Sep 19, 2022
tl;dr: A decent although generic concept executed not all that well.
Meiyaku no Leviathan is a light novel series set in a world where dragons had suddenly invaded Earth and demanded that certain territories, including portions of a number of capital cities, be abdicated to dragonkind. The dragon lords were incredibly powerful to the point that humanity could not stand before them, so they grudgingly agreed. This satisfied the dragon lords, however the lower dragons, composed of the not quite as powerful as the dragon lords but still quite powerful elites and the endless but relatively weak raptors, still continued attacking humanity and the dragon lords
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had no intention of interfering. Thus, humanity had to protect themselves. Dealing with raptors was easy enough as they were essentially just oversized flying lizards and could be dealt with through conventional weaponry. However, elites were another matter entirely. Like the dragon lords, they were intelligent, capable of concocting various plans and even using powerful magics. Thus, in response humanity too resorted to the use of magic, and special girls known as witches who were capable of summoning artificial dragons known as leviathans stood on the frontline.
Creating leviathans wasn’t a simple matter however, in that it involved utilizing rare ancient relics that magic had been sealed in. Thus, the profession of treasure hunting suddenly became a lot more worthwhile. Such was the protagonist, Haruomi Haruga, originally. However, while assisting in a ritual to create a leviathan, he ends up getting caught in a fight with an elite dragon, and in the process ends up using a special artifact known as a flint, which suddenly gives him the power to stand up against elites. This power is difficult to control however, so he starts off mostly using it by transferring it to the witches around him. Thus, this series is essentially a story of Haruomi and the group of witches that gather around him working together to defeat the various dragons that threaten humanity.
This concept while not incredibly original is solid enough in and of itself. However, the execution was very lacking and thus series overall leaves a very faint impression. The first issue is that the series overall felt like it was lacking in direction and was just kind of spasming around in a haphazard manner without really going towards any sort of clear goal in terms of plot or characters. The plot is simply the cast dealing with various situations as they arise while trying to become more powerful along the way. It really doesn’t feel like there’s any sort of endgame established. There are a number of interesting concepts brought up, like everything with dragons basically being a game where the dragons are competing to become dragon kings and humans are basically just caught up in the middle of that, or how the preexisting magic organization was overtly conservative and stuck in the past so the protagonist has to rebel against them.
But in the end, it doesn’t really feel like it did anything substantial with them. In the end it’s basically just a bunch of fights. The fights also weren’t that great, in that the flow of battle just isn’t that exciting, though there are certain exceptions like the final battle in the last volume. That heavily comes down to how little structure there is to everything with things feeling really random most of the time, and thus the abilities used by the main cast and enemies alike just not being that interesting and the various power ups that occur just not being all that satisfying. There’s also a lot of world building which felt pretty consistent and interesting at first, but as the series went on it felt like it was getting more and more random, like the author didn’t want to stray constrained by whatever world building he had already done, and thus just forced in whatever he wanted and ignored whatever he no longer wanted to care about. As such, the world ends up having a lot to it, but it’s so messy that it’s hard to really get into it.
The cast too weren’t that interesting. Haruomi is too flat of a protagonist. He’s supposed to be tricky, but that only kind of manifests in battle at times and the rest of the time he’s just dense and lazy. He’s supposed to be a closet pervert, but he’s way too restrained for that to actually make him interesting. He also has zilch in terms of character development, so it’s kind of hard to get all that invested in his story. The heroines are solid enough in terms of their general archetypes, backgrounds, and concepts. However, the plot does so little with them so it’s hard to get invested in them or find them all that likable.
Hazumi get’s some character development, but it felt like it was glossed over. Asya also goes through a major character shift due to special circumstances which felt like it could be used for some solid character and relationship development, but that shift ends up lasting way too long which makes her kind of annoying to read about, and then it just kind of fizzles out at the end leaving me asking what was the point. The other two heroines, Orihime and Luna, don’t really get any character development at all. In terms of relationship development it’s the opposite, in that Asya and Hazumi don’t really get any relationship development at all. But what little Luna gets is completely frontloaded to her introduction arc essentially, and Orihime’s relationship development also doesn’t feel land all that well because of the awkwardness of their being bonds between Haruomi and the rest of the girls that aren’t properly dealt with.
There was some good romantic fluff at rare times, but for the most part it was only okay. The main cast and their group dynamic just all around wasn’t all that fun, so I suppose it stands to reason that the ending wasn’t that satisfying either in this regard. The final circumstances the series ends on I felt were pretty weak for the type of story it is, and what good there was the epilogue didn’t do all that good a job of highlighting. The side characters are also pretty lacking with no one really standing out, wherein I feel like the author was really trying to make a character known as President M seem mysterious and cool but I just found them kind of lame. The antagonists faired much better in that there were multiple really interesting ones, though that alone wasn’t enough to counteract all the other issues with the cast.
The cover art and color illustrations were pretty good but the rest of the illustrations weren’t all that strong, especially the designs for the dragons and leviathans. The fantranslation prose quality was pretty solid, wherein it wasn’t completely natural but wasn’t all that stiff either and the amount of errors was totally bearable, though I can’t comment on how accurate of a translation it was.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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