Dragons: The Nine Realms review: How to Train Your Dragon jumps 1300 years

It is the desire to meet a dragon and become best friends with that dragon at the heart of How to Train Your Dragon. This fantasy is unfortunately a distant dream for dragon-loving children, who are locked up in the Viking Era.

Except that the How to Train Your Dragon movies are actually quite good. Do The story will take place in the present world and not in a Viking Era fantasy land, something that previous films have flirted with. New animated TV series follows a group modern teens and jumps forward 1,300 years in time. It is now more real than ever to imagine flying with dragons, and creating a bond with them throughout your life.

John Tellegen is a writer who has worked on the previous How to Train Your Dragon episodes. Dragons in The Nine Realms Modernizes the mythology of dragons. While the premiere season is more of an introduction to the series, it has great potential. Let’s not forget the finale. Dragons and the Nine RealmsThis is what it promises to deliver: purehearted, childlike fun.

[Ed. note: This review contains some spoilers for Dragons: The Nine Realms]

DreamWorks Image

After the How to Train Your Dragon films ended, the dragons entered the Hidden World. This is a deep underground chasm where humans and dragons cannot peacefully co-exist. From there, the show kicks off with Tom (Jeremy Shada), our plucky and restless protagonist, who journeys to a crack in the earth’s crust with his scientist mother. At the research center dedicated to the fissure, Tom meets some of the other kids: dreamy Jun (Ashley Liao), who believes in magic and the occult; animal-lover D’Angelo (Marcus Scribner), an Army brat who just wants to find friends and a home; and shy Alex (Aimee Garcia), a tech wiz who hacks into the station’s computers for fun.

Tom accidentally stumbles into the fissure, where he meets a curious black-and-white dragon — clearly the distant offspring of Toothless and the Lightfury from the last movie — and discovers the world of dragons, tucked away from human eyes for the past thousand years or so. The station’s children eventually discover about dragons. Each child finds their own dragon and bonds with it.

A key distinction between Nine RealmsThe main trilogy and even other spinoffs feel more like an ensemble. Although the cast of the main trilogy was large, it was primarily focused on Hiccup’s relationship with Toothless. Fishlegs, Astrid and other vikings helped to support that story. Not so inNine RealmsEach child gets to have a turn with his dragons. D’Angelo gets to break out his burgeoning veterinary skills, while Tom brings over the contents of his refrigerator to try and figure out what sort of food Thunder wants to eat (turns out, dragons like frozen fish sticks).

DreamWorks Image

The variety of characters can be impressive but the design isn’t quite as good. The animation is on-par with other CG DreamWorks television properties — which is to say, not nearly as polished as the theatrically-released movies. Television shows are not as expensive as movies and will look less refined. But the stark difference is jarring to more discerning viewers, especially when DreamWorks’ traditionally animated TV projects, like Kipo, WonderbeastsAnd She-Ra, the Princesses Of Power, don’t suffer from the same plummet in quality. While the kids are more-or-less inoffensive in design (albeit a bit generic), some of the adults — particularly Jun’s mom and D’Angelo’s dad — have strange cartoonish proportions coupled with an oddly realistic textured rendering that just looks particularly discordant.

The characters, despite all this, are delightful. The first six episodes spend most of their time setting up the scene, explaining each dragon to the kids and developing the story. With the introduction of Thunder, Tom meets Thunder. Each subsequent episode brings a different kid into the mix. Jun and Tom are friends from childhood. Jun then learns all about dragons. It’s formulaic, but the meet-cutes are enjoyable — each dragon reflects each kid in a way, and each kid has to look a bit inward before really connecting with their dragons. The cast gains a lot of depth from just a handful of episodes. The sight of fearsome dragons curled up in the arms and legs of cats and dogs is hauntingly adorable.Nine RealmsThat meet-cute keeps on giving, every time it feels just as cozy and warm.

Other than the dragons, there’s not much to connect. Nine RealmsYou can still watch older movies or the originals. There are some elements sprinkled here and there, as well as other plot points — like the clash between Tom and his mom’s passion for discovery for discovery’s sake versus the research organization’s desire to make a profit — that feel like building blocks to something bigger. Although the final episode attempts to raise the stakes, the show fails to reach that level. Nine Realms’ pacing always feels off, given that there are only six episodes to establish everything. The last episode, instead of exploring the discoveries and explorations, formalizes the threat. It could have used more building up. Six half-hour episodes isn’t a lot to consider what the show could be, but given those limitations, Nine Realms He manages to create a compelling introduction to greater things.

The Nine Realms DragonsStreaming is available PeacockAnd Hulu now.