Creator: Natsumi Matsumoto
Translation: Andria Cheng
Adaptation: Heidi Vivolo
Publisher: Viz
Age Rating: Teen
Genres: Romance, Comedy, Supernatural
RRP: $8.99
St. Dragon Girl v1
Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane

Momoka Sendou (nicknamed "Dragon Girl") and Ryuga Kou are childhood friends. Momoka is a martial artist, and Ryuga is a Chinese magic master who banishes demons. In order to increase his power, Ryuga calls on the spirit of a dragon to possess him, but the spirit enters Momoka instead. Now the two must unite forces and fight demons together!

A demon serpent king who appears once every hundred years to select a bride has abducted Momoka's friend Shunran. Will Momoka and Ryuga be able to defeat the demon before Shunran is lost forever?


Volume 1 of St. Dragon Girl is evidently the beginning of a substantial body of work, with eight volumes and a spin-off series, St. Dragon Girl Miracle. This is my first exposure to Natsumi Matsumoto's work, and my initial impression is that this is a fairly even mix of predictable and fun.

Momoka and Ryuga are, as the cover copy says, childhood friends who each have their own unusual talents. Early on in the book Ryuga performs a ritual to summon a dragon spirit to possess him, in order to be strong enough to save Shunran, who's his cousin as well as Momoka's friend. It goes wrong; Momoka gets the power; they team up to face first the serpent king and then other assorted antagonists. All of the individual stories are fairly tidily wrapped up.

There are a couple of things which don't really get addressed, though; for example, I'd like to know what happens to the serpent king's previous brides. And more significantly, I'd like to know whether Ryuga would have had full control over the dragon spirit if it had possessed him, or if he would have had to keep it sealed the way he keeps it sealed in Momoka. The presentation of that bothers me a little. Momoka comes across as very self-sufficient and strong in her own right, so having him be in control of when she can access the dragon's power is off-putting. I imagine it's meant to be a result of him being a trained magic user, unlike her, but it results in some contrived situations.

The two of them (particularly Momoka) also spend a fair bit of time dancing around their feelings for each other, which are blindingly obvious to the readers and to other characters. The story does make a couple of nods in the direction of them getting the back-and-forthing out of the way, but then backpedals. I'm not sure whether to take that as a sign that it's more or less likely to get dragged out for multiple volumes; it's more actively frustrating than the also-clichéd stories in which the protagonists are as dense about their own feelings as the other person's.

The artwork is also a bit of a mixed bag: the characters themselves look pretty generic, but Matsumoto is obviously a real fan of the Chinese aesthetic, and she tries hard to incorporate the look in the costuming. (There's some very enthusiastic discussion of her research, which is fun to read.)
So far St. Dragon Girl is on the predictable and episodic side, but the characters are likable and the story is very readable. It's not uncommon for first volumes to be more episodic than subsequent ones, and if Momoka and Ryuga actually sit down and discuss their feelings and are given plots that last longer than a chapter, this could be a very fun series.
This volume includes a page of cultural/translation notes and a bonus feature about the author's trip to Hong Kong.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media.

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6 October 2009
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