Dragon Pink

The ultimate misnomer; there are no dragons here, but there is quite a bit of pink.

One of the more (strangely) famous hentai anime titles on the market, Dragon Pink is a cheeky fantasy miniseries set in a parody of popular RPG premises, many of which also contain the word "Dragon". The series makes no attempt to disguise or shy away from what it is - a raunchy sex comedy populated by assholes (in both senses of the word) - and isn't really interested in bringing anything more than that to the table.

I know it's embarrassing to ask someone for toilet paper when you're indisposed, but asking them to wipe you too? Come on, now.

Stylistically, the show resembles most of its late-80s and early 90s peers (notably the much more well-known Dragon Half, which the original manga author thanked for inspiration), and bases its exaggerated world on the likes of Dragon Quest, Dungeons and Dragons, and maybe a bit of Fire Emblem. The plot is extremely minimal and serves purely as a vehicle for conjuring up each successive sexual encounter, but provides a simple, goofy adventure nonetheless, following a small group of adventurers taking on quests from local villagers and diving into dungeons in hopes of making some cash.

The cast of characters is nicely varied, meant to represent a typical balanced RPG party: a paladin and all-arounder (Santa), a massive barbarian of few words (Bobo), a powerful mage in flashy armor (Pierce), and a cat-slave bimbo for comic relief (Pink). There's a recurring gag during the "eye catch" scenes - transitional title cards typically used to mark where the commercial breaks should be inserted during a TV airing - that use a "Save & Continue" screen to suggest the show's whole world is indeed nothing more than a video game. One episode even opens with a complete party creation sequence that mimics the menu aesthetic of early Famicom and PC RPGs.

What I'm saying is, if some college kid got really drunk and horny before booting up their copy of Wizardry in the 80s and jokingly narrated a bawdy story about the characters as they played along, Dragon Pink would be the result.

An Exhibitionist draws near! Command?

The OVA is split into three episodes, each of which feel laser-focused strictly on hurrying the story along to help set up for the next sex scene, adapting most of the (unfinished) source material in the process. Research shows the manga went on only a little further and started pushing in a darker, possibly more serious direction, but the series remains dormant beyond that. So with no larger narrative at play, each episode could realistically stand on its own, making this an ideal show to inject into a playlist or load up just before bed to help give yourself some wild dreams.

Make no mistake, putting this on before bed would start off hot, but then...

Now I normally try to put a little more effort into dissecting the story of the various hentai anime I review (as ridiculous as that sounds), but Dragon Pink really is nothing more than an onslaught of fragmented misadventures that all work in service of the porn aspect. It's a simple show that knows what it's about! But what the show lacks in plot, it seeks to make up for through its gag humor and surprisingly imaginative kink scenes. Aside from the typical and expected "monster molesting a damsel in distress" moments, Dragon Pink has a certain propensity for putting its characters in fantastical BDSM sequences.

I haven't seen a snake scene this sexual since Reign: The Conqueror!

Some of the more imaginative scenarios include Pink being tormented by a chain on a pulley, Santa extracting "honey" from a fairy using a tiny mushroom, a goddess morphing into slime and unbirthing herself up a young woman's pussy to absorb her lifeforce before violently exploding her from the inside out, and a strange lumpy snake referred to as - I kid you not - a "dildo cobra", which excretes a pleasure pheromone when deployed in a given hole, then eventually unleashes painful spikes to give the victim a taste of both heaven and hell. The show clearly has a preference for torture and torment, but I found myself surprised by how wild and even cartoony the fetishes on display were.

There must have been something in the air back in the hyperviolent 80s and experimental 90s that made showrunners constantly look for ways to scar the audience for life.

Thankfully, it's not all sadistic. My personal favorite of the naughty scenes was something far tamer than my usual fare, but still hilarious: black mage Pierce finds herself unable to rescue Pink from a monster due to being too low on MP to cast an attack spell. Thinking quickly, she turns to her barbarian cohort, yanks down his pants, and starts sucking him off. Bobo, being a man of few words, seems a bit shy at first, but gets more into it once they start 69-ing. When he eventually cums, Pierce laps it all up and swallows, successfully restoring her MP, and proceeds to unleash hell and rescue poor Pink, who has been fighting off the tentacular tongue of the monster this whole time. I think the scene works so well because it flips the expected gender behavior one would expect from this sort of situation by making Pierce the go-getter and Bobo the shy one, and also by virtue of portraying Pierce as a confident adult without any of those stereotypical flustered-anime-girl reservations I've grown so very tired of.

