The Winter 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling

In a world full of dangerous monsters, our unnamed protagonist finds himself reborn at the very bottom of the food chain as an immobile, powerless egg. Even just hatching will require leveling up by fighting monsters–the same monsters who'd love to eat him as a snack. But with the help of the mysterious voice in his head, he's determined to grow into the most powerful creature in the world.

Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling is based on storywriter Nekoko and illustrator NAJI yanagida's Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling (Tensei Shitara Dragon no Tamago Datta: Saikyō Igai Mezasanee) light novel. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Saturdays.

Blame this one on So I'm a Spider, So What? Or thank it, depending on how much you enjoy this episode, because Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling follows a similar trajectory: human reborn as fantasy creature, incessant narration, and a stat screen at the thirty-eight-second mark. It's following a very clear, well-worn path with what feels like little innovation, though obviously that could change going forward.

For most of this episode, our hero is an egg. He has to “evolve” to the point where he can hatch, which is certainly an interesting proposition. He's able to pull it off because he falls out of the nest, but how would any other egg evolve? Does it just take time? Is he special because he's been reincarnated? Or are there simply drastically low levels of dragons in this world because most of them hang out in their nests, not evolving in egg form, until someone comes along and eats them? The episode doesn't seem keen to answer these questions, although it is quick to point out how delicious dragon eggs and baby dragons are, especially when served with “sauce.”

Despite hearing this several times and having to flee from multiple dark worms intent on eating him in his embryonic state, the minute the little guy evolves enough to hatch and hears human voices, he charges right to them. This may have been the part of the episode I enjoyed the most, not because I enjoyed seeing him get slashed by a sword, but because it does an excellent job of showing the discrepancy between how he sees himself and how others see him. As far as our reincarnated, probably Japanese person is concerned, he's an adorable baby dragon with a Pokémon flair, so humans will find him cute and cuddly. But to adventurers native to his new world, he's a dangerous monster who ought to be killed so he doesn't grow up into a bigger problem…and who will be delicious with sauce. It's probably the most critical moment in the story so far because it really drives home his new reality.

Of course, he can't die in episode one, so the moment is almost immediately undercut by Myria, the lone woman in the party, healing him. But in terms of the ongoing plot, that just shows she's special and kind, traits that are almost certainly going to save her life in the near future. And hey, maybe she'll learn that grilled wolf is tastier than baby dragon in sauce!

This isn't a terrible start. I'm mildly curious to know where it goes, although Beheneko has also taught me to be wary of girl-and-monster duos in isekai anime. It's not innovative, but it could be fun.

Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling understands the apparent truth that made shows like Reincarnated as a Slime and Reborn as a Vending Machine so successful: These cliche “reborn in a fantasy RPG setting” shows are nearly always improved if the main character of the story ends up getting turned into a weird little guy (or a weird big guy, in the case of Vending Machine). What Dragon Hatchling has going for it compared to the overwhelming mountain of competition is that our hero is, for all intents and purposes, a Pokémon. Or a Digimon. You could even compare him to a Monster Rancher…-mon? You get the idea. My entire generation was raised on the industry of collecting weird little monster guys with special battle powers to befriend and level up, and that's the niche that Dragon Hatchling is trying to capitalize on. What if you were the weird little monster guy with a cute human girl for a best friend? Are you a bad enough little dude to Pepper Breath the enemy monster hordes and achieve legendary min-maxing potential?

So far as gimmicks go, it's a perfectly serviceable one. However, I am sad to report that the gimmick represents the beginning and the ending of Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling's contribution to the cultural conversation. Outside of the fact that our main character is, in fact, a Dragon Hatchling, this premiere hits every single beat that you'd predict a reincarnation isekai to hit, and it doesn't even try to put a fresh spin on most of the material. We still spend far too much time with a robot narrator as she explains the world's exceedingly simple, formulaic RPG mechanics and menus. We still have our main character mostly spending all of his time alone as he figures out these exceedingly simple and formulaic RPG mechanics and menus. Eventually, after a bunch of running around and farming easy mobs, Dragon-kun begins to improve as much as he can within the rigid boundaries of this exceedingly formulaic and straightforward RPG ecosystem. Even if you never watched a second of this premiere, I would bet dollars to Brock Pokémon's famous jelly donuts that you could still write an entirely accurate summary of the entire first episode on gut instinct alone.

