Drifting Dragons vol. 3

Three volumes in and this series is still pleasant fantasy comfort food reading.  I still can’t help but feel that it should be more than that, and this volume doesn’t do much to get me to think otherwise.  After an opening chapter of goofy comedy about who drew a picture of a sleeping Vannie, the focus shifts firmly onto newbie Takita and the predicament she finds herself in.  After the crew of the Quin Zaza tries to hunt a school of traveling dragons, one of them proves to have more fight in it than expected and winds up taking the young draker overboard.  Takita survives the fall, but now she’s injured in a cavernous area with only her wits and the small amount of gear she has on her person to survive with.  Oh, and the baby dragon that happens to be the kid of the one she just killed.

It’s a good thing that the baby dragon is too young to hold a grudge, or this volume would be considerably less heartwarming than mangaka Taku Kuwabara intends it to be.  What we get is a story of survival, friendship, community, and persistence as Takita makes some new friends and she tries to get back to the Quin Zaza and return the baby dragon to its herd.  This is all well and good, and very nice-looking thanks to Kuwabara’s detailed art.  It also happens to be completely lacking in surprise or interesting characterization, which is why vol. 3 is still nothing more than fantasy comfort food.  There’s a hint in the abrupt ending to this volume — seriously, it felt like my volume was missing a page or two — that the crew of the Quin Zaza is about to be caught up in something bigger.  Whether or not that actually leads to “Drifting Dragons” finally taking its storytelling to the next level remains to be seen.