Dragon Half

Dragon Half

ドラゴンハーフ
1993 Production I.G OVA 2 episodes Completed
Comedy Fantasy Parody Adventure
Details & Synopsis
Mink is half human, half dragon, ridiculously strong, equipped with horns, a tail and wings, and desperately in love with the famous dragon-slaying singer Dick Saucer. This is inconvenient for several reasons, beginning with the fact that Dick makes a living killing the half of Mink's family tree she inherited most visibly.

Dragon Half takes the usual fantasy-adventure ingredients and immediately throws dignity out the window. Mink wants a magical potion that could make her completely human and, hopefully, worthy of Dick. Instead she gets dragged through monsters, rival princesses, incompetent villains, absurd tournaments and escalating slapstick where being the heroine mostly means surviving everybody else's terrible decisions.

Released as two OVA episodes in 1993, Dragon Half is one of those compact early-90s anime objects that feels almost engineered for tape trading and convention-room recommendations. The animation snaps between ordinary fantasy designs and deliberately deformed comedy at a moment's notice, while Kotono Mitsuishi plays Mink with exactly the amount of energy the material requires: too much.

It is short. It is loud. It never became the four-episode adaptation originally envisioned, so the story simply stops while the manga keeps going. Somehow that makes the anime feel even more like an artifact of the OVA era.

And yes, the ending theme is called "My Omelette" and is sung over Beethoven. Some things belong in an archive because history would sound made up without the evidence.
Alt Title ドラゴンハーフ
Studio Production I.G
Network OVA
Aired 1993
Episodes 2
Genre Comedy, Fantasy, Parody, Adventure
Status Completed
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Dragon Half Comedy Mechanics

The Art Style Is Part of the Joke

Super-Deformed Is Not a Separate Mode From the Story

Dragon Half constantly snaps between ordinary fantasy proportions and exaggerated super-deformed comedy. The switch is not reserved for harmless side gags. Characters can move into ridiculous visual shorthand in the middle of danger, romance or a fight and then return to normal without the story treating the change as unusual.

That visual instability is part of how the OVA tells you what kind of fantasy this is. The setting may contain kings, dragons, demon warriors and tournaments, but no amount of fantasy seriousness is protected from becoming a joke.
How you can tell
When a scene starts resembling a conventional sword-and-sorcery anime, Dragon Half often changes the drawing before it changes the plot.
Mink Rufa Pia Damaramu

Debut: Ep 001 - Mink's Voyage

Failure Is a Recurring Character Trait

The Mighty Damaramu Survives Because His Brain Is Too Small

SPOILER!
Damaramu's first encounter with Mink ends with his own energy blade driven through his head. In most fantasy OVAs that would be the end of the henchman.

Dragon Half brings him back as a cyborg in episode two and explains the survival with the most Damaramu answer possible: his brain was so compact that the blade barely damaged it. He then wastes so much energy demonstrating his upgrades that Mink vs. Mecha-Damaramu becomes another opportunity to remove him from the tournament.
Why it matters
Damaramu is not funny because he is weak. He is funny because every upgrade gives his incompetence a larger machine to operate.
Damaramu Mink King Siva

Debut: Ep 001 - Mink's Voyage

Everybody Has the Wrong Priorities

Princess Vina Is Also a Half-Human Problem

SPOILER!
Mink is embarrassed by the part of herself she cannot easily hide, while Vina has a concealed mixed-species problem of her own. She is half slime and maintains the appearance of an ordinary human princess through magic.

That makes the rivalry wonderfully dishonest. Vina uses Mink's dragon heritage as ammunition in their competition over Dick Saucer while hiding a heritage that is no more conventionally human than Mink's.
Why it matters
The joke underneath the rivalry is that both girls are measuring themselves against an imaginary standard of normality for the benefit of a man who has done very little to earn this level of effort.
Princess Vina Mink Dick Saucer King Siva

Debut: Ep 001 - Mink's Voyage