Review: Nella the Princess Knight “Dragon Taggin’”

“You’re it!”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

Nella and Trinkett accompany her purple dragon friend Snowpuff on a quest to find the legendary “well of Wishes” to help Snowpuff fix a personal flaw of his so he can win against the other Dragons in a game of “Dragon Taggin”.

Our Take

This was a decent episode. We learn that apparently Ogre’s kinda exist with the first appearance of “Boggle-Snort” who prefers to have his whole name spoken like without it being shortened like he’s “a pimp named slick back”, though it’s never explained why the Ogre even protects the Magical Well since the creature has the mentality of an overgrown child and the vocabulary of a dumb brute that frequently refers to itself in the 3rd person.

The Animation and backgrounds do a good job changing things up this time with parts of the plot taking place outside of the kingdom and within a dark cave that uses different shades of blue to represent darkness, but I guess the color black doesn’t exactly exist in this show unless it’s a hair color.

Design-wise Snowpuff kinda reminds me of Gohan’s tiny Purple Dragon friend Icarus from DBZ, though unlike Icarus, the show does press the matter that the Dragons in this universe are capable of human speech with Snowpuff’s accent almost sounding like a new-yorker. We don’t get any new songs in this episode, but the colors remain bright and vibrant as they should be for a show like this.

I also give points to how good the pacing is. For a 15 min episode, it moves fast while still easy to follow in terms of action scenes that gell together with excellent character moments, especially for Snowpuff as a character.

Overall, if there’s any lesson this episode has properly conveyed for kids, it’s learning to accept your own flaws and turning them into a strength, and it’s well-conveyed without dumbing down its audience.