CSBS – American Dragon Jake Long S01 Ep 04: The Legend of the Dragon Tooth

Plot: Haley is getting her first adult dragon tooth, which means the old one is falling out. Hearing this, Dr. Dentin, the Tooth Fairy’s assistant, steals her wand and holds her captive while he tries to steal the dragon tooth for himself. It’s said that planting a dragon tooth in soil will yield unspeakable evil and massive power.

Jake is becoming increasingly irritated by his little sister’s annoying behavior. Not only is she doing what she always does in regards to shoving how much better she is than him in his face, but now she’s being even more coddled by their parents than usual because she’s got a loose tooth.

Trixie and Spud cheer Jake up later that day by telling them they’ll be able to get into the Hip Hop Video Awards where Jake’s celebrity crush, Shaniqua, will be performing. However, his plans are soon soured when his mother reminds him that he agreed to babysit on the night of the awards.

That night, Jake, Trixie and Spud make an arrangement – they’ll each go to the awards while watching Haley in shifts.

As Jake leaves for his shift, Dr. Dentin tries to infiltrate the house only to find that it’s protected by a new shield that Grandpa put up. He has no choice but to wait until Haley leaves the house.

Meanwhile, Trixie and Spud try to pry out Haley’s loose tooth, in spite of the fact that her mom told her that dragon teeth must fall out on their own. Their efforts are good, but they yield no results. It seems it’s incredibly difficult to pry out a dragon tooth.

Jake returns after his shift, irritated that not only does he have to go back to babysitting, but also that the house has basically been destroyed in the tooth removal antics. Haley tells him that Trixie suggested playing hockey since hockey players always lose their teeth. Fed up with the situation, Jake tells Haley to go play outside, despite the fact that she’s not allowed to play outside after dark.

Dentin nearly ambushes her, but Haley unknowingly staves off some of his tooth minions with her hockey puck before Trixie and Spud return and take her back in the house.

Jake, Spud and Trixie go back and forth to the concert and home numerous times before they decide to just take Haley with them to go see Shaniqua. As they’re skateboarding to the arena, Jake senses a threat and realizes the tooth minions are following them. Jake makes up an excuse to briefly stay behind and Haley refuses to leave, so Spud and Trixie go on ahead while Jake takes care of Dentin and the tooth minions.

Jake fights the minions again and again, but each time he destroys them they just reform. In the confusion, Dentin grabs Haley and heads off to his lair to retrieve the tooth.

Meanwhile, the tooth fairy, having escaped from near death, seeks out her old friend Fu Dog to help her take down Dentin. Realizing Haley’s the target, Grandpa comes along to help.

They meet up with Jake and head towards the Tooth Fairy’s lair. They manage to hold their own against the tooth minions, but Haley’s tooth gets knocked out in the crossfire. Dentin grabs it and plants it in the soil, turning him into a massive tooth monster. His plans now? To steal money from children to recoup the costs of the Tooth Fairy’s money for teeth tradition. He takes Haley in case he needs more dragon teeth and heads off.

Jake tries to fight him, but gets wrapped up in some cable. He tells Haley to use her dragon teeth to bite through the cable, but she doesn’t feel like she can. After some encouraging words from Jake, she’s able to partially transform and bite through the cable, freeing Jake.

In a final blow, Jake grabs a massive TV screen off the side of a building and slams it into Dentin. The burst of electricity causes him to explode in a flurry of teeth.

Now safe and sound, Jake takes Haley back home. When their parents return, they’re angry about the mess but instantly forget about it when they notice Haley has lost her first tooth.

Even though Jake missed the concert, he’s more than happy to have saved his little sister and gotten some bonding time with her. Meanwhile, Spud and Trixie ride off happily with Shaniqua in her limo sucking down sparkling cider.

Breakdown:

– Ugh, I always hated those tooth monsters. Anything involving teeth squicks me out.

– Yes, our villain today is an evil magical dentist.

– Also, I don’t much care for Haley. Just getting it out there.

