Ryuu no Haisha

War rages between two neighboring countries, but one side has an ace up their sleeve: an ancient dragon bound by a pact to protect the nation. Despite these overpowering creatures being capable of leveling entire battlefields, they are rendered useless by cavities. And so, a special unit—the dragon dentists—has the important duty of caring for the dragon's teeth.

Nonoko Kishii was the only one of many brave volunteers who survived a recent round of recruitment; in order to join the dragon dentists, one has to witness their future demise and accept it without a fight. Knowing the exact circumstances of their fated ends, the dragon dentists devote themselves to their work. One day, they gain a new member who did not undergo the test: Bernard "Bel" Octavius, a young enemy officer killed by his own men and revived by the dragon's teeth. Despite his appearance being an omen of a great disaster, he is placed under the care of Nonoko as a dentist-in-training. Will Bel come around to the dragon dentists' attitudes toward death and help them face the painful future that is to come?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kishii, Nonoko Main

Shimizu, Fumika Japanese

Octavius, Bernard Main

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Godou, Yotoshio Supporting

Yamadera, Kouichi Japanese

Arisugawa, Kanne Supporting

Nazuka, Kaori Japanese

Natsume, Shibana Supporting

Hayashibara, Megumi Japanese

Satou, Shuuzou Supporting

Tokumoto, Yukitoshi Japanese

Salvador, Blanco Supporting

Matsuo, Suzuki Japanese

Oozawa Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Guilleri Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Iemura, Soutatsu Supporting

Takagi, Wataru Japanese

Tsurumaki, Kazuya Director

Anno, Hideaki Sound Director, Executive Producer

Yoshizaki, Hibiki Episode Director, Storyboard

Kurokawa, Tomoyuki Episode Director

Reviews

Feb 25, 2017

BBBBBBBBBBBBE

Recommended

Not much is to be analyzed.

Watching this was an absolute treat.

So rarely does one come across an anime that diligently sets itself apart in the aspect of plot-portrayal. No matter the unique depiction of characters, their seemingly-unrelatable demeanour at times, or even the realization that you know almost nothing about the world the characters in the story live in (Hence intermediate scores in the Story and Character rating), you can't help but feel bedazzled by a story with such a unique setting.

It's not that Ryuu no Haisha has many twists and turns.
It's not that Ryuu no Haisha has the innate ability to ... change the way you think about the world.
It's not that Ryuu no Haisha has a story that will move you to tears.

No. It's much more simple...
It simply enraptures you.
And I encourage you to watch it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 25, 2017

Zelev

Mixed Feelings

Set in a fantasy-like land, there exists dragons and people who clean the teeth of these great flying-beasts, whom are known as dragon dentists. Dragon dentists cleanse the teeth of "bacteria" and prevent cavities in what looks like a dragon port, station, or village. These bacteria and cavities are harmful because it affects the dragon's power of revival. It is said that humans are reborn after death through the teeth of dragons, but they may not always be reborn as humans. One exception to this rule is the "yomigaeri," or bad omen, which is said to be a sign of future destruction. This may symbolize ... humanity's sins as a whole. Is this fate, or is it mere coincidence? Does fate even exist, or is it something we tell ourselves in order to stop trying? These themes are ever-present throughout the show. In particular, our dragon dentists are very aware of this concept. They have a sense of understanding on what it means to live and what it means to die.

It should be noted that in Buddhism, there is no belief in "God" or "fate." This contrasts against the dragons that live and enable their power of reincarnation. There is a mixture of beliefs or a constant clash in ideology carefully embedded into this show. It makes you think. It makes you wonder. You can be alive, but are you really living? It is said that dragons "cry with their teeth," yet their teeth is their source of power; they live, and they live genuinely.

