Dragonar Academy

tl;dr: A manga with great art that isn't all that unique but is a pretty solid telling of a standard story, other than the incredibly inopportune axed ending. This is a manga that isn't particularly novel, but is a solid usage of standard tropes and plot elements. It's mostly set in an academy and thus generally follows the general structure of a battle academy with random lighthearted school events intermixed with more serious action filled plot lines tying into overarching plot lines but being written in such a way that they're pretty character focused. The lighthearted moments were reasonably solid, wherein the comedy wasn't great butwas decent enough. The overarching plot lines were also decent and it felt like there was good world building, though ultimately it didn't really do much with most of it. The action was okay, in that it looked cool and felt like it had a few good concepts but it didn't really try that hard to do much with them most of the time so things felt pretty random. The characters were also pretty solid, wherein the protagonist has an okay personality in that there's nothing that particularly makes him stand out as a good character, but nothing that particularly makes him a bad character either. The rest of the cast is far better. There were a few characters that were pretty much likable from the get go, the most prominent of whom was the main character Rebecca, though most of the others in this category were side characters like Lucca, Jessica, Anya, or the various maids. With the rest of the main characters, such as Eco, Sylvia, and later on Oscar, they start out not being all that likable at all but over time either grow in such ways so as to minimize what made them annoying or are given more background that makes them likable even with their issues, which is a decent enough way to handle things as the main cast is pretty likable overall by the end. With that said, the character and relationship development isn't all that great, never being all that surprising or impactful, but at the same time it doesn't really do anything particularly wrong either and does seem to convey things pretty well. It should be noted that the ending is awful, in that this is an adaptation of a novel that clearly got rushed axed in what feels like the exact middle of an arc, which results in the last chapter being a quick flash forward past the arc with the protagonist simply remembering how the rest of the arc was resolved. I suppose this was necessary as it's not like you can leave a story related arc dangling completely, but at the same time as one would expect it was rushed way too much for it to be anywhere near an enjoyable adaptation of the rest of the arc, and furthermore having to do that prevented it from being able to hit any of the standard notes that axed manga try to hit in terms of characters looking towards the future and such, which leaves the ending feeling woefully incomplete and leaves a terrible final impression. The art has a pretty generic style with character designs also being pretty generic for the most part, but overall is really high quality with the colored pages including covers especially standing out as well done, and overall the manga uses its art style well such as it flows well and looks really nice.