English Dub Review: Dragon Goes House-Hunting: “A Home with Falls”

Overtime: Letty (Michael Kovach) meets the realtor/homebuilder/demon lord Dearia (Steven Kelly) as he searches for the perfect home and seeks the help of the elf to show him homes from different walks of life and all their oddball qualities that come with that. 

Our Take:  The show has begun solidifying both its humorous and tonal roots as Letty looks for a new home in an ancient Greek style home and haunted mansion with ghosts. With that brings the talented triple threat elf, Dearia. And with his arrival comes a big factor as to why House-Hunting is beginning to work as well as it does. It’s his chemistry with the big red dragon himself. Dearia’s deadpan attitude and dry wit makes for a good juxtaposition and allows him to bounce off of Letty’s naivety and kindness well. Not to mention they act as a good conduit for wacky hijinks that he befalls the dragon that further makes them an funny pair to watch interact. 

The last few minutes of the first episode set the series tone and style in stone moving forward with Letty stumbling upon humans with a lot of great timing and wit with the obnoxious heroes. It’s sophomore debut builds upon that. For instance, it is cool to see that archetype in a new light in how the show paints them in an extreme comedic caricature with them essentially being bloodthirsty murderers of monsters without remorse. It also continues to carve its own path with the increasingly zaniness and loads of references that are nods that are woven in naturally and not relied upon. Whether it be Letty’s horrified Wendy Torrence impression and Dearia’s stoic Jack Torrence, or child spirits imitating those iconic ones from that of The Grudge.  There are also gaming references galore and ones that only people who are inundated in the genre will truly love and get a kick out of. Like with Resident Evil save point nods or the classical first person dungeon crawler likely going over people’s heads but being appreciated by the more hardcore.  

Dragon’s second episode is vastly more enjoyable throughout with more consistency of the quality humor and the amount in general of it compared to the first episode. This new episode actually made me look forward to the next entry which is something I was not expecting from an incredibly lighthearted anime such as this. 

Dragon Goes House-Hunting begins to breathe a fire under it’s butt with it finally finding it’s voice in goofy levity and even goofier timing and chemistry amongst the show’s leads. Factor in the exceptional pop culture mentions and you get a fantastical show that is as multi-talented as Dearia himself.