Dragon Century (1988 OVA): An Analysis
Warrior culture and perennialism
Dragonsphere Report
I had intended to keep this substack separate from any media analysis or occultism not directly related to the project of Dragonsphere restoration, but since in practice that has meant not writing anything at all and that’s a strictly worse outcome than writing insane things all the time, I guess it is time to give up on the thought of literary hygiene.
Dragon Century is an obscure and very short two part anime OVA, or straight to video release, that came to my attention through my boyfriend. It is sparse, simplistic in plot and presentation, and dense with symbolism and consequence (whether intended or unintended). Spoilers follow, so watch the video first if you don’t want it spoiled: It is less than an hour long in total.
The anime is divided into two parts. In the first part, dragons mysteriously appear on earth, are attacked by the militaries of the world including the Japan Self Defense Force, then after being mostly slaughtered turn out to be perennial guardians sent (by who? Dunno, don’t think it’s ever stipulated) to protect humans from demons who periodically reappear and threaten to destroy the world. A young girl named Riko rescues a baby dragon (who she names “Carmine”) from a bloodthirsty soldier, raises it, and saves the world with it.
Somewhat interestingly, the young girl Riko raises Carmine because she hates the world and wants to see it destroyed. She later recants on this and asks Carmine to help her save the world, and even sacrifices herself in the end to destroy the enemy by throwing herself at the boss demon while using a dragon horn as a weapon.
Some notable and/or weird things in the first episode: Carmine breaks off his own horn and gives it to her for her to protect herself with. The soldier saw a comrade killed by a dragon, but later sacrifices himself to allow Carmine and Riko to kill the enemy boss demon. Riko hates the decadence and falseness of the world as she sees it, but dies commenting on the beauty of the natural world. The boss demon takes on the appearance of Riko before she attacks it. Carmine screams for her not to attack it but she does anyway.
Part two: Carmine now lives in a giant weird futuristic tower. A girl named Rulishia climbs the tower to try to harvest one of his horns. She apparently succeeds, and Carmine agrees to be her servant due to this being the way of dragons. They descend down to earth and Carmine and Rulishia immediately begin fighting in gladiatorial dragon combat arenas in which killing is common and heavily rewarded. Rulishia is revealed to be the child of a former highly accomplished gladiator who was killed by a mysterious dragon and dragon gladiator. She wants revenge. These enemies later turn out to be demons, and demons return to earth, and after fighting with and killing the enemies, Carmine (called Vermillion sometimes) flies off with the other surviving dragons to fight the rest of the demons while leaving Rulishia in the protection of a younger dragon.
This summary is about as blunt as the anime itself. However, it still captures a number of very important themes, mostly pertaining to heroism, violence, masculinity, and culture.
I have momentarily lost my ability to be terribly verbose so I will try to be as straightforward as the material itself.
This anime is very timely in what it has to say, given China’s rise, the decline of the USA, the precarity of Japanese security, debates over Article 9 and so forth. It is an attempt to find a spiritual balance between the “feminine” virtues which sustain a civilization internally and the “masculine” virtues which sustain a civilization against its enemies. The days of imperial Japan were characterized by fascist excess. That part of Japan’s history has no corollary in this anime, which is instead readable as being about Japan’s post-war attempts to reclaim a heroic masculine military tradition and square it with Japan’s growth and pacifism.
In episode one, this dichotomy manifests in Carmine and Riko. Riko wishes for the death of her own country because she views it as corrupted, not realizing the nature of this corruption is in its excessive domestication. The demon appears to Riko as Riko because its destructive tendencies are the same as Riko’s; are derived from the same spiritual one-sidedness. In a certain symbolic sense, Japan is weighed down by excess feminine principle. It takes the unity of Riko and Carmine to destroy this corruption, and ultimately only when Riko, who represents the zeitgeist in a sense, is willing to destroy herself both metaphorically and literally.
In episode two, Carmine is in repose, pursuing intellectual matters. Below, however, other dragons have allowed their former glory to become corrupted into gladiatorial prize fighting, even to the death. This is the opposite problem of that presented by the first episode. It is an excess of masculine spirituality, particularly in the absence of an external enemy. The anime asks, how is the new found militancy of Japan to be sustained in peacetime. No real answer is provided. Instead, the ugly realities of what happens empirically are simply presented. Carmine represents the proper, but uncommon, principled approach, but the consequences of dragons existing in the world are not run away from. Of note is that the demons manifest this time initially in the context of the corrupted bloodsport, the corruption of masculine principle.
Fortunately in a sense, demons come back in earnest. The second episode ends on a cliffhanger. I don’t believe this is because the outcome is unknown. Rather, I think it is because it is meant to symbolize the eternal recurrence of war.
I am reminded somewhat of The Culture series novels by Iain Banks, in which the sentient combat ships of The Culture are sometimes described as functional sociopaths, as ostracized by the rest of The Culture to an extent; in which they too mostly wait around in a world where combat is rare. In which they too are prone to some excesses in peacetime, and so forth. War is a civilizational problem and a spiritual problem, and there are a lot of texts that attempt to document or speak on this problem. Dragon Century is one of them.
Thus ends another Dragonsphere Report