Title: RuriDragon Vol. 3
Author: Masaoki Shindo
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 193
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Comedy, Supernatural
Publication Date: March 3, 2026
The Story
Ruri is adjusting to volunteer committee life; however, things don’t stay that way for much longer because she, along with Maeda, is summoned to a meeting. She and Maeda are asked to become the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the committee because they’re short-staffed, and the top two candidates have social anxiety and are sick and can’t talk, respectively. She refuses, but gets peer-pressured into joining.
Shortly after, Ruri ends up vomiting. Everyone rushes to her, and when her teacher arrives, he notices that it’s not vomit, but something else. With that, we learn of Ruri’s fourth dragon trait! As they continue to get things ready for the sports festival, Ruri and Maeda overhear some people talking badly about Ruri. Maeda won’t stand for it and ends up devising a plan to teach them a lesson!
Once that is settled, a problem arises… a typhoon is scheduled to strike the region on the day of the sports festival, but that’s okay because dragons can control the weather… if only they knew of a dragon that would help them!
Characters
Maeda was the biggest focus for development again. She started as we knew her from the previous volume in the fact that she acted annoyed/peeved whenever she was around Ruri; however, as the volume progressed, she warmed up to her quite quickly, even going so far as to come to Ruri’s defense when people were talking badly about her. At the end of the sports festival, she even came up with a banner that showed her full support for Ruri. Needless to say, Maeda went from being a hater to one of Ruri’s closest friends. Despite the newfound friendship, though, she hasn’t lost her sharpness, which is a great trait to keep.
Next, we have our committee members in Makoto, Chikuma, Ryunosuke, and Towa. The first two were the ones who called in Maeda and Ruri into the meeting, while Ryunosuke (haha… truth dragon) was the sick one, and Towa is the anxious one. Makoto led the meeting and was quite energetic and persuasive, while Chikuma was there mainly to be her voice of reason by keeping her in check. Outside of that, Ryunosuke and Towa were kind of just there. Towa did get a ride home from Ruri’s mom after she vomited, though, but you can tell those two were appreciative of Ruri and Maeda joining the committee. Plus, it was revealed that they were the two who recommended them!
We receive a bit of a reveal with Takemoto-sensei; however, I won’t go too much into it. I’ll just say that the fact that he instantly recognized Ruri’s vomit as something other than vomit tipped her off, which led to him revealing a bit of the truth about himself. Even with the reveal, we don’t know the full story yet, so we’ll have to see how this unfolds.
Final Thoughts
The pacing continued to slow as we focused more on slice-of-life versus Ruri’s powers, even though there were some moments when we did get a bit more insight into them. Her new trait was covered, although it doesn’t seem to be particularly useful at this point. It’s more of a detriment to her than anything else. Although the usage of one of her powers at the end was a bit of a plot device… no, I take that back… it definitely was a plot device… and a bit of a stretch at that. Perhaps it is because I studied meteorology and I know how typhoons/hurricanes work that I thought their plan to get rid of it was extremely far-fetched, but it is manga, so I let it go… even if it still irks me.
Maeda’s growth has been nice to watch, and I love the fact that she’s keeping her edge to her. Seeing her stand up for Ruri was also great, but those who heckled her got off a bit too easily. It was another situation solved by just talking it out, which was kind of annoying. Ruri is starting to get more of a backbone, so I would have liked to have seen her ramp things up and perhaps give her bullies a display of her dragon powers to scare them off. It would have broken up the overall campiness of the volume, but perhaps I’m seeking too much?
The comedy here also felt muted compared to the first volume. Ruri’s mother seems to have settled into her role and lost her edge. I liked it more when she was vague and acted like nothing was a big deal. I mean, she’s still not explaining things in full to Ruri, but even Ruri herself said that she didn’t want to sit through an infodump. So, we’re using that as a filter to get information bit by bit, which is a little frustrating because one would think that as a parent, she would take the time to sit Ruri down and explain everything, but the fact that she didn’t while blatantly knowing everything was part of that comedic gold in the first volume. Now, it all seems missing in favor of just telling a slice-of-life story with a half-dragon as the main character.
I hope things will pick up again soon, but I have a feeling they won’t, and this is what RuriDragon will continue to be here on out. We’ll see, but this series had a lot of promise, but now, it just looks to be average. There’s nothing wrong with that. I still enjoy it, but that first volume set the expectations high, and now, I feel like it’s not meeting the standards it set for itself.
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