If you were put into this story, would you fight your fate or would you accept it? There would be a sense of irony if you resisted your fate only to find out that it was your destiny to fight fate; you would be playing into the plan right from the start. Our fellow characters are forced to find out if we truly are the authors of our own tale. Ryuu no Haisha, or The Dragon Dentist, is an unconventional surprise that contains Buddhist undertones and challenges what we may believe in ourselves.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 10, 2025

Gsarthotegga

Not Recommended

Spoiler

Dragon Dentist looks promising at first, with a unique fantasy setup of cleaning mushi cavities and plaque buildup amongst the huge rows of dragon teeth, for dragons are nearly unstoppable weapons, but their one weakness is that they have a bit of a sweet tooth. What I thought might be on the fantastical SoLish side turns out to be a "serious" story of war between two ill-defined sides. The worldbuilding is vague and limited to the mystical and metaphysical possibilities of the dragon's teeth alone. The characters are dull and the script is heavy handed, leaving us without much other than an often appealing aesthetic ... (when the CGI isn't too obtrusive, like in the finale), half-baked themes, and a dragon as a unique micro-world within a world, and one of those grand spiritual-laden conclusions so common to anime. While I try to avoid heavily summarizing a title, it's impossible to talk about what I want to discuss without a large amount of context and plot summary.

We start with an explosive action sequence between a fleet of dragons obscured ominously by clouds and rapidly decimated battleships. Aspects of the scene look old, so you could point to WWII-era technology, especially given the appearance of the dragon dentist base attached to the dragon that will be revealed once we have been introduced to the dragon dentists in the next scene. There's a feel of early 20th century Japan, before they were defeated, especially with the four-eyes commander looking like an imperial army caricature and being mildly antagonistic with the dragon dentists. All of the dentists and soldiers on this side have Japanese names and are of the same ethnicity. We can see here that the creator presents the dragon dentists as noble, while the soldiers are hardly portrayed other than to be criticized as oppressive.

While the backstory is never explained, one might imagine an alternative scenario where Japan was on the verge of defeat in WWII and acquired dragons. For the enemy side, most of them appear to be European, South/Central American, black, and mixed ethnic or racial groups. The enemies shown never appear to be a single ethnicity, like the Japanese dragon dentists, and there's a feeling of a nationalist versus globalist power, the latter being in the most literal sense, with Japan being the last bastion for the former. This gives me the impression that nearly the entire world is the enemy of Japan, with them having the advantage because of their command over dragons, though they presumably hold far less territory and manpower. The premise is similar to Attack on Titan in a lot of ways. For the sake of convenience and the lack of worldbuilding, I will call Nonoko's country Japan and the enemy country Not-Japan (whether "the enemy" comes from one country, multiple countries, or one global empire or some such is never made clear, presumably for the sake of universalizing the events). It follows the commonly seen anime notion of a liberal post-war Japan either turning back the clock to prevent a defeat or regaining respect and dominance and looking to broker peace with the world, while grappling with its own war-like, imperialist, or colonialist ambitions, which is pretty common in the work of authors like Ryousuke Takahashi or Kaiji Kawaguchi.

Though we never actually see dragons eat, they accumulate all kinds of nasty creepy crawlies upon their teeth. The three rows of teeth on top and bottom are, of course, giant compared to our heroes, so they use ropes to climb their way to the top, and they plod along the gums of different dental alleyways, shoveling crud into bags, and exploding black cavity-like mushi mobs with their assortment of crimson melee weapons. Every so often, teeth will degrade and crack, and stronger mushi will emerge for them to fight. The process of becoming a dragon dentist involves being absorbed into the tooth, being shown one's death, and not struggling against one's fate. To struggle is to be fully absorbed. To accept it is to be "spat out" and stationed with cleaning the teeth. Oddly, the teeth act as a kind of metaphorical prop, with the cavities and toxic mushi obviously emerging from the dragon's teeth because of the war itself. Soldiers, friends and foes alike, are seemingly absorbed into the teeth upon their death, and those who are available to listen can hear the voices of the dead emanating from them, with the inner chambers of the vast pearly whites acting as something like a purgatory or afterlife or a repository for memories and consciousness. Discarded military equipment pours out of the teeth on a daily basis, acting as more detritus for the dragon dentists to clear and providing a touch of mystery and dread in the same way one might find an abandoned ship upon a mist-laden sea, filled with items of unknown belonging. These strange interactions with the teeth represent the cycle of warfare between the two sides, but without the war, it would still be a place of the dead.