– I find it interesting that they confirm that Haley has developed dragon powers earlier than Jake ever did (It clears up why Jake only seems to be learning the basics now when Haley can already partially transform and use fire breath etc. He only developed his powers upon reaching his teens, which means just barely before the series began was when he started gaining them) but the reasoning is a little odd. Girls mature faster than boys. I know that’s technically true, but from a mythical standpoint, that seems a little strange.

– Jake’s face when he imitates Haley, however, is simultaneously hilarious and frightening.

– Actually, Jake’s making a lot of great facial expressions today. It’s like he’s somewhat melded with a Looney Tune.

– Dr. Dentin: *After experiencing the magical shield first hand* *later, after Jake says it’s a spell* “Ah, so that’s what it is. Some kind of magic spell.” What the hell did you think it was? Some kind of electrical shield generator that dispels magical creatures?

– Why did a cat meow when Trixie finally hit Spud with the fire extinguisher? Jake’s family doesn’t have a cat….

– There is no way in hell twenty minutes went by between Trixie and Spud leaving and Haley just going out the door to play hockey. About a minute went by, if that.

– Trixie and Spud both decided to help Jake out with the babysitting specifically so he could see Shaniqua in concert….and when she’s on stage, they argue over who gets to go see her….Uh, what?

– Why didn’t they just take Haley from the beginning? Technically, they shouldn’t be able to in the first place because I doubt they have an extra ticket, but still.

– Trixie’s awful bitchy when she tells Jake and Haley to work out whatever it is on their own.

– Did the tooth fairy actually say ‘H E double hockey sticks?’ Wow…..Actually, now I’m reminded that Disney had a movie called H E Double Hockey Sticks with a good chunk of the movie taking place in Hell. Weird times, the early 00’s….

– How is taking Haley for more dragon teeth going to help? Is he somehow going to get bigger and….toothier?

– So ‘unspeakable evil’ is a giant tooth monster who steals kids’ piggy banks….Okay.

– Why couldn’t Jake bite through the cables with his dragon teeth? It’s especially strange because Haley clearly still has baby dragon teeth.

– It’s weird that the dragon tooth monster thing actually seems less powerful than the tooth minions. Sure, he’s bigger and physically stronger, but he doesn’t have any special powers, and the tooth minions simply reform when they’re defeated – the dragon tooth monster doesn’t.

– Also, Jake just straight up murdered someone. Dentin was electrocuted and exploded into a million teeth. He is never seen again.

– How and why did Spud and Trixie get to hang out with Shaniqua after the concert? They’re drinking ‘sparkling cider’ in her limo and everything.

That seems like a cruel ending to a degree. They offer to watch Haley so Jake can see Shaniqua, selfishly refuse to stay home when Shaniqua’s show comes up, their selfishness and balking on their word put Haley in danger to begin with (she would’ve been safe had they stayed home) yet Jake has to miss the concert, and Spud and Trixie get to hang out with his celeb crush in a limo.

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Ultimately, I did kinda like this episode. Haley wasn’t as annoying as she could’ve been, and she even had some moments where she was kinda sweet.

Likewise, Jake wasn’t as annoying as he could’ve been, given the situation, and he also had some nice moments. Trixie and Spud (Mostly Trixie) were basically asses, though. They destroyed Jake’s house and completely screwed him out of his chance to see Shaniqua while simultaneously putting Haley in danger (Unknowingly, but still.) Yet they get to hang out with Shaniqua while Jake fights tooth creatures and nearly takes the blame for their mess.

My other issues were with the enemy. I will admit, this episode did have some good action. While gross (I still hate teeth) and uninteresting in a design sense, the tooth minions were damn near invulnerable. The dragon tooth monster, while also uninspired design-wise, was a set piece for some decent action, but it as the main villain was terribly disappointing.

No wonder more people haven’t tried that dragon tooth trick. It’s just not worth the fuss.

‘Unspeakable evil’ my ass.

Even his motivation was dumb. He didn’t become a big tooth monster to wreak havoc or rule the world – he wanted to steal money from little children, dimes and quarters kinda stuff, because he was sick of the Tooth Fairy giving money away…..

Finally, I did enjoy the Tooth Fairy just because she has a really funny manner of speaking. She talks all sweet and cute, but then she says things that make you double-take. The fact that she legit called her lair her ‘Fa-la-la-la-lair.’ was priceless.

Next episode, Jake is anxious as he gets a role in a play opposite Rose, and one infamous scene involves a kiss.

……Previous Episode

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CSBS: American Dragon Jake Long S01 Ep02 Review

Plot: Jake battles a mysterious creature in the sewer and comes out supposedly victorious. However, Jake is more preoccupied with the upcoming Fall Dance than he is with his normal dragon duties.

The next day, he gets up the courage to ask his crush, Rose, to the dance but finds she already has a date with the resident blockhead jock, Brad. In order to save face, Jake lies and says he also already has a date to the dance, so it’s a race to find a date before it’s too late. Jake tries to ask nearly every available girl he can find, but he has a big problem. His breath is horrible. Despite many efforts to freshen it up, the stink eventually gets so bad that they actually evacuate the school to find the source.

Grandpa says his horrible breath is perfectly natural for a dragon his age. His firebreathing glands are reaching maturity, and the bad breath problem should clear up in a week or so. Jake can’t wait that long with the dance coming up, but Grandpa is more concerned over the creature they battled earlier.

Fu Dog, always one to offer a suggestion, brews up a potion. As long as Jake wears the concoction in a small flask around his neck, his bad breath will be gone. Jake’s ecstatic to be minty fresh again, but is still dateless. Having asked out every free girl at his school. Fu takes him to the magical realm to ask out a nice supernatural girl.

Jake’s put off by Fu’s first choice, a half-girl half-spider, but is quickly enamored by a pair of twins nearby. Fu explains that they’re oracles. Not only that, but they see different things in the future. Sara, a bright and cheery girl, can only see negative events while Kara, a gloomy punk girl, can only see the positive events. Despite liking how they look, Jake can’t handle their sudden blurting of predictions, so he moves on.

Jake sets his sights on a beautiful girl at the potions counter named Jasmine, but before Fu can offer his two cents, he gets grabbed by two thugs he owes money to. Jake is able to make a date with Jasmine, despite her incredibly precise curfew, and he saves Fu from the thugs.

Jasmine and Jake head to the dance while Grandpa stumbles upon pictures that Jake’s mom took of him and Jasmine before he left. Seeing her red eyes in all of the photos yet none show Jake’s eyes as red, he deduces that she is a Nix, a creature that is perfectly normal and harmless during the day but becomes a soul-sucking demon at night when the moon reaches the center of the sky.

Jake flaunts Jasmine to Rose and Brad and his classmates. Everyone’s so impressed with Jasmine’s looks, that Jake takes advantage of the attention and starts taking over the dance, leading everyone in rapping and DJ-ing. Everyone’s having a good time, but Jasmine notices the position of the moon and asks Jake to leave. He says they’ll go soon, but he wants to stay for a while longer. Realizing Jake won’t go, Jasmine tries to leave on her own, only to be stopped by Brad who also ignores her requests to leave so he can pressure her into a dance.

Jasmine starts her transformation and steals the souls of Brad and several other boys, turning them into mindless zombies. Once the moon is precisely in the center of the sky, Jasmine finishes her transformation into a full Nix, quickly sucking up the remaining souls in the room. Jake calls Fu, admits to what he did, and Fu starts whipping up a potion to combat Jasmine while Jake stalls her in his dragon form.

Jake struggles with Jasmine, but is soon saved by Dragon!Grandpa and Fu, who also give him a potion to help him beat the Nix. As Grandpa stalls Jasmine some more, Jake downs the potion without thinking and Fu reveals that was actually a potion which strips you of your powers temporarily and he was meant to pour it on Jasmine.

Jake, now dragon-less and with Grandpa quickly zombified, starts getting pummeled by Jasmine until he gets the idea to use the one piece of his dragon nature he has left – his horrible breath. He rips off his necklace and breathes right in Jasmine’s face, throwing her for a loop and knocking her out cold, releasing the consumed souls back to their rightful owners.

Fu and Grandpa take a now un-transformed Jasmine to the shop where she’ll be contained until sunrise and then sent back home. Jake tries to skew the attention of the confused students back to his DJ-ing, but without the necklace everyone soon starts dispersing at the smell. Jake starts to leave when he’s stopped by Rose who thanks him for the dance. They state that they both came to the dance with the wrong person and promise to make better choices in the future.

