AKA: さようなら竜生、こんにちは人生 (Sayonara Ryūsei, Konnichiwa Jinsei)

Genre: Fantasy

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG-13 (Violence, fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Overlord, Utawarerumono, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, So I'm a Spider So What?

Notes: Based on the light novel series written by Hiroaki Nagashima and illustrated by Kisuke Ichimaru, serialized in Shōsetsuka ni Narō, then later AlphaPolis. There is also a manga with art by Kurono, also serialized on AlphaPolis.

Rating:

Good Bye, Dragon Life

Synopsis

Despite never having killed or even troubled anyone else, an ancient dragon is killed by a group of heroes. Having lived for so long, the dragon welcomes his end, wanting nothing but to rest for eternity, yet.... he is reborn as a human named Dolan, and he gets a new chance at life in a small countryside village named Verun.

Review

Having an ancient... well, anything, really... reborn as a human while retaining their memories from that earlier life is an interesting concept. It presents an angle where a formerly ancient and almost limitlessly powerful being has to get used to a new life at the bottom end of the totem pole of power. That would make Good Bye, Dragon Life a study of the human resilience and adaptab-... the show doesn't do that? Dolan retains all his dragon powers? Uh... OK?

In that case, maybe Good Bye, Dragon Life is a story about a being with so much power who suddenly has to adapt to a vastly quieter, more sedate life where his duties revolve around everyday stuff, and that becomes a point of contemplation for the ancient being as he... wait, he gets involved in the things going on around him and has to stop an invasion by the demon realm? That's.....

I wasn't sure what I was hoping for when I started this. Perhaps it was a little too optimistic of me to expect Good Bye, Dragon Life to take the more quiet slice-of-life route, as fantasy shows like these generally don't do that. The reborn-from-dragon angle nevertheless was interesting enough to make me check it out through curiosity alone, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake.

I would not learn that until a few episodes later, though. Good Bye, Dragon Life does get off on a rather good foot as it tasks Dolan with checking out the reason for the disappearance of the lizard population living in a swamp nearby. There, he meets the Lamia Celina, and the two of them work together to deal with the probable cause and then have a bit of a campfire chat about their respective families while Dolan ruminates about how lonely his old life was compared to his current one. Which is understandable to some extent, as I imagine most people would struggle to come up with a conversation topic that would be interesting to someone who has lived for lord knows how long. But don't expect this show to dwell too much on it.

Dolan's personality is almost aggressively aloof. I know that sounds like a really ridiculous and contradictory thing to say, but the main thread throughout the whole show is how unflappable and matter-of-fact he is about absolutely everything, save two moments in this season, near the beginning and the end. There are aspects to this that soured the show for me later on, but more on that later.

Now, this is not solely "The Dolan Show," at least in casting. The village he lives in has quite a few colorful personalities. There's the village elder, Maguru, who also serves as the teacher of anything magical and alchemical. Dolan is one of her students, the other one being Airi, a young girl with a very clear crush on Dolan, and she's also the one who gets a short out-of-universe segment providing hints as to what will happen in the next episode. The major character roster also includes Christina, a knight tasked with protecting the village alongside the local force. Her behavior is very much like Dolan. She's a bit aloof, but she's also much more self-conscious about it. Prior to her life in the village, she received her education in the capital (presumably), and her battle capabilities are the only ones that come even close to Dolan's. She and Celina are the only ones who are involved in the main story all the way through alongside Dolan. At some point, she even gets challenged by Verun's captain of the guard (more or less) to a drinking contest, which serves as the key point in showcasing how removed she feels from the village's social circle when she doesn't immediately accept -- which is partially of her own doing, granted, but it's probably hard for someone to feel like a part of a village when everyone seems to worship the ground they walk on. And you might think said drinking contest is centered around alcohol, but it's actually all about the milk. "Oh, so this village has cows? I guess that makes sense. It is a farm-side village, after all." And you'd be right. Kinda.

The woman on the left? She... uh, she's the provider of this village's milk. The drinking contest? It's to see who can chug the most mugs of milk... without becoming sick and barfing all over the floor, I would assume? Maybe I shoulda seen it coming, what with the earlier episode having the local cow lady, Miu, push a mug on Dolan, followed by a close-up of her chest as he chugs it down. Miu is married to the village captain, Baran, and they also have two children: a young boy, Tauro, and an older girl, Mir. Both of which have horns on their heads, but Mir seems to be the only one who inherited her mom's more cow-like ears. And in the same episode, she also hands a mug over to Christina -- right after the aforementioned drinking contest has been concluded, mind you -- and asks Christina to give her some feedback on it. I realize that this is probably normal for this world, as is the ability for a cow woman to produce milk without having to be with child, but it still strikes me as a weirdly fetishy thing put into an otherwise low-fanservice show. And that awkward feeling certainly isn't helped by Miu mentioning that her father was the one who's really supposed to test his daughter's milk. What a time to be alive.