The primary reason the dragons need a dentist is because of the "foolish" actions of man, for they debase nature with their ways. The ideal would be for man to be at peace and the dragon to continue its natural role rather than the destructive parasitism of humanity using it as a weapon. Dragon dentists are not even needed for dragons to maintain good oral health (remember that many "uncivilized" tribes have strong, healthy, straight, white teeth without having ever been to a dentist, and it's actually some of our developed habits that make us so dependent on them), and what they do is only necessary because of the horrors the two sides are committing against each other. If the dragon dentists were to abandon their posts and there were a shortage of them, then the Japanese couldn't continue to use the dragons as weapons. This would presumably balance the war between the two sides, which might eventually lead to reconciliation and an improvement in health of the dragons and humanity. This, of course, casts aside whether or not peace is a good choice for the people controlling the dragon. Not-Japan might even double down on eradicating Japan if they were to lose their best weapon, sunk cost fallacy or otherwise. Struggle and war are also a part of nature, and humans being able to better harness resources to inflict more damage hardly changes this. In this sense, Dragon Dentist is another preachy anti-war and environmental film, just like Ghibli, Origin: Spirits of the Past, or Arjuna.

It warrants attention that Nonoko's fate is to be killed on the battlefield by a young European soldier with blue eyes and blonde hair, who she says is beautiful. Bernard Octavius (Bell), is a yomigaeri drawn out of the dragon's tooth. The dentists are hesitant to touch Bell and want to allow him to be absorbed into the tooth because of the potential hassle of dealing with yomigaeri, who are something like bad omens, but Nonoko saves him. She also remarks that he is beautiful, much like the boy in her vision, and they look relatively similar. She is predictably assigned to be his trainer and they develop a bond that verges toward romance. This is clearly a nod toward reconciliation between the two sides, for Bell was murdered by his own unit and is estranged from either side, so he could reasonably act as a bridge between the two toward achieving peace. While Nonoko and most of the dentists are dutiful and accept their fate that is tied to the dragon and conflict, Bell thinks they should fight against their fate and he is only ever an ambivalent and clumsy dragon dentist, eventually rejecting the role altogether in the second half, albeit rather abruptly and without much buildup.

The central conflict for Bell begins before he meets the dragon dentists and is reborn as a yomigaeri, with him being a ranked officer due to privilege, for his parents were military doctors (it's thematically relevant that they are doctors). The men around him are bigger and stronger. He fits the stereotype of the studious school kid, and they look like chiseled, battle-hardened soldiers. This has historically been a fairly common scenario, where you have officers who are given such a position without earning the respect of their unit (either because of education or family) and would have likely never been promoted to such a role by normal means. Whoever assigned Bell to be the commander of this unit is a moron. One of the soldiers under Bell's command is Blanco, who acts as one of the main antagonists. The name is Spanish, but his origins are unclear, with him being of mixed descent from a likely former Spanish colony or the equivalent for this world. He's one of those mysterious figures who stands in the middle of the battlefield without fear, for all gunfire appears to be deflected, as if some unknown force were shielding him. This is a common trope in nonsensical grimdark war films to comment on fate or something something, though it clearly doesn't apply to Blanco's teeth, for most of them have been knocked out, rendering him as an ugly toothless old bastard any time he opens his mouth. Just as with older caricatures in fiction, Bell is beautiful, and his nemesis is ugly, though the other traitorous villain is granted mercy in appearance and perceived in a more sympathetic light.