After a pratfall, Jake returns Jasmine back home with them exchanging apologies, and it’s revealed that Trixie and Spud accidentally switched bodies when their souls were returned.

Breakdown:

– Jake was seriously going to ask out the school janitor? She has to be in her 50s. I know the joke is haha, she’s ugly and gross so it shows how desperate Jake is to get a date, but, still, major creepiness factor for even suggesting this as an option, especially when he does actually try to hit on her.

– The main point of this bad breath part of the episode is trying to meld something akin to an embarrassing result of puberty with something dragon-like, so we can have a cliché teen problem episode still tied into the main plot. But I gotta say, having the problem be bad breath….uh, that’s still pretty normal. You could easily change that to body odor and nothing would change. Since the issue was with his firebreathing glands, maybe he could spontaneously spout fire? Dangerous? Yes. But being in a cartoon universe could easily dispel the gigantic risks and just make for comical burns.

– Jake seriously got a girl to pay an iota of attention to him after using the line “You come here often?”? This really is a fantasy world.

– Why is Jake lying to Fu about getting a date? He just says ‘I’ll be fine’ not ‘don’t worry, I got a date!’ The only reason I can see for this is that if Jake told Fu he got a date, he’d have to tell him her name or point her out to him, which is obviously something they’re trying to avoid. It’s already obvious that there’s something very wrong with Jasmine both by Fu’s warning beforehand that some of the girls in that part of town were dangerous, with the sudden shift in tone when she conveys her curfew and, of course, the obvious shot of her shifting her eyes as they glow red.

It’s like they’re purposely writing this part incredibly poorly for the sake of moving the plot along.

– Let’s just get this out of the way, many people, particularly Jake, are being complete assholes in this episode, and Jasmine is being treated like a piece of meat. Not only does Jake refer to her as ‘My Hot Date, Jasmine.’ but he also completely ignores her requests to leave by her established curfew time, ignores her saying she doesn’t feel well, every guy in the dance clamors around her and, for some reason, treats Jake like a king because he got a hot date, which is weird because everyone else, barring Brad, starts ignoring her after Jake starts showboating with his rap skills.

Then Brad ignores her saying she has to leave because she doesn’t feel well so he can pressure her into a dance. To top it all off, when people finally start shifting attention back to Jasmine, Jake and Trixie basically call her a cheating hoe for dancing with Brad (even though this dance doesn’t even involve touching each other. Plus, Jake is way too busy being a showboating DJ to pay his date an ounce of attention. I’d say she has a right to dance with someone else at this point.). Jake doesn’t even care about this anyway because, with Brad preoccupied, Rose is free for him to pounce on. And hey, as a bonus, she’s on the rebound after being dumped by Brad to dance with the ‘prettiest girl in the room’

– *Jasmine in full Nix form* Jake – “Oh now you want to dance with me?” Uhhhhhh, you never asked her if she wanted to dance or even implied it. The instant you got her through the doors you were flaunting her around to your friends, then to Rose and Brad, then the other students. The only other reason I can think of for this line is her dancing with Brad, but, again, he didn’t give a crap about that other than giving him an opportunity to dance with Rose.

– Of course Jake uses the potion on himself before asking 1) what it does and 2) what he needs to do with it.

– So as long as Rose is within stank distance, Jake’s visibly green nasty breath doesn’t come out? How convenient.

– Any reason Jake can’t fish the necklace out of the garbage and continue the dance? It’s not like it broke or anything. Any reason he chucked it in the garbage at all, for that matter? He really only needed to take it off his neck or even drop it to the floor.

– I will give props to the ending for acknowledging that Jake was being an ass, but not entirely because 1) They clearly put more of the blame on Jasmine, even if, admittedly, she should’ve told Jake what she was (to be fair, it must be hard to get dates if you explain that you turn into a soul-sucking she-beast when the moon is in the center of the sky. Cinderella this is not.) and 2) He only apologizes for not leaving when she asked. He doesn’t apologize for only asking her out for the sake of making Rose jealous, or flaunting his ‘hot date’ in front of his classmates like she was the aforementioned piece of meat, or thinking badly of her for dancing with Brad when it wasn’t her choice.

