(No Spoilers!)
So Margie and I binge-watched The Dragon Prince on Netflix last night. And the fact that we just kept watching and watching last night until we ran out of season should indicate that we thought it was pretty good.
The animated series is helmed by Aaron Ehasz (head writer and director on Avatar: The Last Airbender, as well as a writer and story editor on Futurama), joined by Justin Richmond (co-director on the video game Uncharted 3) and Giancarlo Volpe (a former Avatar director as well). That Avatar influence shows (beyond a few Easter Eggs): there is a blend of epic narrative, of personal drama, and of goofy kid-friendly humor that is balanced neatly and effectively.
Unlike Avatar's quasi-Asian fantasy setting, Dragon Prince is drawn from more European fantasy tropes — castles and elves and magic and dragons — but the overall setting is completely respectable — not unique, but sufficiently thought out, remixed, and imaginatively added to that it feels both fresh and familiar.
What's better, to my mind, is playing with very non-absolutist moral states in a family-friendly setting. The idea of humans upsetting the balance of magic by introducing a new form (called not-at-all-alarmingly Dark Magic) isn't new — the idea that humans get ethnically cleansed from half of the world in order to keep that danger under control is quite a bit darker. Conflict, war, and violence on both sides makes things more morally ambiguous than we're used to, both on the macro and micro level.
Even when we are introduced to a flurry of cast in the first few episodes, the demarcations between Good Guys and Bad Guys are difficult to draw. Our protagonists are flawed in various ways (except for the youngest kid, who's just cloyingly/amusingly cute). People who you really want to call villains keep being (or least starting out as) sympathetic and complex — they are almost all of them antagonists more than baddies.
This is not deep psychodrama, mind you, but unlike the endless array of Fire Nation evil types from Avatar, the humans (and, to the extent we've seen them, the elves) are all a mixed bag, made up of individuals who make mistakes that they (sometimes) regret, hold prejudices that they (sometimes) recognize, and occasionally start heading down paths that they don't recognize the destinations of clearly.
We're also talking a character set that's diverse. Women and men both play prominent, non-stereotyped roles. The humans, at least, are ethnically and racially diverse. One major secondary figure is deaf and uses sign language extensively (and is extremely kick-ass and respected). The diversity is not heavy-handed — but is more effective for that.
One of the few controversial parts of the show is the animation. It's fully done in CG, but painted to look like traditional 2-D animation, and with the frame rate reduced to also ostensibly make it seem more traditional. The results sometimes look great, other times there's something just a bit off about it. Some people have said looks awful, which I can't agree with, but the process does need some work for next season.
This season is 9 eps, and it felt longer, in terms of the complexity of the story — its set-up, the mini-quests along the way, some startling reveals, etc. It's all good stuff, though, and I'm very much looking forward t the next season, whenever Netflix graces us with it.
See Also:
– https://www.netflix.com/title/80212245
– https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8688814/
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dragon_Prince