{"id":949,"date":"2019-03-06T22:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2019-03-11T13:39:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T04:39:30","slug":"the-dragon-princes-second-outing-is-much-stronger-than-its-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/06\/the-dragon-princes-second-outing-is-much-stronger-than-its-first\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dragon Prince<\/i>\u2019s Second Outing is Much Stronger Than Its First"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey everyone. Before we get started, I just wanted to give out a big thanks to Joshua Ott for sponsoring this review with his <\/span>Patreon<\/span><\/a> donation. (At the $60 a month tier, you are allowed to pick anything up to an including a 13ish episode series to be reviewed\u2013which is released in addition to the one article a week I normally put out here on BiggestinJapan.com.) However, this time around, we\u2019re not doing an anime but rather the second season of the anime-inspired <\/span>The Dragon Prince<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Dragon Prince<\/span><\/i> is set in a fantasy world where elves and other magical beings live on one side of the continent and humans on the other. Now, the cold war between the races has turned hot, first with the killing of the Dragon King and destruction of its only egg followed by the retaliatory assassination of one of the human kings, Harrow. Yet Harrow\u2019s sons discovered a secret: the Dragon King\u2019s egg was not destroyed, only captured. Now traveling with the egg and aided by a former elven assassin, the trio makes their way to the elven homeland to return the egg to where it belongs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much of the second season revolves around the dark secret that the two princes, Callum and Ezran, have yet to discover: that King Harrow is dead. Now, Rayla has known this from the start thanks to the magic band around her wrist that would only come off once the King died. In the first season, it\u2019s obvious why she didn\u2019t tell the pair of humans: she\u2019s a stranger in a strange land carrying the single most important object in the world and she needs them in order to get home safely. However, as she gets to know Callum and Ezran–and begins to trust them–her guilt begins to grow.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the second season, the guilt is becoming too much. She\u2019s dying to tell Callum but can\u2019t find the right time to say \u201cOh, your Dad\u2019s dead and I\u2019ve known the whole time–my bad.\u201d This is, of course, because there is no such thing as a \u201cright time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole situation is further complicated by the arrival of Claudia and Soren. Soren has no qualms about lying to Callum and Ezran, saying their father is alive and worried about them–especially as he has the secret mission to kill Ezran. Claudia, on the other hand, is appalled at the lie and spills the beans to Callum moments before Rayla can.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rayla, realizing she\u2019s missed her chance, panics and apologizes for not telling him–but that\u2019s the furthest thing from his mind. While she\u2019s been focusing on this secret, he\u2019s simply consumed by the fact that his father is dead. <\/span><\/p>\n

But soon, he comes to realize the worst truth of all, now he\u2019s in the same position as Rayla was–he got to tell Erzan their father is dead but can\u2019t seem to do it. Instead of driving Rayla and Callum apart, as Rayla herself feared, it pulls them closer together as they share both the secret and the worry for what will happen to Ezran when he finds out. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And in the end, it is the secret that breaks their fellowship to return the dragon prince–though, not for the reasons Rayla or Callum feared. Ezran, while crushed by the news, falls back on the certainty that comes from duty.<\/span><\/p>\n

With his father dead, he must become the new king. No matter how much he wants to continue the quest, he feels that he has to go home and stabilize the kingdom–and let\u2019s face it, he\u2019s 100% correct. In his absence, the kingdom has basically been usurped by Viren and is teetering on the edge of a coup if not a full-on civil war. Ezran will be forced to grow up in a hurry and it is no doubt that going forward, numerous people will attempt to exploit that–especially with Callum far from his side.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trust is something that\u2019s in short supply. Even before the secret is revealed to Callum, Rayla is forced to deal with the fact that, with the arrival of Claudia and Soren, she\u2019s become an outsider in the group. Callum, Ezan, Claudia, and Soren have been together since they were young children. Rayla is practically from another world. Moreover, she\u2019s mistrustful of pretty much any human outside of Callum and Ezran–especially when said human is trying to get his or her hands on the Dragon Prince.<\/span><\/p>\n