– Also, why is Jake now free of bad breath while walking Jasmine home? You can’t make rules for bad breath.

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This is a pretty bad episode. Not horrible, but still bad. The action isn’t that good, the running gag about his breath is just dumb, and you can see it coming from a mile away that he’ll use his bad breath to beat Jasmine. After all, if he didn’t, that would mean the breath thing would just be a plot device for the sake of getting Jake to date Jasmine, and there are much less contrived ways of doing that. Maybe it was so close to the dance that every other girl had a date so he had to go to the magical realm to get one?

Speaking of the ending, that was an incredibly stupid way of beating her. If his breath is bad enough to knock out a Nix, surely it’s bad enough to possibly kill people. Or at least make them physically ill. It’s like his breath had a worse effect on her than it did regular humans.

I can’t believe I’m bringing this up, but this ending was much in the same vein as Naruto beating Kiba by farting in his face. And I really can’t believe I’m saying this, but whereas the Naruto thing was stupider, at least it was more of a surprise and kinda funny in a ‘hurr hurr farts’ way. This was entirely predictable from start to finish, made even more predictable right before the finale due to Jake losing his powers. By the way, apparently Jake’s bad breath problem doesn’t exist in his dragon form, even though it’s caused by his dragon form. Figure that out.

Not to mention how much of this story either doesn’t make sense, was badly written for the sake of convenience, or wrote Jasmine into being purely an object. They downplay Jake’s level of fault here at the end by a lot. I’m almost convinced the ending where he walks her home and makes that weak apology was merely thrown in when test audiences complained about how Jasmine was being treated for the whole episode. I’m surprised Jasmine wasn’t more angry at him bragging about his ‘hot date’ to everyone then ditching her to enjoy the limelight. I know she had more pressing matters to attend to, but I’d still be pretty mad.

Jake’s also terribly stupid in this episode, moreso than usual. He asks out a girl in the magical realm without asking what exactly makes her magical even after Fu warns him about the girls in the market, and the previous girls he met all had some weird issue that he couldn’t deal with – two of them being seemingly normal looking girls with powers that annoyed him. Then lying about it to Fu for no reason, drinking the potion without asking what it did or how to use it (hell, that could’ve been a poison for all he knew). I know Jake’s not the smartest person in the world, but this is overkill for the sake of plot convenience.

Even Trixie and Spud don’t escape stupidity and asshole-ism. Their role in this episode is to convey information to Jake that he would’ve discovered seconds later anyway and to just be there. Trixie is taking it upon herself to ‘perform charity work’ by taking Spud to the dance so no other unfortunate girl will have to suffer through being his date. That’s almost exactly what she says. With Spud like ten feet in front of her. Not like any girl who agrees to date Spud won’t be aware of what she’s getting into. Spud really wears his personality on his sleeve. If you agree to something along the lines of;

“Hey, uh, pretty girl. Would you, uh, like to go dancing at the dance with me at the, uh, dance. We can totally wear matching shirts.”

Then you can’t say you didn’t think he was a stoner-esque doofus when you’re at the dance.

This also could’ve been made a lot better with just a small tweak. Spud can’t get a date to the dance because he completely forgot to ask anyone until it was too late so Trixie takes it as a ‘charity case’ to be his date, perhaps also covering up that she didn’t have a date. There, was that so hard?

Then, at the dance, Trixie doesn’t want to dance or do anything. She lays down ground rules at the start that she won’t dance, get him punch or take pictures with him. She just sits at the table being miserable while Spud is forced to stay with her also doing nothing at the table because I guess he doesn’t want to abandon his date no matter how much of a bitch she’s being. Then they switch bodies at the end because…..we needed to end on a joke. Really makes you wonder why they even went at all.

Ya know what? I change my mind. This is a horrible episode. Maybe not insultingly horrible, but still terribly written, uninteresting and just not fun. Not to mention there’s an influx of cocky!Jake during this episode with even more painful slang to sit through. Yes, I realize how old I seem typing that.

