottles of Tabasco sauce in one go.
- Cute Monster Girl: Mink
- Christmas Cake: The Earth General
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: That bomb Damaramu uses is in an... interesting location.
- Dramatic Ellipsis: ... Master Gill. ... Talks like this.
- Epic Fail: The escape attempt.
- Fail O'Suckyname: Dick Saucer? Dick Saucer? On the other hand, if this were porn...
- And given that Mink's father distorts his name as Dick Sausage...
- Finishing Move: Dick Saucer's Saucer Special. Which he doesn't use, because right as he's about to fire it, he realizes he's late for a concert.
- Forgets to Eat: Damaramu
- Frying Pan of Doom: Mana uses one to punish Royce's Casanova tendencies when she doesn't feel like breathing fire on him.
- Genki Girl
- Genre Savvy: Mink, sometimes
- Good Bad Translation: The "Godslayer of Hit Points", which was retained for the subtitles on the DVD version.
- Goofy Print Underwear: Mig's Teddy Bear undies, which prove to be his greatest weakness.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Mink, Vina, Pia, Dick
- Hermetic Magic
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Everywhere.
- Inept Mage: Lufa
- Interspecies Romance: Where to begin? In the manga, you get: human x dragon, human x Slime, human x naga spider...
- And eventually Human x Half-Dragon!
- I See London: The heroes defeat Mig the first time by (accidentally) pulling his pants down (see Goofy Print Underwear above).
- Later, Vina uses a picture of Mig in his underwear as blackmail material, and tends to yank his pants down whenever she feels like it.
- Killer Rabbit: Mappy
- Large and In Charge: Azatodeth is bigger than mountains.
- Laxative Prank: Rosario attempts this on Mink... who passes it onto Saucer.
- Let's Get Dangerous: After being a lecherous butt monkey for the entire run of the manga, Mink's father effortlessly kills one of the most dangerous enemies in the series in one hit when it makes the mistake of trying to take his wife hostage.
- Leitmotif: Saucer~~!
- The Load: Rufa, played for humor. She usually doesn't bother to attack or do anything at all helpful. When she does use her magic she inevitably hits Mink instead of the monster, and it isn't always an accident.
- Medieval European Fantasy
- Medium Awareness: Characters occasionally remark that they are in a comic strip. Vulcante in particular knows he can't attack Mink yet as it's the end of the chapter and claims he can't be a minor character, as he gets a dramatic closeup at the top of the page.
- In the anime, during his fight with Mink, Dug Fin claims he's seeking revenge for something Mink did, and she tells him that those scenes were edited out. He pulls out a VCR and a copy of the tape and watches it.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Happens once to Rufa. She immediately smashes it.
- No Accounting for Taste: You'd think being married to an incredibly powerful, jealous dragon who is also an incredibly beautiful woman would be plenty of incentive to stop skirt-chasing, but...
- Noblewoman's Laugh
- No Fourth Wall: One character is incensed that he was edited out of the first episode.
- The Ojou: Vina
- Pervert Dad: Mink's father...
- Plot Hole: Parodied with everything regarding Dug Fin, capped by this immortal line:
 |
Dug Fin: I don't care about story continuity, I'm going to kill you anyway! |
 |
- Prophecy Twist: Mink is told that if she undergoes a second ecdysis, a horrific monster will appear. Everyone assumes that Mink will turn into said monster. Instead, the monster appears as a birthmark on Mink's butt.
- Punched Across the Room: The final fight during the anime.
- Refuge in Audacity
- Ring Out: The final fight during the anime.
- Schizo-Tech
- She's All Grown Up: Pia, in the finale.
- Shout-Out: To Iron Man here
- And lots more in the Manga. Hell, that example above also references Mazinger Z and Guyver at the same time.
- Shrunken Organ: One character is undamaged by a sword through the head because his brain is "compact".
- Step Three: Profit: The king's plan:
|
Step 1: Kill Mink |
|
- Stripperific: Does it even need explaining?
- Super-Deformed
- Surreal Theme Tune
- Toilet Humor: Saucer in the Tournament Arc.
- Token Evil Teammate: Rufa is consistently portrayed as a horrible person with no redeeming features whatsoever. She gets better, but only in the very last chapter.
- Too Dumb to Live: Damaramu... who also might be too dumb to die.
- His brain is very, very compact, you see.
- Too Kinky to Torture: In the manga, one of the villains attacks with spells that cause decidedly specific tortures. They backfire when he uses them on Rufa.
- Tournament Arc
- Tranquillizer Dart: Rosario shoots Mink with a knockout dart and she instantly falls. Then Rosario puts two more darts into her right away, setting up a gag where he and the king think Mink died from the overdose. Strangely, at first Rosario accidentally inhaled and got the dart stuck in his tongue, but nothing ever came of this.
- Visible Sigh
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: A major concern for Mink in the last third of the manga, as if she undergoes her second ecdysis, she'll turn into a hideous monster. Rufa frequently cheers for Mink to do this. The second ecdysis eventually happens and the hideous monster is a small birthmark that appears on Mink's butt.
- You Killed My Father: Dick Saucer to Mink's grandfather.
- Zany Scheme