There are many different kinds of dirty, dangerous jobs in the world, but at least if you’re a draker you get a great view of the sky in the process. Draking, the business of hunting dragons, is a messy affair where moments of tedium are punctured by instances of great danger and untold days afterwards of rendering the dragon carcass for sale back on land. The crew of the Quin Zaza is used to this though — even the greenhorn Takita is getting into the swing of things during a particularly eventful season.
But there’s one thing that Takita probably didn’t expect, and that’s how many ways there are to cook a dragon!
Some days it seems as if every new manga/anime is actually a “food manga” and I did roll my eyes a bit at how heavily eating dragon meat played into the first chapter of Drifting Dragons. The way that Drifting Dragons likes to include “recipes” at the end of every chapter feels a little twee and try-hard, as if the story is mimicking Delicious in Dungeon’s take on cooking fantastical creatures but taking the idea a bit too seriously.
“A bit too serious” describes the entire first volume of Drifting Dragons rather accurately; after an introductory chapter with a very good hook (showing both the whaling-like profession of draking and showing off how much of the story will be about eating dragons) the rest of the volume feels repetitious and like creator Taku Kuwabara played their hand too early and ran out of ideas.
Thankfully the second volume picks up by having more varied types of conflict, brought on by a change of scenery as the Quin Zaza lands in a draking town to sell and resupply and Kuwabara is able to start fleshing out both the world and the characters in more detail.
However, for me it was the third volume that really sold me, as the main point of view character Takita is separated from the rest of the crew for the majority of the volume and she goes from being a more passive character to a more active participant in the world of dragons and humans that she has entered into. Up until this point I had wondered if Takita was really the best person to be the series main point of view character, since her only defining characteristic was “is new to draking,” but once she’s not in danger of being overshadowed by the other crew members, she proves herself to be resourceful, empathetic, and determined to do what she thinks is the right thing.
While it was the third volume that truly sold me on Takita, oddly enough other side characters were being fleshed out before her in volume 2. Volume 2 was where Kuwabara showed that they could not only think of an interesting world but also design one as well. Visually there are some rather clear influences in Kuwabara’s art and designs, which isn’t something I often say about manga art. Some of the designs for both the dragons and in people’s clothing reminds me a lot of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke and Kuwabara’s overall art style reminds me quite a bit of Hayao Miyazaki’s manga version of Nausicaa with regards to the types of lines and shading (specifically, shading made of lines) they use. Some of the dragons that show up later remind me a bit of some of the alien designs from Knights of Sidonia, creatures that strange but ultimately “organic” in appearance. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one group of characters in the second volume, who appear to be more traditional, “tribal” people, whose housing and fine craft works immediately made me think “I see Kuwabara is a fan of A Bride’s Story.”
And of course, as I said at the very beginning, at least 50% of Drifting Dragons’ focus is on food so there were a few food manga that it reminded me as well. There were a few shots in the third volume that made me wonder if Kuwabara is a fan of Golden Kamuy (the stylization of some close up shots of people eating with rapturous facial expressions, and a general philosophy involving hunting felt rather familiar) and, like I mentioned earlier, the earnestly “realistic” approach to cooking the dragon meat reminded me of the monster meals in Delicious in Dungeon, even if I felt that Drifting Dragons was mimicking the style more than the substance in that regard. Although, the “recipes” at the end of each chapter could theoretically be recreated with various cuts of real-world meat much more easily than the meals eaten in Delicious in Dungeon.
Drifting Dragons is a series with an unexpectedly slow start, but it’s in its quietest moments that it does the best. Over these past three volumes I’ve been rather attached to a number of the characters on the Quin Zaza, although I really would like dragon-meat obsessed Mika to have less page-time since he really is a one-note character, and the more Kuwabara showed off their world-building chops the more I wanted to continue with the series. It’s a shame that the series is digital-only at this point, digital-only distribution limits the number of ways new readers can encounter the series and I think that this odd, adventure-food manga would be up a number of people’s alleys. Hopefully Kodansha will release it physically in the US one day but until then I’m ready for the Quin Zaza and crew’s next adventure!