Next Episode, Spud enters a talent show where the trophy is an important supernatural artifact that Jake needs to recover.

…Previous Episode

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Cartoons Step-By-Step: American Dragon Jake Long S01 Ep01

Plot: The world is filled with mythical beasts who try to live normal lives among humans who aren’t aware of their existence. Each part of the world is protected by a dragon who is tasked with protecting these creatures and maintaining their secrecy. Jake Long, a reckless but determined teenager, is a dragon in training with New York City, and ultimately the United States, as his main domain. His grandfather, the previous American Dragon, is getting too old to do the job, and is training Jake to pass on his title and responsibilities to him. However, Jake seems to want all of the fun and action of the role with as little work as possible.

Jake comes from a long line of dragons, but it is purely on his mother’s side. His mother does not possess the ability to transform into a dragon, but his little sister, Haley, does. She, however, is not tasked with protecting the country/city. She merely has to keep her powers a secret. Jake’s father is completely unaware that he married into a family of dragons, so they have to keep their secret even when they’re in the house.

As Jake is out training with his grandpa and his magical talking gruff bulldog, Fu, they find signs that the Huntsman, a man that leads a group of hunters who target mythological beings, specifically dragons, has been in the area. His target tonight? Unicorns.

Grandpa sends Jake out to fight the Huntsman on his own, and while Jake screws up his first attack, he does succeed in scaring the unicorns into running away. The Huntsman targets Jake, who is only half transformed at the time. As he manages to transform entirely, he’s knocked out by the Huntsman’s protégé, Huntsgirl. As the Huntsman calls for Huntsgirl to finish Jake off, Grandpa intercedes and rescues him, prompting both Huntsman and Huntsgirl to retreat. Seeing his extreme difficulty in even keeping up his transformation and his previous failures in battle, Grandpa decides to amp up Jake’s training.

After school the next day, Jake is forced to blow off skateboarding with his friends, Trixie and Spud, to go train. Grandpa’s training for the day turns out to be a lot of chores that incorporate certain aspects of Jake’s dragon-ness such as grasping a toilet brush with his dragon tongue to clean the toilet and sweeping with his tail.

After getting fed up with Grandpa’s weird training, Jake decides to skip training for the day and go with his friends to the new skate park. As Grandpa and Fu wait for Jake, the Huntsman and Huntsgirl show up to capture Grandpa. He tries to fend them off, but ends up falling into a trap.

Fu witnesses this and runs off to find Jake. After Fu finds him, he tries to convince him to find help, but Jake insists that he save Grandpa on his own since it was his fault that he was captured in the first place. Jake arrives and starts fighting the two, and he finally sees the benefit in his odd dragon training when Grandpa directs him to fight using actions that he learned in his chores. Jake and a freed Grandpa cause Huntsman and Huntsgirl to retreat yet again. Jake apologizes to Grandpa for blowing off training and putting him in danger. As they return home, Jake promises to take his dragon training more seriously from now on.

Breakdown:

– Dragons can fart fire. I didn’t need to know that.

– Apparently Grandpa sounds like a lion when he uses his dragon breath.

– This isn’t really relevant enough to include in the plot synopsis, but Jake also has a teacher, Mr. Rotwood, who is obsessed with magical creatures and teaches mythology class….Yeah apparently there’s mythology class in high school now. If anyone has been lucky enough to have mythology class in high school, I hate you.

Getting back to Rotwood, though, he’s basically a less crazy Mr. Crocker (Fairly Odd Parents). He believes that these mythological creatures exist, and he’s right, but everyone thinks he’s nuts for having such a strong belief in them. Unlike Crocker, though, I don’t believe he’s ever made out to be a real threat. For the most part, his scenes are relegated to either harassing Jake in class or going on tangents about mythological creatures to eventually trying to out Jake as a dragon.

– Another thing I couldn’t really squeak into the plot synopsis was Rose’s role. Jake has a crush on a girl named Rose, who is seemingly perfect in every way. She is secretly the Huntsgirl, though this secret is not kept a secret from the audience due to the dragon birthmark connection. Jake’s relationship with Rose and the big secret that Jake is the American Dragon while Rose is Huntsgirl is a big overarching part of the series.