Hoping to save themselves from the wrath of the dragon, the unit abandons a wounded and unconscious soldier. Bell wants them to save the soldier, but they mutiny. Bell orders them at gunpoint, shaking in his boots in fear. Blanco disarms him, and the unit stabs Bell. Bell would be justified to shoot Blanco for insubordination, not just in self-defense but to establish his authority, for Blanco was coming to disarm him and would not follow orders. What would happen next is uncertain. Would the others kill Bell or fall in line? But it's better than being gutted like a fish. The convenience of the dragon and the gunshot being loud, of course, stacks things against Bell completely because he would blow their cover by firing, maybe resulting in them all dying either way, which is also why they knife him. But Bell's hesitation to shoot Blanco is not because of this practical concern. Bell is stupid or too kind for his own good. Given the situation, it was not a good time to assert authority and not be able to deliver, though his reason for doing so is understandable. Bell is a coward, but that's also not the reason he does not shoot Blanco, per the script. The primary reason is because Bell is a good boy without "killing intent." In the final confrontation between Blanco and Bell, this same situation is repeated, and the thematic coup de grâce is delivered. Blanco and Bell have their standoff, each pointing a gun at each other. Bell could have tried shooting out Blanco's few remaining teeth with his pistol, like that one arcade game where you spray wacky slabs of cartoonish chompers, knocking them down one by one. Instead, Bell now faces Blanco without fear, has no intention to fire, and is shot, but the cavity tentacles kill Blanco because of his "killing intent." The whole production resembles a dream where the scenario was rewritten for Bell to die in a more dignified manner, to have been right to not fire the gun in the past or present, and for justice to have been served, like some cheesy ghost story.

There is a large battle at the end with anyone who has "killing intent" being slaughtered by the cavity tentacles. For all we know, those killed might be the bulk of the army for both sides, meaning there would need to be a hiatus to the war, but I sincerely doubt this, and we're given no context to make such a determination. Japan still has dragons, so they are the dominant power. The idea that the cavity feeds off the "killing intent" of man like this is ridiculous and hypocritical. Somehow, the boy who was meant to kill Nonoko is shown to survive, but if he had "killing intent" toward her in the vision (and the visions are shown to be accurate based on the death of Shuuzou, short of some intervention by some unforeseen event, like a yomigaeri being born), shouldn't he have had "killing intent" toward the other soldiers and would also be killed? That's a plot hole, unless we are to believe something contrived, like the pile of corpses formed a shield for him, or he gets off on killing women only. The medics were not being killed because they were simply treating the wounded, so they couldn't have had "killing intent." The same goes for the dragon dentists. The message on war seems kind of nonsensical considering Japan keeps using the dragons for war. Even if you can say the dentists don't have "killing intent," they are undoubtedly responsible for more deaths of the other side than any single soldier with "killing intent." The irony here is how we judge soldiers who are possibly conscripted and forced to kill because of the threat of violence from the state, yet the medics and dragon dentists are presented as a cut above, despite the former keeping these "killers" going, and the latter maintaining weapons of mass destruction.

If not for Bell, presumably most of the events of the series would have happened, with Hibana betraying her country, causing the cavity overload, and for Blanco to escape with or destroy the wisdom tooth. The result would have been for the dragon we follow in this story to be taken down by the foreigners and for Nonoko to be killed by the blonde soldier on the battlefield, who is shown alive, rising out of a pile of bodies to smile at the sunset. Bell changed fate and instead of this story ultimately leading to the kind of "come together" reconciliation that I expected or any talk of peace, Japan still has another one of its dragons to continue the war effort against Not-Japan. Bell wasn't even betrayed by his own country. He was betrayed by his own unit. Helping Japan instead of Not-Japan seems questionable because we don't have any comparison of the two sides. Since Bell was from the other side, you can see why I would think this is about bringing about peace between the two, but the other side is primarily an enemy and we don't know why either side is fighting.

