Dragon Pilot
Weird yet oddly wholesome
Dragon Pilot is an anime about dragons that can disguise themselves as airplanes that people can pilot. No, I am not making this up. To give a more in depth premise, this show follows Hisone, a rookie pilot for Japan’s Air Force who has been unknowingly selected as a candidate to pilot the base's top secret dragon that Hisone later names Masotan. Turns out that, dragons are real, but have been kept a secret from the public by simply disguising them as fighter jets and, in addition to this already wacky premise, the only people that can pilot these dragons are people chosen by the dragons themselves by… eating them. I kind of wish I was making this up but that is entirely truthful to the premise of the show.
Now, normally, getting eaten is a terrifying and deadly experience, yet in Dragon Pilot it' actually isn’t a problem at all if you have the right equipment to protect you from the surprisingly sparse stomach acid and a VR headset that somehow lets you see outside the dragon as well as push the dragons internal organs as though they were buttons in order to control them. Needless to say, this show asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief from its audience.
But, if you can roll with this insane premise there is a pretty wholesome show to be found here, with a surprising amount of both plot and character development. Without getting into too many spoilers, we learn about three other dragons and their pilots, as well as the dynamics they share including the pilot Hoshino and her dragon Norma who have a clearly dysfunctional relationship. Essentially, Hoshino always wanted to pilot an actual fighter jet but after being selected to pilot Norma instead, she felt a sense of betrayal and disgust towards Norma, and yet Norma knew that what Hoshino really wanted was to be a pilot. To that end Norma stays in their fighter jet form indefinitely, causing them to overheat and cramp their muscles. The midpoint of the show focuses a lot on this particular relationship, with the other characters helping Hoshino grow to become a better person who doesn’t force Norma to hurt themselves for Hoshino’s own dreams. However at the center of the show throughout is the relationship of the titular Hisone and Masotan. Over the course of the show we see them have a relationship that’s oddly very akin to a real life friendship, with all of the hijinks, misunderstandings, and bonding that can happen.
However this is the point where I need to give a SPOILER Warning for the last half of the show, so if you’ve already seen it or don’t really care then go ahead and keep reading, but if you’re interested then go ahead and watch it as the second half really is best experienced blind.
So… when I said that Hisone and Masotan’s relationship reflects that of a real life friendship, it also covers what it’s like not only to almost lose a friend, but to have a friend you would be willing to die for. To both remind and catch you up to speed: In the second half of the anime it’s revealed that there is actually a fifth mega-dragon named Mitatsu that’s asleep, wakes up every 74 years and must be guided by the other four dragons to a new resting place where he can rest for another 74 years. And when I say mega-dragon, I mean to say that this dragon is the size of the city of New York city, and is basically a walking calamity that destroys just about everything in its path.
We also learn that in order to put him to sleep, a ritual must be performed inside his stomach. Over the course of learning about this, Hisone begins developing feelings for a mechanic at the base named Haruto but, as it turns out, the pilots of these dragons aren’t allowed to have romantic feelings towards anyone because it will throw off their synchronization with their dragons that allows them to be piloted, causing the dragons digestive instincts to take over, putting the pilot in potentially lethal danger. Now this isn’t the first time this has happened with one of the pilots, as we also see a couple of other pilots grapple with this same conflict, but we also meet Masotan’s previous pilot, Moriyama. Moriyama is introduced fairly early on as someone who chose to leave being Masotan’s pilot in order to marry someone she loved (Moriyama’s husband isn’t named as far as I can remember/find online). But when we see her it’s clear that she and Masotan are actually still very good friends. However when we see Hisone encounter that same conflict, Masotan ends up retreating from her, and it isn’t ever stated why. It could be seen that Masotan felt betrayed by Hisone because even though she initially denied having feelings for Haruto, when she tried to fly Masotan it was clear that they weren’t synchronized anymore.
