English Dub Review: Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid “New Dragon, Elma! (She’s Finally Appearing, Huh?)”

In the Name of Bahamut, I Shall Punish You!

Spoilers Below

Kanna’s going on a field trip. Yay! She’s told she needs to have a packed bento to eat during the trip. This seems like a normal thing, with her “mother” figure Kobayashi volunteering to pack one for her. Problem is, this is not the normal living relationship. Tohru instantly jumps on, and the gauntlet is thrown for an Iron Chef: Bento Box Battle! Our judges, of course, are Kanna, Fafnir, and Lucoa. First round is a salad, and Tohru presents a caesar salad seasoned with paprika. Tasty stuff, but she loses to Kobayashi’s… two cherry tomatoes? You see, the small format for a bento means that Tohru made far too much. Oh well, she takes it in the main course when she pulls out hamburger. Kids love hamburger. Time for desert, and it can’t be anything complicated. Kobayashi presents an orange jello pack, which is pretty good, I guess. Tohru is taking a long time, though. A really long time. When she does show up, she’s wielding a strange looking fruit. It’s full of tasty flavor and… starts to bark after you bite it? This is no earth fruit! The dragons declare that items from the dragon world are off limits, and Tohru loses.

Problem is, that portal Tohru opened to get the fruit didn’t just go away. Later that night, the ladies receive a new visitor. Elma is a Harmony Faction dragon, the enemies of Tohru’s Chaos Faction. The two of them have hated each other forever, and are equal in power… more or less. Elma’s dynamic entry into the apartment is enough to drive up the renter’s insurance by a tidy sum, and she wants to engage Tohru in combat here and now to drag her back to the dragon world. No consideration, this one. Tohru opens up a portal to a battleground she has prepared. As soon as Elma goes through, Tohru closes it but… well, nobody went through with the Harmony Dragon. She’s just all alone. In a field. On another continent. Elma reappears the next day, having flown all the way over. She demands a rematch. The battle is postponed, however, due to the dragon collapsing from starvation. They feed her a cream bread, and she recovers. Tohru offers her the whole bag of cream breads if Elma will just go away. She takes that offer.

That doesn’t mean she goes home, however. Soon after, she takes a job at Kobayashi’s software engineering firm. She claims it’s because of research into human culture. Really, it’s because she can’t get back to the dragon world. She doesn’t have that kind of power. She also has no clue what a computer is, or how to use one, or how to even write in romanji. Kobayashi ends up tutoring her on all these things. When Kobayashi returns, however, she discovers that Tohru can smell Elma all over her. The green dragon becomes insecure, over-trying on everything she does to win back Kobayashi’s friendship. She even goes back to trying to feed Kobayashi her tail meat in a sandwich. After a moment of the programmer looking up the dragon’s skirt to ascertain the status of the tail, there comes a knock on the door. It’s Elma again, this time with a protective charm as a thank you gift for all the help. Tohru escorts her rival out. With a fireball. To the face.

This leads to a conversation that could have been tense. Tohru expresses her insecurity, and Kobayashi explains that she’s lived such a walled-up life that she doesn’t know how to express her feelings well. She settles for patting her dragon maid on the head, which is a good enough sign for both of them. Elma, on the other hand, is only getting close to that sandbox and unconsciousness.

This summary seems a bit briefer than some I’ve done, but only because of how this anime actually works its character development. As a series of vignettes, character development is hidden in the nuances of the dialogue between characters. Subjects such as the equality of humans and dragons, Fafnir trying to reject humans while secretly having a bro-lationship with Takiya, and Kobayashi’s introversion are sprinkled in as other, seemingly unrelated events are going on. This means we can touch lightly on each subject, without letting it drive the episode, which I can enjoy. The intro scene for Elma had some fun animation and art, as well as little scenes with Fafnir and Lucoa adjudicating the Iron Chef Battle. I found that the voice acting was just fine, though I think Elma’s voice actress, whose name I haven’t seen listed, needs a bit more time to get into her role. Some of her lines during her time at the company felt off, as if they were forced. Altogether, I’m still loving this series, and give it eight angry dog fruit out of ten.