The one area that has some promise is the time that Dragon-kun spends as an egg in the first half of the episode. This is partially because all of his helpless rolling around reminded me of Don Bluth's The Land Before Time, which softened my stony heart somewhat, but mostly because this is the one part of the story where Dragon-kun had to demonstrate the kind of gumption and resilience that makes for an interesting character. We don't meet a single other human until the final minutes of the episode, so Dragon-kun is all we've got, and I was rooting for the little guy to burst out of his shell and greet his brand new world.

Unfortunately, these reincarnation shows are all so addicted to the dumb, menu-based exposition dumps and cliche story beats that Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling doesn't give itself enough of an opportunity to tell a halfway decent story with this setup. It doesn't help at all that the show is honestly unpleasant to look at. The animation is… fine, for the most part, but the visuals are color-graded with a shade of piss-brown that would immediately warrant a hydration check if it showed up in someone's toilet bowl. I wish that this humble little draconic fantasy were more entertaining or pleasing to the eye. Sadly, it just makes for another easy isekai skip in a season already chock-full of them.

I watched past the first episode of So I'm a Spider, So What? for exactly one reason: Aoi Yūki. She's easily one of the best voice actors of this modern age, and her monologuing made the incessant narration, a rhetorical device I hate in a reincarnation isekai, a genre I do not care for, at least tolerable. So what happens when you make a nearly-identical series with a voice actor with only a tiny fraction of her charisma?

Not that I bear Shunichi Toki any ill will. I've liked him well enough in other roles. But while I could never get sick of listening to Yūki, I was feeling pretty done with him by the end of this episode of Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling. He wasn't sufficient to distract me from the endless onslaught of stat screens, references to RPG-style skills, hit points, and evolutionary trees. Ami Koshimizu brought a bit more charm as the subtly snarky Divine Voice, pointing out just how much of a delicacy the hapless protagonist is at every opportunity. However, most of the role was still emotionless reporting on his growth.

It was just dull. Each plot event was filtered through the trappings of an RPG. Every action he took resulted in him developing a new skill or gaining a level. And he did not. Stop. Talking. Once upon a time, you could have an animal protagonist without language. Their actions and reactions spoke for themselves. They didn't offer running commentary about the taste of the giant worm monster they ate or how many MP the human helping them had. True, there have been talking animals as long as animation as a medium has existed, but I still wanted him to shut up so I could enjoy Kō Ōtani's background music.

Wait, Kō Ōtani? Did you get lost on the way to Digimon Ghost Game because of how much the protagonist looks like a Digimon? Not that this is anywhere near the legendary composer's best work; before I looked up the staff credits, I sincerely thought it was someone trying to imitate his fantasy scores and coming up short.

Most everything about Reincarnated as a Dragon can be described as an imitation that comes up short. I'm not sure why the powers that be decided now is the right time to adapt a ten-year-old webnovel series in a subgenre that has fallen out of fashion. This is the era of helpful dudes getting kicked out of the hero's party.

As we get more and more of these “reincarnated as a non-humanoid in a fantasy world” stories, I feel that each has to work that much harder to stand apart because they'll inevitably be compared to the ones that came before. Sometimes, this means pushing the framework to its most absurd extent for the sake of humor, like with Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. On the other hand, it can go full erotic like Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! where all the girls want to get with the hero… who is, for all intents and purposes, a literal cat.

However, what we get with the first episode of Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling is the most bog-standard version of the sub-genre. A random guy is reincarnated as a dragon egg and, through the use of status windows, he must survive and get stronger. This, of course, feels like a retread of So I'm a Spider, So What?—but Shun'ichi Toki, for all his talent, is not Aoi Yūki and can't carry the entirety of a show on his voice acting alone. Luckily, the story gives him a disembodied voice to play off of—but our dragon and “voice of god” pair somehow lack the chemistry seen in Tensura where this trope is used to great effect.

What I'm getting at here is that there is nothing in this episode I haven't seen before elsewhere and done better—not a single thing. And simply put, this absolutely kills my interest in it. I wouldn't say this anime is unwatchable. The story and characters make sense, and the animation doesn't look terrible, after all. However, the more isekai anime of this sub-genre you've seen, the less novelty—and thus enjoyment—you will find in this episode. And as for me, I've seen an awful lot of them.