As the eighth volume of Dragon Drive gets underway, the team is off on another quest to find the Shrine of the Four Sacred Dragons.  The going isn't easy though, and there are plenty of battles, double-crosses and betrayals on the way there.   Even with these developments though, this show still has an I've-seen-it-all-before feel to it.  Having screened two volumes back-to-back, everything seems to blend together because the individual episodes are so similar.  This repetitive show has fallen into a rut, and can't get out.

This show is about Reiji Ozora, a junior high slacker who gets horrible grades, is only interested in sleeping, and is perpetually late for school.  One day his childhood friend, Maiko, invites Reiji to join her in a new sport, Dragon Drive.  In this game, a player's DNA is read and used to match the player with a dragon that appears in a virtual reality world.  Reiji's registers but his dragon, Chibi, is not the massive five story tall fearsome creature the other players have.  He is a small cute dragon with an attack strength of zero.   Of course, like Pikachu in Pokemon, Chibi is destined for bigger things and is much more powerful than he first appears.

Apparently the group has now been transported to another world, as these episodes don't take place in the same world that the show started in.

As this volume starts, Reiji and Taiyou are trying to save their dragon's that Bloody Mary captured at the end of the last volume.  This dragon collector has a secret and a reason why she imprisons wild dragons, but can the guys figure it out in time?

Meanwhile, the other members of the group start looking for the Shrine of the Four Sacred Dragons, while Reiji and Chibi stay behind to work on controlling the power that Chibi obtained in the last volume.

A new character shows up, which was a little surprising this late in the game.  Hideaki is another Dragon champion from Earth, and somehow just sort of wandered onto this world due to a mechanical malfunction.  Everyone but Reiji suspects that there is something that's not quite on the up and up with this new kid, but the leader welcomes him with open arms.  What an idiot.

I have the same complaints with this volume as I did with the last one.  Maybe it is because I've missed a lot of episodes, but this isn't a very good show if you are much older than six.  While the dragon designs are cool, and some of the fight moves are impressive looking, there just isn't much to the series.  The whole "go on a quest to gain more power so we can defeat the villains" story has been done many time before, and often better.  Like many of this type of show, the program quickly becomes very repetitive and doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Like Pokemon or Shaman King, the main section of each show is a battle.  That's really what the show boils down to.  There is the illusion of advancing the plot (finding a cure for Chibi, looking for the Shrine of the Four Sacred Dragons etc.) but these are just meaningless quests.  They really don't solve anything when all is said and done.

The animation in this show is rather crude and primitive too.  There aren't a lot of details, and all the characters feel flat and two-dimensional.  The movements are stiff and very repetitive, with the animators using actions over and over to save money.  When you notice the same scenes with different dialog popping up over the course of four shows, you know they are stretching their budget to the limit.
 

Audio:

Surprisingly enough, this DVD includes the original Japanese language audio track.  Many anime shows aimed at children forgo this and only provide an English dub.  I was happy that this show had both.  The two-channel sound for both tracks, while lacking a bit of punch, is still very good, and the English dub wasn't annoying like many of them can be.  This is a nice sounding disc.

Video:

Although the quality of the animation leaves something to be desired, the picture quality is very good.  There were only a few instances of aliasing, a digital artifact that usually plagues animation, but no other major defects.  The full frame image was bright with tight lines.

Extras:

There isn't much in the way of extras on this DVD.  There is a short image gallery and a few trailer.  I would have liked a clean opening and/or closing included, and hopefully they'll include that on a future volume.

Included inside the case is a lenticular pencil board of Crystal Gene.

Final Thoughts:

Man, does this show drag.  Maybe it is because I've missed some episodes, but I had a real hard time paying attention to the screen.  My mind kept wandering as the show unfolded.  The show is really dragging at this point, and I'm hard pressed to find a reason why anyone would want to watch it.  Skip it.