It should be an unspoken rule that friends let friends suck them off and swallow their jizz to restore MP, saving valuable Ethers in the process.

That said, the rest of the show's focus feels very much centered on absolutely tormenting Pink, even outside of the sex scenes. Townspeople talk down to and discriminate against her, she's forced to eat scraps out of a cat bowl at the local restaurant while everyone else eats at the table, the party makes her pull the wagon since they can't afford a horse, and Pink is regularly "volunteered" as bait for catching demons and bandits. Her "job class" as a cat slave frequently becomes a bargaining chip to help her party gain the upper hand, often at Pink's expense. Honestly, the only reason she is even beholden to this troupe of dimwits at all is because they do - at least on some level - seem to care for her, though apparently not enough to stop treating her like a slave.

...and no, it hasn't escaped my attention that Pink is the only character in the series with dark skin. The implications of this are pretty impossible to ignore.

Like. I can't be the only one that noticed this, right? Come on.

The narrow silver living here is that the series at least openly acknowledges that despite these moments of "caring", this group of heroes are anything but. Unofficial group leader Santa at one point even sells Pink back into slavery just to pay for a meal after losing his satchel of gold (with the intention of immediately going out to farm a rare item drop from a monster to buy her right back). He regularly makes gestures like this as though he's genuinely looking out for Pink's safety, but it's readily apparent that he simply doesn't want to lose his slave and easy sex token. Pierce and Bobo frequently chide him about this, but - as even Santa himself points out - they're no better, since they too ride along in the wagon while Pink pulls it.

Basically, everyone in this show is an asshole except for Pink herself, whose only crimes are naiveté and bubbling bimbocity. She clearly resents her status as a cat-slave (the manga suggests she was "corrupted" into this form by a pair of cursed panties she found and equipped in a dungeon), but doesn't do much to resist Santa's sexual advances nonetheless. My guess is that she's either not above enjoying sex when the mood is right, or wants to remain compliant to avoid rocking the boat too much. Either way, the show feels inconsistent on its tone and often comes across as more mean-spirited than actually funny.

Admittedly, I do still laugh about hearing the repeated phrase "Santa, you ASSHOLE!", especially out of context.

Anyway. Having at last sat down to watch it for myself, I now suspect that the reason Dragon Pink is considered a "classic" has less to do with how "good" it is and more to do with how long it's been around, and how little there was to compare it to back in 1994. In terms of sexual content, it does hit on quite a decent selection of fetishes and hilariously contrived setups, but the show often feels hampered by its barebones characters and story, and especially by the way it treats Pink. It absolutely feels like it was made for college kids (namely, straight men) who fantasize about having a slave, sexual and/or otherwise. Sure, it might work for you if you have a "love slave"-type kink, but for me, I definitely would have liked this anime more if Pink had been given a little more agency, or if she was given literally anything to do outside of being a sexy chew toy.

We love a good "pussy grabs back" moment!

I mentioned this in my F-Force review, but I'm always looking for more goofy fantasy hentai series to check out. Dragon Pink is certainly in the right ballpark, but it falls short for me due to its frankly juvenile attempts at college humor. The writing reminded me a lot of the indie Flash animation porn I used to see on Newgrounds back in the 00s. Which is to say, wildly inventive, but too reliant on shock value and offensive comedy to really strike gold. If you want to check it out for yourself, I do recommend watching it dubbed, since the voice cast all sound like they're under some kind of influence, and I do mean that lovingly. Bobo in particular is great in English, coming across like a strangely reserved Patrick Warburton who could only be bothered to record a small handful of lines before the budget was completely blown out.

I would so totally watch an anime about a cat-slave who finds an all-powerful sword and uses it to break free of...wait a minute.

And so, while Pink remains an immediately identifiable icon in the world of cartoon porn, this title is not something I would recommend heartily. If you're looking for more good fantasy-driven porn, I'd suggest bigger productions like La Blue Girl first. Magic Woman M would also be a good place to start for a short fantasy-flavored hentai. Alternately, if you want another show about a cat-slave set in a video game-y RPG world, but WITHOUT any porn, try Reincarnated As A Sword. It's got a great setup for a story - if you like isekai-type stories - but I eventually lost interest listening to its characters sitting around literally discussing video game mechanics as a plot point, like that moment in every JRPG when an NPC forces you into a conversation to have a chat about how to Set your Ability Crystals or Junction your Magic.

My continued search for fun hentai series will resume shortly. Got a few more big ones coming (heh) in the pipeline soon!