English Dub Review: The Dragon’s Dentist Episodes One and Two

Someone should’ve called the Cavity Creeps on the producers.

Brushing one’s teeth is highly important to keep healthy. Now in The Dragon Dentist that mentality has been woven with themes of accepting one’s own inevitable death. Not exactly the terms you would think would blend together in a narrative and… that’s partially still true. Based on the 8-minute short ONA (Original Net Short) that was featured in Hideaki Anno’s Animator Expo, The Dragon Dentist is the story of Nonoko a young, but skilled dragon dentist who follows her duties of cleaning the tooth decaying cavity bacteria out of the mouth of the country side dragons she and the other dragon dentists live on. One day, Nonoko discovers that out of the dragon’s tooth a young soldier named Bell, who had been killed by his own men, has been revived. His resurrection foretells a bad omen that legend says occurs before a major disaster. So, with that knowledge, the Dragon Dentists work to make Bell one of them and Bell learns the tireless work and the unflinching resolve it takes to be a dragon dentist. Oh, and at the same time a World War is happening, there’s a commando unit out to kill the dragon or steal its teeth and one of the dragon dentists goes rogue to cheat death.

While all these plot threads do have very interesting implications behind them, I’m disappointed by the almost halfhearted execution they take on in the actual narrative. If we’re looking at the full 80-minute running time over the two episodes, it takes 30 minutes for Bell and Nonoko to truly become key aspects to the plot. The contextual build up to this Bell and Nonoko dynamic was mostly done via montage in the first episode which comes across disingenuous as character development. The rest of the time we’re watching the partially developed world building.

What I mean by partial is that there are ideas of what the narrative wants to get across but nothing is really solid. For example, the time at which the story takes place in is actually confusing to figure out. It either takes place during either world war one or modern-day, it honestly is not clearly established as each episode began with the dragon either blowing up a bunch of navy boats in episode 1 or swallowing a typhoon beside a commercial airplane in episode 2 and then coupling that with the soldiers wielding bayonet guns and firing old fashion cannons. This ambiguous world building doesn’t stop there. There’s mention of a dragon pact with humans to not be part of war conflicts but that’s not fully talked about until the last 15 mins of episode 2 and even then, it’s at best just glossed over. There are humans who hate dragons but with our only context of dragon being the big red one that literally did nothing to anybody until the bad guys messed with its teeth it leaves me wondering why is there hate towards dragons?

But the war and such is just the world framing device for the conflict, how about the world building of the dragon and the dragon dentists? It is honestly very interesting and the thematic drive of the story was all set up for a complete satisfying beginning, middle and end but like the rest its built and laid a flimsy support for itself. In the most simple explanation, the dragon is a vessel for all the souls of the dead. It doesn’t necessarily have to eat people, it just takes in the souls of whomever dies beneath it, this included Bell. So, then all the souls of the dead become one with the dragon’s teeth and it’s the dragon dentist’s job then to keep the teeth clean of cavities and dispose of the souls’ belongings that inexplicably end up in between his chompers. From an analytical perspective, it feels like the dragon and even the dentists are vessels for the idea of living and working heartily even in the knowledge of inevitable demise. That is very intriguing but everything from this angle is undercut by the war angle taking such a prominent stance in the world over the dragon itself.

Nonoko and Bell fit with what this theme was going for. Bell is a soldier who feared death and confrontation and was killed due to his indecisiveness. Nonoko is the complete opposite, a care-free yet hard-working girl who through the dragon knows how and where she will die but just lives each day to the fullest and towards her life’s ambition, taking care of the dragon. The narrative styling reminds me a lot of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke, almost to a degree where I would be almost persuaded to call The Dragon Dentist, Mononoke lite. Quiet and reserved male protagonist, wild and duty driven female lead and even the background framing device of war where the key mystical being’s power is sought after to be weaponized. After all is said and done though narrative wise, watching the TV special made me wish it was something more. More focused on its strongest plot points. More character defining moments. It just needed more of a direct line of reasoning to its theming to help package it up in a more fulfilling package to watch.

All things considered, it is still a very well animated and acted TV special. Great fight choreography, eye-catching settings, very detailed and stylized characters and the cast for what they’re given give very defined performances, especially in episode 2 where the writing is allowed to reveal more character depth. The visuals nor the dub cast are an issue at all. This was done by Khara the same company who worked the Evangelion series and, coincidentally enough with my earlier comparison, performed in cooperation with Ghibli on Ponyo, From Up on Poppy Hill and The Wind Rises. Although I would want to ask if some of the character redesigns including turning the dragon from a more ferocious looking beast in the short to a rounded tooth docile one was made to fit with the theme or for some other reason? As I can see the thought process for theming but aesthetically the short’s dragon was more visually captivating.

Pretty animation or not, though, The Dragon Dentist is interesting in terms of the concepts its laid out for its audience but it needed to have more of a focus point so that everything else could be built on a more solid foundation. A disappointing watch for me but not a bad one. I’d recommend The Dragon Dentist to anyone who is intrigued by the use of the descriptive term “Princess Mononoke Lite.”