Scoreboard:

Review:

By the third season for Dog Days, most know what to expect from this series. You have a show based on an athletic kid Shinku and his friends who are summoned to this fantasy world called Flonyard and asked to be heroes. Just that in this case a lot of the duties for heroes in that world are taking part in extremely safe war games. The world itself has a special feature to it where damage turns the average person in that world into a fluffy animal ball and the more powerful people….well their clothes and weapons get destroyed before that point. Yeah, almost the entirety of the populace is a kind of animal/human hybrid of sorts. You have Biscotti which is basically the canine kingdom, Galette which is the feline kingdom, and Pastiage which is ruled by the squirrel people XD. It’s a very fun show, but one that is not the easiest to simplify because each season has had its own focus to this point.

The first season was very much a story that had some seriousness to it and was setting up the story. It focused on the plight of Biscotti where Shinku was summoned and told a pretty good tale that actually had some seriousness to it and even a lot of drama near the end. The second season wasn’t quite so serious, spending its time giving more detailed characterization to certain characters. The second season very well just jumped around spending an episode focusing on a few members of the cast and just telling a story that added something to those characters and gave you more insights. And the third season was very much about world building. They wanted to take a world that was fairly small in the first season and blow it up to massive levels. Comparing the end of the first season to the third season, the scale of the world is completely different. You know so much more about Flonyard and its peoples than you did after the first couple seasons.

The strongest element to the third season is that world building. It spent a great deal of time showing the viewers that the world was much bigger than they thought was possible. They focused a lot of time on the sky sea above Flonyard and all the creatures and peoples that exist up there. They introduced different species of creatures and even dragons. The spiritual side of the show was given a bit more focus introducing priestesses and individuals that the rulers of the main countries only considered legends or rarely interacted with. In a sense it gave even the main characters a much better grasp of their own world. The show even took some time to look at the past of Flonyard and gave some insights as to how it reached the current and fairly peaceful condition it is in. You get to understand the darker part of the world’s past and how it wasn’t a simple accomplishment to reach a point where the world could be so peaceful.

The season also started on a good point. It had a lot of mystery and created some expectations with things not starting as normal. Although in the end the start wasn’t that serious and didn’t end up creating the kind of chaos I might have expected. One weakness I might bring for the season on the plot front is that the story for the main characters doesn’t really advance. Shinku himself doesn’t go through anything too dramatic outside the first episode and kind of falls into the background when he is supposed to be the main character. Time is spent more on Galette than anywhere else, but mostly just expanding the world and showing us how the people there make that world work; their mining policies and how there are other countries that are further out than where the main cast live.

The plot and story for the third season is both its strength and its weakness and I find it hard to say which is stronger. You gain so much more information about Flonyard and its history, that is a very good thing. But at the same time…so much focus was left on that aspect that there was never any time left over for most of the main cast. They introduced quite a few new characters and that also took up time. I think the big thing for this season is whether or not you really love world building and at what cost. I appreciate a bit more balance in building up the world and developing characters than what we got here. Galette does get what character focus remains for the main cast so if they are your favorites then it should still be a fun season. There are just some things brought up that are left hanging and I hope a future season can delve into more of the mysteries.

The main cast remains as enjoyable as ever. Shinku remains a really positive person and its no wonder the guy has a few girls that are heavily interested in him romantically. He even manages to catch the eye of a few new characters almost immediately because he is a damn heroic person and knows how to make an entrance. He and Becky don’t have a lot of focus though this season since the story is busy running around with new characters and expanding the world. So if those two are the key pair for people that may not leave for a hugely enjoyable season, but they are at least around for plenty of episodes.

Again in terms of the regular cast, Galette gets the lion share of the focus. Gaul and Leo both have some good moments and their personal life gets fleshed out a bit. You at least have a better grasp of their relationships to others and potential developments that could happen in the future. A lot of the new cast introduced have some kind of relationship to these two, though not all of them. Leaf and Aria are those two characters and their interactions with Gaul and Leo are worth seeing. Sharl is the character introduced that is more involved with everyone else. I think the weak point with the new cast members is that some of them really don’t get much time to leave an impact. Sharl appears early on and then is not seen again until the last mini-arc, Aria is an interesting character but she also was just introduced in the last few episodes. Leaf had a bit more to him since he was in most of the episodes past his debut, so less of an issue there.

The problem I had was that we really didn’t see much of the Biscotti cast. They had a couple episodes where they were fairly important, but otherwise they were really background. Pastiage was a mix since they did give some focus to Adele and Valarie, but Cou and Becky weren’t too important this season. There are only 12 episodes in this season so there is only so much time to go around, I just wish we saw some more of the cast that didn’t get much screentime.

Visually the show remains as solid as ever. There are moments when characters that aren’t as central to the scene are drawn a bit simply which is a shame, but animating everything at top notch levels probably isn’t easy to actually accomplish. When characters are supposed to stand out they usually look pretty nice. The big attacks remain fun to look at visually though there wasn’t as many of them due to the lack of war games this season.

The music and vocals remain enjoyable. I like the OP and ED for this season although I’ve pretty well enjoyed all of them to this point. The voice actors remain quite good. The new characters also got nice voices and I can’t complain about any of them. There wasn’t as much singing for Millhiore in this season and the one new song she does sing….well the lyrics aren’t exactly mindblowing. I know her VA does the singing for the ED, but since singing is a major aspect of her character it’d be nice to get more of that.

As a whole, Dog Days Double Dash was a solid third season. I may not have had as enchanting an experience since Galette isn’t my favorite kingdom and world building isn’t as important to me if it blocks off the story. But they did an amazing job with the world building this time around and I’m glad that we’ve got this huge world to work with now. I never would have expected Flonyard to have so much going on in the first season. It seems safe to say there will be a fourth season so I’m not as bothered by the last episode. If this was the last we’d ever see of Dog Days I might have had an issue with how they ended it. But in the end this was a solid season and I look forward to seeing what we might get in the future. Will miss this show, here’s hoping it isn’t a long wait until I can talk about it again.