DEATH TO ALL DRAGONS!

The sudden appearance of massive monsters known as "Dragons" throws the world into chaos. The New United Nations, created as a response to the threat, puts together a team known as the Dragonslayers, including (among others) a vampire, an android, a witch, the animated remains of the legendary ogre Shuten Doji, and....a little girl?! Ace pilot Momo may still be in grade school, but she just might have the skills to save humankind. Taut action, propulsive storytelling, and sly humor take this seinen action series to new heights and unexpected places!

A dragon—the first of many—appears in the skies over Tokyo, and in an instant the world is changed forever...not least of all for Dr. Abe, who loses the woman he loves to the beast's fearsome onslaught. Decades later, a mysterious figure joins the desperate fight, coming to humanity's aid on a battlefield in the United States: model DS-08, code name Shikigami. He wears Abe's face, and his rallying cry is "Death to all dragons—!"

DRAGON CIRCUS 0 has a story by Eiichi Shimizu and art by Tomohiro Shimoguchi. English translation is done by Jonathan Thumas and lettering by Eve Grandt. Published by Vertical Comics (May 19, 2026). Rated T.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Sci-fi/fantasy mashups are always super fun. Here we have “dragons” attacking various cities of the earth. Dr. Abe, a researcher who builds a weapon to defeat the dragons, learns that elves, witches, and dwarves all exist in our world. Dragon Circus 0 takes that one step even further, adding Japanese demons and shrine maidens into the mix, to create a multi-skilled team. These Dragonslayers use mecha and other tech to defeat kaiju dragons around the globe.

That's a pretty sound concept in my opinion, and Dragon Circus 0 was a full-speed-ahead read of action, revenge, Shinto tradition, and science fictiony bits all mushed together and splatted down on the page in a mostly coherent manner. I liked it.

My only complaint is the fridging of Dr. Abe's fiancée, a scene we had to re-live several times in the course of the manga, I guess, so we really understand how angry he is and how driven for revenge. Seriously, though, we get it.

Other than that, I dug the mystery of the different kinds of dragons—this seems to be very in this year in manga— attacking different areas of the globe, which brings different people together to fight them. It's a classic formula that works here. Combined with heavily shadowed art and a robot sidekick for “comedic relief,” this volume is set up for a specific kind of action-manga success.

Bolts
Rating:

There are some stories out there that are just…cool. While there are some moral dilemmas and solid world-building established, I feel like all of that is secondary to just presenting an incredible style and action set pieces. That's how I felt when I read Dragon Circus 0, a book that has a lot of elements from sci-fi and kaiju stories wrapped up in a very digestible package. What it might lack in depth or compelling nuance, it makes up for with so much style that I was practically drowning in it by the end of that first volume.

The world is overrun by dangerous dragons and monsters. This book is all about humanity slowly sowing the seeds of getting people together who can combat such threats. There are vampires, quirky robots, witches, Slender Man, etc. A lot of the buildup comes from establishing just how messed up the world has become and introducing these characters' backgrounds. Sometimes it can get surprisingly dark in a poetic way, but it never feels like the story really goes the extra step to get me to care in a meaningful way that can reasonably stick.

There's a surprisingly charming sense of humor that properly bounces out with all the destruction and despair. The dramatic paneling and rather angular designs of some of the characters give this almost a western comic book feel to it in a good way. The story ends as a sort of prologue with the establishment of a team that's going to continue to take on these threats, and I'm honestly very curious to see what the follow-up to this prologue actually looks like. It's a little basic, and the story does more or less come off as a series of set pieces followed by large portions of exposition dumping, but I don't think it needs to be anything more than that to be entertaining. Especially when the action and dramatic framing already do a good enough job of giving this book its sense of identity.