– Who exactly screamed when Jake shot off that fireball in the house? Haley? His mom? No matter who it was, burning someone with fire kinda warrants an apology, Jake.

– I find it a little stupid that Grandpa fell for Huntsgirl’s trick. I mean, as a serpentine dragon, surely enemies have tried to force him into tangling himself up before. If he’s such an experienced master, why would he have fallen for something so obvious?

– Huntsman and Huntsgirl know Grandpa’s human form and that he’s a dragon. Isn’t that….really bad? I mean, surely the Hunts Clan is knowledgeable enough in dragons to know that the trait is carried through blood. If they know who Grandpa is, it’d be incredibly easy to hunt down his family members, Jake included, and capture them. At the very least, Huntsgirl/Rose would know from the start that Jake is Lao Shi’s (Grandpa) grandson.

– While I’m no stranger to transformation sequences, the one for ADJL is a little…cringy? Especially the awkwardly placed 360 shot of CGI Dragon!Jake.

– Grandpa knew the exact move for blocking the magical net. Why didn’t he use it in his fight with the Huntsman? He was tangled up not completely immobile.

– Another dragon fire fart….sigh.

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I did follow American Dragon Jake Long in its entirety when it was on Disney Channel back in the day, but I can’t say I followed it too strongly. While I liked the stories and loved the premise, Jake and Trixie’s mannerisms and the rap got on my nerves on more than one occasion.

As a first episode, this does its job quite well. It explains the world that they live in, the main character’s role and many of his powers just fine. It also does a good job of establishing his family dynamic and the villains. Rose’s dragon birthmark is not the most subtle way of showing that she was Huntsgirl, and, personally, I would’ve preferred that they waited a while before revealing who she was, but it’s not that big of a deal. I suppose it was meant to create some early drama in allowing the audience to know something that the main character doesn’t.

While they also establish Jake’s friends, Trixie and Spud, just fine as well, I really never got into Trixie. I mean, at the very least, she’s not made out as an obvious love interest for the main character like most female best friend characters, but she basically acts exactly like Jake with much fewer instances of responsibility and character development. In essence, she’s annoying most of the time. Her voice is annoying in itself, but giving her gangsta speech just makes it grating.

Spud can be funny on occasion, but for the most part he’s also exactly like his friends, just stupid. His slow and dimwitted manner of speech coupled with his gangsta-isms can also get annoying, but he’s the most tolerable of the group in that regard.

I’ve always had a bit of love/hate with Fu Dog. On one hand, he can be really funny and he’s arguably the most unique character in the series. On the other hand, he can be really unfunny and annoying. He’s voiced by John DiMaggio, so I guess I have to side with liking him.

Jake as a character can seem really one-note. He’s a ‘gangsta’ teen who is egotistical and wants to do everything cool without putting up with a lot of work and responsibility. However, when he’s actually serious, he becomes a pretty cool character. He has plenty of flaws, but he always seems willing to accept when he’s wrong and do his best to protect others.

The story of this episode as a whole, however, is very predictable. Absolutely anyone who’s seen The Karate Kid can predict how this episode will go once they see Jake doing those chores. The episode seems to take more time in establishing necessary things about the series than the actual story of the episode….and that’s fine I guess. There is a lot to go through in first episodes, and trying to work all of it into an original pilot is very difficult. Points are still taken for going the predictable route, but still.

Next Episode, Jake tries to get a date for the dance, but when he’s unable to get human candidates, he goes for supernatural girls.

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Episode One-Derland: Zettai Bouei Leviathan

Plot: Evil insect-like beings known as the Lucasite have landed on the water planet of Aquafall and threaten to cause destruction to the planet. A fairy named Syrup wishes to collect powerful mages to form the Aquafall Defense. The girls she has selected for this task are the water mage, Leviathan, the fire mage, Bahamut and the earth mage, Jormungandr.

Breakdown: Still a sucker for magical girl anime, which this basically is, but this first episode isn’t much to write home about.

It succeeds in introducing us to the main leads fairly well, but not much else is explored properly.

