Dragon's House Hunting

(Image from Amazon.com. Used for review purposes only.)

Doragon ie wo kau (A Dragon Buys a House), vols. 1-3, by Kawo Tanuki (writing) and Choco Aya (art), Grade B+
Seems that "Dragon" is being released in English by Seven Seas Entertainment. The Japanese manga has the English subtitle as "Dragon's House-Hunting," while the Seven Seas title is "Dragon Goes House-Hunting." Regardless, the concept is the same. Letty is the classic example of a NEET, a young male adult that lives at home and is basically aimless. One day, he's tasked by his Red Dragon father to take care of one of the eggs. Letty fails at this, and the egg is stolen by a pair of hunters that eat it for the power-up. His father is so disgusted by how useless his son is that he kicks the younger red dragon out to fend for himself.

And thus begins the adventures of young Letty. He can't fly, even though he has massive wings; he can't fight; and when he tries to breathe flame he burns his own tongue. Fortunately for him, he fairly quickly encounters Dearia, the elf Magic King, who moonlights as a real estate agent. Letty begs Dearia to find a house for him, and the elf immediately replies with "ok." The rest of the series is then a parody of Dungeons and Dragons-style gaming, and/or Japanese Dungeon Quest-like RPGs. Since Letty is a dragon, he's marked as a boss monster, and is occasionally plagued by heroes and dungeon crawers (who are easily dispatched by Dearia). One funny element is that the heroes and hunters all look alike, and all follow the same 2-member or 4-member party patterns, demonstrating just how generic they are. In turn, Dearia keeps showing Letty houses that belong to other scary monsters (harpies, minotaurs, or cereberuses), teaching the dragon that the "bad guys" are really pretty nice people when you get to know them.

The first volume has Letty kicked out of his family's home, encountering Dearia, and eventually receiving an order-made dungeon-mansion built for him. Unfortunately, as the home of a "boss monster," the mansion is staffed with guard monsters and immediately targeted by heroes and hunters looking for treasure (the idea was that Letty would use the loot brought in by the adventures to make the house payments). But, Letty is quickly overwhelmed by the noise and attention and tries to sneak away quietly. Dearia anticipates this, and intercepts the dragon in order to find a new place for him. In volume 2, Dearia tries to sell Letty on an ice mansion, and a tree house in a monster village. In the ice field chapter, Letty finds an abandoned egg, which soon hatches to reveal an Hraesvelgr chick (Hraesvelgr are snow-based monster birds that live in nests of dry ice and eat snowflakes. The chick's main attack is an ear-rending squawk) Letty's first reaction is to try to find the chick's parents, and when that fails, he adopts it as its father, naming it "Pii-chan" for short (the long version is a bit more ridiculous). Meanwhile, Pii-chan had bonded to him on hatching. The goal now is to find a place to raise a family. Letty starts taking on part-time jobs, mainly as a target for magic-users trying to perfect their dragon-killing spells. But, the trio stops at a market town, and when Dearia turns his back on him, Letty and Pii-chan are arrested and thrown into the dungeons to participate in the colosseum games. The other combatants (skeletons, minotaurs, harpies, etc.) are really friendly between matches, and consider this to be an ideal way to make money, as gladiators. Eventually, heroes and hunters invade the space, and Dearia finally appears to save everyone (excluding the heroes and hunters). The gladiators move on with their lives (planning on possibly starting a circus), and Letty, Pii-chan and Dearia resume house hunting.

In volume 3, Letty accidentally rescues a spoiled princess that is running away from home because her father had stolen some desserts she'd wanted to save for herself. Letty is still taking on part-time jobs (deliveries, and hotel front desk work) to keep building his nest egg, while Dearia spreads rumors of the "dread Red Dragon King" to enhance Letty's reputation. They also need to start filing paperwork for building or buying a house in a new country, but Letty can't make up his mind exactly what or where he wants. Pii-chan selects a blueprint at random, which happens to be the castle owned by the Princess' father. The foursome enters the castle town through the sewers, providing more opportunities for dungeoning parodies, before surfacing within the castle at a time when the King and his soldiers are outside the main walls. The King finds himself conducting a siege on his own castle, and Dearia uses this chance to teach Letty about castle defenses. In the end, the King gets into the castle, he and the Princess make up, and the King rescinds his death sentence against Letty. The Princess decides to remain at home now, and as thanks, the King gives Letty a magic potion that allows him to fly for a few hours. Letty swallows the potion, and is ecstatic at being able to soar up in the clouds, while Pii-chan and Dearia ride on him. (Soon after, the Princess is preparing to eat some chocolate cake, and her father takes a slice. She then runs out of the castle in protest again.)

Summary: Dragon's House-Hunting is a very silly parody of Japanese RPGs, and therefore is funny if you like dungeon games. The artwork is very good, the characters are well-drawn, and the backgrounds are fantastic. The only things missing are music, and special attacks. Highly recommended if you like D&D-type gaming. [Announcement: Quest Opened - Find the House-Hunting Dragon now!]