Dragon-A Friend for Dragon (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	72:12
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Philip Marcus Thomas Schneider-Trumpp Su-Wee Moon
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Frank Meschkuleit
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Ray Fabi

    Dragon is a Canadian, German and Korean co-production that uses claymation. Based on the children's books by Dav Pilkey, Dragon is bright blue and lives in a house with his pet, Cat. The stories cover the adventures he has alone, and with his friends Beaver, Ostrich, Mail Mouse and Alligator. The quality of the animation is first class and the storytelling is structured simply so as to retain children's interest. Watching this disc with my three-year-old, I appreciated the show's approach to teaching kids simple problem-solving skills. My co-reviewer clearly loved the characters and situations, so she gave it her thumbs-up.

    Six episodes are included on this disc, each running for around twelve minutes.

• A Friend For Dragon - Dragon needs some company but all his friends are too busy, so he finds a pet rock.
• Dragon's Cat - Dragon takes in a stray cat and learns how to take care of it.
• Dragon's Fly - Ejecting a fly from inside his house proves to be a big challenge.
• Dragon's Holiday - Dragon decides he needs an adventure, but finds there is plenty to be discovered at home.
• Dragon's New Hobby - After trying a myriad of troublesome hobbies, Dragon discovers the joys of knitting.
• Dragon's Special Day - Dragon invites all of his friends over for a party to celebrate 'Dragon Day'.

Video

    The transfer is presented in 1.33:1, full frame. This appears to be the intended presentation.

    It is a little difficult to judge the source of this transfer, but the level of detail is good. I suspect it may be film transferred to NTSC video, but all things considered this is a good presentation for a children's series. The image is not overly bright, nor are there any particularly dark scenes to speak of. There was no low level noise evident in the transfer.

    Most colours are quite muted, which led me to suspect an NTSC background. There are no problems with bleeding or oversaturation.

    I didn't notice any compression artefacts, however a little film grain is present.

    There are no subtitle streams provided.

    This disc is DVD5 formatted (single layered).

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    An English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack is all that's provided. There are no major issues to report.

    The English dialogue and narration is always very clear and easy to understand. The accents are Canadian and easily tolerable.

    I didn't notice any examples of panning at all, so this is effectively a mono effort. The mix is very clear and bright, although some of the music comes across rather flat.

    The subwoofer was inactive throughout.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    None.

    The video and audio transfers are good. There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall