English Dub Review: Dragon Goes House-Hunting: “Pip Goes on an Adventure”

Overview: With Letty (Michael Kovach) napping to regain his energy, Dearia (Steven Kelly) gives Pip (Lindsay Sheppard) permission to go off on his own and have his own little adventure. Later on, Dearia regales Letty and Pip with tales from his past. 

Our Take: Letty takes a backseat role this time around as Pip gets his own  solo outing in the eighth entry of Dragon Goes House-Hunting. Overall, it is a delightful tale of Pip helping out some leprechauns find a new home after the tried and true “heroes” of the series discarded it. The constant framing of the heroes as overbearingly self-righteous and belligerent will never not be funny. It’s even more so when the series pokes fun at their consistent gag losses at the hands of the plot and it’s endless shenanigans. With the endless amount of video game references and meta jokes, especially one very direct one about NPCs in this episode, it makes me actually wonder whether or not the world is actually just a video game? That would be quite the twist but one that would make a lot more sense after allusions present throughout the fantasy series. By and large though, the tale was fun. It didn’t overstay its welcome therefore it never became stale and was a charming side story about the little arctic bird. 

The other half of this episode focuses on the magical elf himself, Dearia, and his upbringing. His backstory, at least the first part of it, strongly mirrors that of Letty’s in how he is an outcast in how different he is from the rest of his species. Beyond the obvious matter of his old friend being a dragon, it’s an evocative tale of how he is able to relate to Letty and sympathize with the plight he faced. He eventually is sent away to live with the ancient knowledgeable serpent, Jörmungandr. Their chemistry is one of the strongest aspects of the tale with them having a mentor/pupil relationship that also evokes that of a mother and son that is never not sweet and endearing. It’s also a great origin of how Dearia’s homebuilding and house hunting skills took off as living around Jörmungandr and her gigantic slithering body was his first undertaking. Not to mention there are great nods to other characters like the yetis he has used or the witch sisters that have made appearances previously. But this is just the beginning. The story of how he forged a friendship with his previous dragon companion, Varney, after becoming a demon lord, will get underway in the next episode. 

“Pip Goes on an Adventure” offers an exceptional Pip and Dearia centric episode with each of them getting their own time to shine in a lighthearted enjoyable diversion and an engaging and heartwarming backstory, respectively.