Luca the Dragon Vet - Vol 1

Yuna Hirasawa brings dragons to life in a new real-fantasy war story.

It's worth starting with the hook here because Luca the Dragon Vet is not the story you might think it is. This is a book that tackles the heavy subject of war and loss. Luca herself may seem like an everyday "magical academy manga" protagonist, but the book's opening twist — that Luca is the daughter of an accused war defector — grounds her as a much more driven and focused character than her contemporary genre peers.

To get to the heart of the review I want to touch on two key ideas in the text: Veterinary work first, and then the war.

The former is highly important to the text and I think that it is what ultimately holds the book together. The dragons are big, beautiful, and well-designed. I wasn't loving Hirasawa's paneling work until the dragons — dominating the page with their huge illustrations — broke up on the monotony and gave the human character designs something to contrast to. Getting a very real look at each dragon's insides also lends to the story's realism and sense of worldbuilding. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they all have very different medical needs. It's exciting not just to see each dragon, but to see what makes them anatomically unique.

The war, on the other hand, is far more nebulous. It is the central driving force of the story and it gets almost no introduction. Instead, it is treated as a background event, populated by more big and nebulous terms: "The army. The island. The continent." In this first volume it's not clear why the war happened or even who the opposing forces are. While the dragons keep the story realistic and grounded, the characters on the island hang precariously in the air. The war is always something that "has happened" and rarely reaches into something that is, like the characters themselves are keeping the reader at arm's length.

It's an interesting choice because it weakens the premise but makes the story itself more engaging. The dragons are big and adorable, yes, but they are also war machines and physical infrastructure. The girls are attending a military academy. The war bleeds into every aspect of the story and begins to balance more complex ideas; technological progress vs cultural history, grief through loss and the process of connecting over trauma that has yet to fully heal. That complexity is what makes the story exciting to read, and I hope that future volumes address it directly instead of leaving it slightly off the page.

With that in mind, I am curious to see where the story will go from here. Please pick up Luca the Dragon Vet if you enjoy fantastical war stories, dragon biology, or other medical tales.