So with her general distrust of humans, the weight of the secret, her growing feelings for Callum (and growing jealousy of Claudia), and the mission to return the dragon prince to his mother, everything inside her is screaming that Claudia and Soren are not to be trusted. And when she\u2019s voices her concerns to Callum he can\u2019t believe that his friends would betray him–especially after Claudia ramps up the seduction and tells Callum about his father.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, while Callum trusts his old friends, that doesn\u2019t mean that he doesn\u2019t trust Rayla–and Rayla, in turn, has been with Callum long enough to know this deep in her heart. Thus, instead of giving into her fear and doing something reckless against the pair, Rayla convinces Callum to test Claudia and Soren–to give them an opening to kill Rayla and capture Callum and Ezran.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And they take the bait. Shocking and saddening Callum. Friendship and loyalty mean everything to him. As we see over the course of the season, there is nothing Callum wouldn\u2019t to for the sake of his friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the loss of his magic, Callum feels like he\u2019s lost meaning in his life. Sure, there is the immediate mission, but with the storm orb, he finally found what it was he was meant for. Now that\u2019s been taken away. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Claudia tempts him with becoming a dark magic user like herself–and that has the added bonus of letting him spent much more time with his longtime crush. But thanks to his own knowledge of magic and friendship with Rayla, he feels that dark magic is wrong–both morally and for him personally. He would rather try the impossible–to become a human able to wield elemental magic without an orb–than take the easy path he knows to be wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, when Rayla is about to be slain, he doesn\u2019t hesitate to use dark magic to save her. For his own self-interest–power, purpose, love–he won\u2019t use it. But his loyalty to his friends is above anything else. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This choice tears at Rayla: Callum has committed a major taboo, but at the same time it was for her sake. She\u2019s angry that he would use something so evil but how can she not admire his sacrifice. If there is one person in the whole world she can trust implicitly, it is not another elf, it is Callum. And as he suffers from the backlash of the dark magic, the fear of losing him to it makes her realize her own feelings more clearly than ever before.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final battle of the season is really an internal one, not an external one. In his own mind, the dark magic temps him. Yet, with his friend\u2019s safe, he has no wish for it. And upon rejecting it, he starts to understand the magic of the sky–proving that while humans aren\u2019t born connected to magic, they can learn to make that connection. With this, Callum has found his true path, he has the power to both protect his friends and do what he feels is right–even if that path is both uncharted and full of many dangers to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other main focus of the season is the backstory that leads to how things are now. But this isn\u2019t really about the past as much as it is about developing the villain. Viren sees himself as a hero–a great man equal to the King. The problem is that, when it comes down to it, he is 100% pragmatism, 0% compassion. As his goal is the prosperity of the kingdom, he will take the shortest, most direct path to that goal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, with a compassionate king on the throne like Harrow, Viren could be directed. Once the guidelines were laid down for what was needed of him, he was able to find creative solutions to dire problems. Yet, with the passing of Harrow and the successor to the throne being a mere boy, Viren feels there is no one who has the right to overrule him in what he thinks is best.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is not a man driven by racism against the elves nor is he a man acting out of a misguided need for revenge. The reason for his actions is far more simple: pride. He simply believes that he is always right–that the world would be so much better if everyone just did what he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as he sees in this season, that\u2019s not going to happen just because he wants it to. The other ministers fight him at every turn and the other kings decide not to follow his plans for a full scale war with the elves. Yet, instead of taking a long, hard look at himself to see if he is the problem, he instead decides that the problem is that he doesn\u2019t have enough power. Thus he starts messing around with magic he doesn\u2019t understand and ends up linking himself to an unknown sorcerer–an elven sorcerer if looks are to be believed.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the closing scenes, things end optimistically overall. Ezran is on his way home, Viren has been arrested, and Rayla and Callum have crossed over into elven territory with the Dragon Prince. But just because things look okay for the moment doesn\u2019t mean our heroes are safe. Ezran will have people pulling at him from all sides as a child ruler. Viren may be in a cell, but with his link to the sorcerer, he needs neither orbs nor spellbooks to make magic. Oh, and of course, there\u2019s the little fact that Rayla and Callum have walked headlong into a dragon.<\/span><\/p>\n

…So that might be a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Dragon Prince<\/span><\/i> season 2 was released on February 15, 2019. It can be viewed on <\/span>Netflix<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Top image source: \u00a9 2019 Wonderstorm, INC. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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