Are middle-grade horse books still a thing that girls are into? When I was growing up, I indulged in a veritable glut of books about girls my age or slightly older who had a special connection with these beautiful, spirited four-legged creatures that was almost supernatural. I, who only had occasional access to horses in real life, lived vicariously through those books. As I grew up, I transitioned from horse books to fantasy novels (via, of course, fantasy novels about girls with magical connections to horses), but I've always looked back fondly at that phase of my life.

The Dragon Knight’s Beloved is a horse girl book, but with dragons instead of horses. The heroine, Melissa, is completely unafraid of the great flying lizards, and even seems to have some kind of innate ability to commune with them. Even though she's unremarkable in pretty much every other way—which is as much a part of the fantasy for the reader as her preternatural ability to understand animals—the gentle way dragons interact with her marks her as special, thus making her the perfect candidate for Hubert's plan.

It's a decently solid fantasy shojo plot. The bones of its concept, such as horse girl magic, a fake lovers scheme that will undoubtedly turn into a real romance, and a bitchy rival, are well-trodden but have enough room for the skin and organs to make it into something that can really stand out. It's the kind of story where standout character writing or worldbuilding— maybe a plot twist or two—could really set it apart and make it memorable. I'd say The Dragon Knight’s Beloved is about halfway there, with good execution but nothing to make it great, and a couple of major drawbacks.

For one thing, the art is quite lovely. Ritsu Okazaki, though relatively unknown in English-speaking fandom circles, is an experienced manga artist and illustrator, and her long resume shines through in the amount of polish apparent in the shojo-style art. Although there are art elements that appear to be from photographs run through filters to make them look like pen and ink, the hardest elements to draw, such as the dragons and the knights' armor, aren't so easily rendered from pre-existing elements. I do wish they had been shown in motion a bit more—it's hard to get a sense of just how intimidating they are to most people when they're mostly depicted standing around calmly or fawning over Melissa—but drawing all those interlocking scales is no mean feat, and this is a romance, not an action series.

Okazaki's skills for drawing characters and their clothes match her skills for drawing dragons. Everyone is beautiful, with thick, lush hair and delicate features. There does seem to be an emphasis on making the characters look attractive at all times, which kind of precludes any sort of exaggerated facial expression and forces their emotions to be rather understated at times, except on rare occasions. Hubert is by far the most dynamic of the cast, struggling with the loss of his brother, his departure from the dragon knights, and the situation with his brother's ex-fiancee, and Okazaki does a fine job of conveying that through his eyes and facial expressions. He's an ideal shojo boyfriend too, kind and polite but a bit off-beat with his devotion to dragons, and oh-so-handsome. Melissa, with her wide eyes and poofy maid's uniform, is a perfect everygirl: pretty, but not too much so, set apart solely by her connection to majestic beasts, a quality many girls wish for or secretly believe they possess.

If only Melissa had some modicum of a personality! Other than her initial plan to find work outside the castle, which seems to be more of a convenient setup for Hubert to whisk her away to his lands than an actual self-motivated choice, she has no agency whatsoever. She makes no choices or decisions for herself, nor does she really show much motivation or drive other than liking dragons, and even then that extends mostly to not being scared of them and feeding them vegetables. She's purely reactive, and even then, those reactions are fairly subdued. She possesses no particular traits or quirks. She's like one of those people who get described as “nice” because there aren't really any other adjectives to their personality.

There's also a hint of internalized misogyny or “not like other girls”-ism to the way she and the other women in the story are written, especially when taking the short prose side story at the end of the volume into account. The only other female character of note is Lady Eleanor, Hubert's brother's fiancee from before he died who is trying to strong-arm Hubert into marrying her in his brother's stead. You can tell she's awful because the dragons hate her, plus she wears obvious makeup, wears a fancy gown, and has a high forehead. Maybe the recent villainess trend has conditioned me into questioning whether these girls are evil exactly, but until we actually get a sense of her motivation, it's hard for me to simply accept that I'm supposed to hate her.

There are other small details that make me question the manga's attitude toward women. All of Melissa's friends are men, even though female dragon knights do show up. Apparently dragon knights have a hard time getting married too, because they can't find a woman their dragons approve. The short prequel story describes how noble ladies showing up to the practice yard to stare at Hubert would put dragons ill at ease because of their perfume, as if not a single one of them has the good sense to leave off their scents for the day. There could have been ways to explore this peculiarity—that their mounts, which seem to be largely female, are jealous and overprotective or something like that—but instead it seems the ladies are just too frivolous. It's one of those things where you don't think much of it in isolation but in aggregate starts to stink a bit.

The Dragon Knight’s Beloved isn't a stinker right from takeoff. It's just kind of… okay. While its art is beautiful, the writing is somewhat adolescent, its wings clipped by an immaturity that shines through its thoughtless adherence to tropes and lack of nuance. It still has potential to soar.