The production has the appearance of Bell becoming a traitor and sacrificing himself for a waifu, even though that's not the case. Bell never gives a coherent argument for why he does what he does or compares the two sides. It seems like he is choosing neither side by saying that he's not a dragon dentist and declaring war is bad, but what he does ultimately helps the dragon dentists (and, by extension, Japan as a whole). Here is a summary of Bell's various shifts in perspective: "WAAAAH, my unit mutinied and killed me. Oh, this waifu might have sex with me if I stay by her side. I don't want the responsibility of being a dragon dentist and want to forage berries in the woods instead. Oh, no, my sweet waifu needs me. Let me give my life to save Japan and its wonderful waifus, so they can continue to fight against my country with full force." It can be argued that what he did was not for Japan but for the Japanese dragon dentists who have bought into a deterministic agreement to the dragon on behalf of Japan. The conflict between the Japanese military and the dragon dentists is established early on, and the dentists protect Bell from them. Nonoko probably was not keen on being a dragon dentist, except she appeared to be a war orphan living a meager existence, so she went for it. We can imagine a lot of her compatriots are similar. Bell, when he was taking orders from Not-Japan, also seemed to prefer not to be part of the war and both of his parents similarly died as a result of it, then he died at the hands of mutineers for adhering to his ideals. With Bell's first death, he transcends the conflict itself. He is the savior come back from the dead, attempting to enlighten the humble dragon dentists who act according to orders from Japan but actually hold all the power and could resist, if only they could realize their own worth and leverage, just as anyone who goes against fate is called "brave" by Godou, the head dragon dentist. Bell urging the dragon dentists to challenge their fate means to abandon their role as dragon dentists. Similar to how I have mixed feelings about the way they present Bell as turning away from his own side, I can't help but think Bell is a meek Christ figure who comes in like a trojan horse and inspires Japan to give up their one all-mighty weapon and be subsumed by the hordes of Not-Japan. If we're presented with an element of reform to Japan but not to Not-Japan, the whole thing appears unbalanced and unconvincing in its sentiment, as if striving for being stamped under a boot.

The ending also is unsatisfying, with Bell comparing a childhood event where his horse threw him into a marsh and left him to drown to Nonoko proudly casting him aside as he dies. The one solace for him is that the horse galloped out of the water and moved on without any concern for his former master, while his waifu obliviously looks around for him now that he is dead, so at least he's getting a few scraps of concern. Hope it was worth it, cherry boy. The final frame is Nonoko descending the stairway of the shrine that houses the wisdom tooth of the dragon, which is a symbol of Japan's pact with the dragon, and she's calling out to Bell to return to the status quo of scrubbing dragon teeth. His importance to her and moving away from the shrine in the final frame could suggest that she will come to reappraise her views much in the same way Bell did, but we're not given anything more explicit than that. An ending where Nonoko acknowledges that Bell could not be found and must have once again died and became reabsorbed by the tooth, using voiceover much in the same way that they had with Bell, would have been more meaningful and probably could have suggested a bitterness that might lead to reform. Bell is the only character with much depth or development, but Nonoko is never given the chance, remaining no more than the waifu who could have been. She didn't necessarily need to be developed as much as Bell, but we should at least see the seed of development planted in lieu of Bell seeding her. There is not enough information given to Nonoko for her to understand that Bell's existence and actions changed her fate and likely that of the remaining dentists; while we are shown the battlefield in her vision, she never acknowledges the battlefield to be the same one, so she most likely is unaware. As the viewers, we know the fate of the dragon dentists is not set in stone, but they do not. It's fixed if they choose to be dragon dentists, but it's not if they abandon the role, which is arbitrary. Why should it be set in stone for going to war versus not going to war? Because the script said so.

Dragon Dentist's take on violence, cyclical or otherwise, is naive. The idea seems to be that our characters should embrace their meekness. If we all did, there would be no violence. But there are always the meek and strong, those who engage in violence and those who won't. But if you want a hypothetical non-violent world, then you, other people, or multiple generations will have to do something that this script would deem "bad" to actually achieve that outcome. Otherwise said in a cynical but true fashion, you can't make an omelet without scrambling a few eggs. Something as revolutionary as "Violence is mean, so no violence is allowed" requires "killing intent" and a lot of bloodshed to achieve such an outcome. The setting is intriguing, but the themes percolating around the war story are somewhat muddled and not well conveyed, and the short length was not quite enough to fully flesh out the story, attenuating a lot of the vitality the production might have otherwise had.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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