Leviathan is seemingly the main main character of the three. She has a weird personality that I can’t quite peg. On one hand, she seems shy, yet on another she seems melancholy and blunt. On yet another, she’s quite emotional, and on the other she can be stone faced and tough. It’s like they roll a die to see which temperament she’ll have in the next scene.

As mentioned, she has power over water and she can turn into a sort of dragon-humanoid hybrid based on her element of water. She seems to actually be somewhat poor at water magic, but a flashback reveals that she used to be quite the water mage until her older brother vanished. Now she can only do water magic well when she’s particularly emotionally charged.

Bahamut is the youngest of the crew. She doesn’t seem to have much luck with her fire magic, and, unlike Leviathan, we get no real insight as to why this is, besides her age. She’s the daughter of a very well respected and powerful fire mage named Rage Row, and that’s all the background we have on her so far.

Despite her lack of luck in fire magic, she is more than willing to stand up for others. She’s a tad immature, overestimates herself and is pretty hardheaded, but she seems to mean well. Her voice can be very irritating, however, in spite of her VA’s, Eri Kitamura’s, impressive resume.

Jomungandr has the least amount of information given thusfar. She’s supposedly the earth based one of the group, but we never see her do anything with her magic. She is shown to be exceptionally strong, however, wielding a huge axe and tables like they’re paper. She is the tough one of the group who works as a delivery person for some guy named Travis. I can see her becoming my favorite character.

These three really started seeming familiar….and then it hit me.

They’re the Powerpuff girls.

That might be stretching it a little since Bahamut doesn’t seem to like being cutesy like Bubbles and Leviathan’s personality really needs to be solidified more before she can fully fit Blossom, but they fit the trio of archetypes, and you can’t convince me that Jormungandr isn’t Buttercup.

Conspiracies aside, our final main character of the group is Syrup, the fairy. Syrup is a little annoying, but not

…..annoying.

She doesn’t have much to her so far besides the fact that she has a big appetite, appreciates justice and I guess fighting, and that she always tells the truth, which seems to be a facet of fairies as a whole.

The villains are the main problem in their introduction. All we see of the Lucasites so far is a beetle-like bug the size of an iPad flying around smacking the girls in the face until it is fairly easily dispatched. Outside of a little explanation by Syrup, we get nothing else.

Instead, our main antagonists for this episode are a bunch of random thugs who were hitting on some random girl in the street. Both Bahamut and Syrup piss them off by defending the girl and Leviathan and Jormungandr get caught up in the fight and end up having a huge mostly off-screen battle with the thugs, resulting in the lot of them destroying some poor lady’s bar. The girls then lament that they didn’t get their food or tea and then laugh, end episode…..

The world that they live in is interesting to a degree. Some of the people seem based on dragons with scales and stuff and some just seem like humans with pointy ears. Some seem to be mages and others aren’t.

The names of the girls are based on beings from mythology. Leviathan is taken from that of a sea monster. Bahamut is taken from a giant fish (with no connection to fire outside of seemingly living in an abyss that includes fire). And Jormungandr is taken from a world-squeezing sea serpent. Seeing as how the girls all possess the ability to turn into dragon-humanoid creatures, these seem pretty fitting.

The art is just okay. The OP makes Leviathan’s transformed state look great, however. The colors pop and the lineart is decent enough. Nothing’s particularly detailed very much. The animation, done by Gonzo, is nothing fantastic but perfectly fine.

The opening has this cool fake language, possibly of Aquafall, layered over the credits before it dissolves into the actual Japanese credits, which I thought was cool. The BG music was pretty good. Seems a bit RPG-ish, actually. The OP and ED were fairly generic and forgettable though.

This isn’t a very good first episode as a whole. It did give us somewhat decent introductions to our main characters with plenty of room for exploration in the future, but nothing particularly big happened to hook in our attention. It was pretty boring.

The big baddies were nameless thugs who were obviously no match for even these three teenage girls and will probably never show up again, and we saw little in terms of magic. In addition, despite the set dressing, this is yet another story of invaders coming to a planet with a team of super beings needed to take them down.

My soft spot for magical girl shows is being manipulated a bit here. I hope it gets more interesting in the future.

Verdict:

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