And then we have Celina. She's a Lamia, and as the show informs us, they are very much feared due to their abilities, the most prominent among them being her "evil eyes." She is probably considered to be among the strongest beings in this universe, and to be fair, they're nothing to scoff at. As is typical of shows like this, however, she's also a complete sweetheart and a bit of an airhead. According to her, and I have no reason to believe she's lying, the Lamia race is entirely female, and that's why they have to rely on men from other races to reproduce. And you would think that a race that has to rely on other races to survive wouldn't benefit by being feared by everyone, but sense in this show is very much a "case by case" basis.

As is the fact that, except for elves, we mostly just see one type of each of the non-human races. One arachne, one... plant lady of sorts, one wolf man. If not for her children, Miu might've been the only cow lady in the show too. And yes, Celina is the only Lamia we get to meet, at least so far.

It's this, alongside the show's tendency to just have Dolan solve every confrontation with his unmatched powers, that makes Good Bye, Dragon Life such an absolute bore to watch. I know the idea is that while Dolan has been reborn as a human, he still retains all of his ancient dragon powers and abilities. In a move that annoyingly reminds me of The Testament of Sister New Devil, our main character is here to solve everyone's problems and save them as they inevitably get in over their heads. The only one who gets to even approach this level of competency is Christina, so of course she gets underutilized for the better part. This show is about Dolan first and foremost.

And it's from the fifth episode that this really comes to the forefront. That's when the elven forest becomes the target of a demon invasion. It spills into the nearby area, which by extent includes Verun village, so his inclusion isn't entirely unwarranted. But the elves who live in the secluded forest are shown to be entirely useless against even the lowest-ranking of demons, save a scant few. The show tries to up the tension by introducing even more powerful demon knights a mere episode into the whole thing, and good lord, the show wants its cake and eat it as well. Said upper-tier demons just lay waste to entire squadrons of elves seemingly with little effort, yet Dolan (and Christina on the side) defeats them with little effort, which honestly has to feel pretty galling for everyone involved. Dolan is the veteran player here to help the newbies and make sure they aren't pushing themselves too hard.

This isn't helped by the dry, overwritten dialogue. The whole thing feels like it's being transcribed directly from the novel without considering that the audience can see what's going on. Part of that can probably be laid upon the feet of the poor animation quality, but that doesn't make it any less annoying to have to listen to. I'm normally all for encouraging and reflective dialogue, but the one you get served in this show is basic, to say the least, especially once the demon invasion gets underway. The show has its moments, don't get me wrong; the episodes centered around Dolan's plan to get Celina accepted by the village culminate in Dolan visiting his Goddess friend, Myrale, to thank her for speaking to her oracle on Celina's behalf. That moment is genuinely sweet, and it's also one of the moments in the show where the dialogue doesn't feel overwritten, overexplain-y and over-lecturing. Well... mostly. But the demon invasion arc is allowed to eat up all the episodes starting on episode 5, and most of it just sounds like trash talking written by ten-year-olds. In fact, that's what this reminds me of: kids from other anime playing hero and demon lord.

I didn't necessarily expect Good Bye, Dragon Life to live up to my... probably overly optimistic expectations about its portrayal of cohabitation and fantasy species in general, but I sure didn't want to be this disappointed by it either. Good Bye, Dragon Life is bereft of tension and too overloaded with meaningless blather to be an interesting look into the lives of the residents Dolan is living alongside. The show has no trust in its audience understanding what it's trying to get across, rather just wanting us to soak in the sheer power fantasy of it all, which just feels insulting. The protagonists speak like they're in a PSA, while the villains are almost cartoonishly evil in a very manufactured "honorable" way. The few points it has going for it are just drowned out by asininity and boredom. I am done with this.

An interesting concept and a few heartfelt moments are completely wasted on this. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: The violence is direct enough, but not that bloody in the grand sceme of things. Probably fine for teenagers. The fanservice is also relatively mild. Dolan walks in on Celina while she's bathing, and we get a few closeups of Miu's chest as she hands out milk to someone, with all the implications that comes with that.