Merry Month of Manga: DRAGON GOES HOUSE-HUNTING

 What's the bigger fantasy here: a gentle dragon who only wants a house of his own, or the very idea of being able to afford to buy or build your own home?

DRAGON GOES HOUSE-HUNTING (Dragon, Ie o Kau), written by Kawo Tanuki and art by Choco Aya.  First published in 2016 and first published in North America in 2018.

PLOT:

Letty looks like a fearsome dragon, but he's too gentle and cowardly in nature to act like a proper dragon.  Now that he's been kicked out of his family den, all he wants is a cozy little dragon-sized home he can call his own.  That's not an easy thing to do, though, when seemingly every other species out there wants to harvest him for parts.  His only ally is Dearia, an elven architect and realtor with unconventional taste and possibly an agenda of his own.

STORY:

I didn't expect a manga called Dragon Goes House-Hunting to be very serious, but this turned out to be a lot more comical than I expected.  Furthermore, the humor is more complex than I anticipated.  While there's a lot of jokes made at the expense of Letty with his inability to stand up for himself, his lack of strength, and his general inability to do anything one might expect of a dragon, there's also a sort of dry humor that runs throughout the entire book.  There's also a surprising amount and variety of references to video games, something that's only enhanced by T. Campbell's adaptation.

That being said, I suspect Tanuki knows how limited this premise could become and thus keeps shaking things up every couple of chapters.  Just as "Letty tries to consult with Random Fantasy Race, gets captured" starts to get tedious, Dearia is introduced.  Once "Dearia offers Letty a totally unsuitable place" starts to get old, then he starts building a house for Letty.  It's a smart structure as not only does it keep things novel, it allows the reader to get more insight into both Letty and Dearia through their interactions.  Dearia himself is the MVP of this series, as he's the biggest source of dry wit and we get more than a few hints that he may have an agenda of his own which may or may not be wholly positive.  If Tanuki can keep this sort of energy up into later volumes, then maybe this story will be more substantial than it sounds.

ART:

A big source of comedy for this series is the disconnect between the silly premise and the seriousness of the art.  Aya's art is actually quite elaborate, with highly detailed character designs and backgrounds.  They also don't indulge in any wild takes for the sake of comedy.  While Letty is a bit more expressive than your average dragon, most of it is done through sweatdrops, stress lines, and similar sorts of shorthand versus making his face do distinctly un-lizardlike things.  If anything, the straightforward style and serious faces only enhance this manga's dry sense of humor.  

RATING:

Dragon Goes House-Hunting seems like a limited idea for a manga, but it manages to make the most of itself through a combination of quality art, an awareness of when a joke is getting old, and an understated sense of humor.

This series is published by Seven Seas.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available.  6 volumes have been published and are currently in print.