Comparing this back to real life friendships, it can be a similar experience to when a member of your friend group finds a romantic partner but over the course of pursuing a relationship with that partner they end up changing and one day, you realize that they aren’t the same person they were and that they’ve slowly been getting more and more out of touch with the friend group in order to pursue a romantic relationship with someone outside the group. But when we look back at Moriyama it’s clear that Masotan is still friends with her, much like how you can still be friends with people who end up pursuing a romantic partner outside your friendship. It can mean spending less time with them, but it almost never means that you have to end up ending the friendship altogether. So then it could be that Masotan simply doesn’t want to hurt Hisone. They both know that as long as Hisone has that desire to be with Haruto, they won’t be synchronized enough to fly together, and if they try, Masotan could end up unintentionally hurting Hisone, or worse.
And so Hisone is given an ultimatum by the air force, they need someone who can pilot Masotan ASAP in order to put Mitatsu back to sleep when it does wake up and they don’t have a lot of time left. And in episode 10, as Hisone asks herself what decision she should make, charges into the base, out of breath, and tells everyone present “I quit” reasoning that she can’t bring herself to stop caring about Haruto, nor does she want to hurt Masotan by trying to force herself to pilot him. But Remi Kakiyasu, Hisone’s superior officer, is understandably both upset and even enraged by this, seeing it as a betrayal of everything that everyone’s worked so hard for, but even then, she later admits that it might have been her fault for pushing Hisone into this position, that she had never actually asked if Hisone wanted to be a Dragon Pilot in the first place.
But, right at the proverbial eleventh hour, Hisone comes back, asks Kakiyasu to forgive her, and admits that she was really just scared and indecisive, and that you can’t protect what she can’t protect what she cares about by running away. In the end she is able to pilot Masotan and save the day, helping guide Mitatsu away from the city and towards an isolated spot in the ocean where they can perform the ritual to put it to sleep for another 74 years.
But… it isn’t really that simple. As it turns out, the ritual in question entails a sacrifice. Natsume Misumi is the person selected to lead the ritual, and the person to be sacrificed. Natsume is a character with relatively little screen time, but to quickly summarize: She is a childhood friend of Haruto’s and has romantic feelings for him but is willing to play out her part in the ritual because keeping this monster of a dragon asleep is more important than her own desires. Within Mitatsu’s stomach, the ritual performers (which includes Haruto), the sacrifice, and the pilots are all gathered to ensure that Mitatsu goes to sleep. But there is also an elderly pilot present who has seen this ritual play out once before, and she reveals to the others the tragedy of what’s about to happen. Deep within Mitatsu’s bowels they find a large chamber with so many objects floating around inside. And among them the characters spot a single set of torn clothes, the exact same that Natsume is wearing while the ritual is being performed.
It’s an eerie sight to say the least and now poses another dilemma to Hisone. Can she really just sit back and let Natsume die here? Is there some way to put Mitatsu to sleep without anyone dying? Hisone eventually devises a way to let Mitatsu live so that she and Haruto can be together, but it ultimately means that she will be the one trapped inside Mitatsu instead. But Masotan also chooses to stay with her. Despite Hisone’s protests, Masotan stays with her inside Mitatsu, choosing to be there with her until the end.
But, despite such a seemingly tragic end, it does get better. It isn’t explicitly stated how it happens (although you could extrapolate that Mitatsu can’t digest other dragons and with her protective gear, Hisone could safely stay inside Masotan’s stomach before finding a way out), but when Haruto decides to go searching for Hisone and Masotan near where Mitatsu went to sleep, he uses a bag of phones to try and lure Masotan (dragons eat phones by the way) and turns out, they both lived and found a way to get out of Mitatsu. Happy endings all around.
END OF SPOILERS
So what is the takeaway here? Is there a message about responsibilities vs personal desires? Perhaps something about needing to consider the impact our choices have? Maybe the understanding that relationships are a two way street and you need to consider how the other person feels and not just yourself? It’s really a handbag of all these things tied up into a much simpler message tied to the overall show. Things won’t always work out the way you want them to. Life can and will throw sudden curveballs that don’t always make logical sense. But if you stick together with your friends, your loved ones, all the people you care about, then in your darkest hour you can survive just about anything. For a show with such a weird premise and such a tragic turn near the end, it’s honestly a really sweet story with a lot of charm, some very humorous moments, and really well developed characters. If you can suspend your disbelief enough to roll with the premise, and can handle the initial disgust of seeing the inside of a creature's stomach then I would recommend giving Dragon Pilot a try. It isn’t for everyone, but there’s a lot of joy to be found here.