Please Look After the Dragon Volume 2 Review

Student Murakami has an unusual roommate: Ilsera, the young female dragon who’s been sent to Earth by her parents to study and prepare for her exams in magic (she failed the last ones). Ilsera has problems flying (she’s afraid of heights and has to keep her eyes closed) and spends much of her time avoiding studying, helping out elderly Saki-san in the local shopping street by grilling her popular onigiri with her fiery breath.

It’s summer and everyone in town is preparing for the annual Dragon God Festival – when a terrifying storm blows in out of nowhere. Murakami and Ilsera take to the air and encounter the local dragon god who’s celebrated in the festival and they’re in a very bad mood indeed! In Volume 1 Ilsera accidentally broke the shrine statue of the dragon god when she and Murakami were supposed to be cleaning it – and the dragon furiously informs them that when they mended the statue, they left out the whiskers. As the dragon-summoned typhoon hovers menacingly overhead and all the townsfolk flee for cover, Ilsera and Murakami try to bargain with the dragon god and save the town.

The arrival of local dragon god Ranmei opens up many possibilities for the two dragons from different worlds to discuss their very different experiences – and Mitsuki (Saki-san’s granddaughter) is especially delighted. Ranmei’s human form is surprisingly childlike and charming although it needs a lot of magical energy to sustain (like Ilsera and her chibi form) leading to a few embarrassing slip-ups. Ranmei is welcomed by the townsfolk and sore feelings are soothed by attending the festival in their honour – but the dragon god is also saddened that the old ways and people they once new are long gone. Now lots of people come to the shrine once more to ask for the dragon god’s help granting their wishes (everything from finding a lost cat to producing a mythical tsuchinoko for a grandchild to see) but that begins to become a burden…

The second volume of Please Look After the Dragon builds in a satisfying and charming way on the themes introduced in the first. Ilsera continues to be a lazy dragon and her attempts at summoning magic are both comical and disastrous (Chapter 10 ‘Please Let Me Train…’). When she receives her first pay from Saki-san, she decides she wants to find a way to say thank you to Murakami but things don’t quite go as she plans when she goes out in heavy disguise, arousing the suspicions of the police! And meanwhile, Ranmei has been trying to accustom themselves to the twenty-first century and getting on well with Mitsuki who’s delighted to have another dragon around. Then, when Murakami, Mitsuki and their fellow students get together to make a film to enter for a contest, he purposely doesn’t tell Ilsera where they’re going. Ilsera is not so easily fooled, though and hitches a ride on top of their bus. As she spies on the students, Ranmei joins her and the two are tempted to help out – with predictably disastrous results.

Yuki Higashiura’s art continues to bring Shoun Makise’s characters, human and supernatural, to life in a convincing way, managing to convey the humour of many of the ludicrous situations Ilsera gets herself into without going over the top. The Teen rating means that this manga will reach a wide audience and as it’s ongoing at four volumes in Japan, I can’t help observing that it would translate really well to anime.

The translation for Yen Press is again by Sarah Burch with Elena Pizarro doing the lettering and both combine to make this a problem-free read. The addition of translation notes is a plus, although there are no extras and space is tight as the translation notes are on the inside back cover! No date yet for Volume 3 but hopefully, it won’t be too long.

Read a free preview at the publisher’s site here.

Our review copy was supplied by Yen Press.