It’s been a little while since I did a FAnime Friday post hasn’t it? My apologies, I had this nice issue planned out for last week, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had planned to do a tribute post to two characters from two separate series who were recently killed off. However, since I’m holding out hope that a certain Naruto Shippuuden character isn’t really dead, this post has instead become a tribute to my favorite ISDA dragonaut.

Name: Souya Akira (Akira Souya)
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Hair: Fuchsia, short
Eyes: Violet
Affiliation: International Solarsystem Development Agency (ISDA); Lindworm Unit.
Dragon: Machina
Status: Deceased
Seiyuu: Sawashiro Miyuki

Soya Akira ( ソウヤ アキラ ) is a character from the anime and manga series Dragonaut – The Resonance- ( ドラゴノーツ -ザ・レゾナンス ) by Manabu Ono.

Akira is the human partner of Machina and a member of the Lindworm unit of the ISDA. She is a tomboyish character and is very lighthearted and carefree. When she first performs a resonance with Machina, her dragon, she is impressed, awed, and scared of Machina’s beauty. She later confesses that, to her, Machina was elegant, beautiful and the epitome of what a woman should be. Machina is all of the things that Akira would love to be, but is not, and she intimidates her. But at the same time, Machina is sweet and kind to her. Akira spends most of her ISDA career torn and conflicted. On one hand she has a very close relationship with her dragon and views her as a sort of older sister (who even corrects her improper speech and posture), and at the same time she has the dogma of the ISDA pounded into her head and feels guilty over the affection she has for and shares with Machina.

When Akira sees the bond shared between Toa and Jin, and then subsequently sees Gio choose to not stay with the human he performed a resonance with, but instead travel with Jin to rescue and protect Toa, Akira realizes that she does not have to feel ashamed of her feelings any longer. Akira recognizes that the bond between human and dragon can be and is much more than “master and dragon”. Subsequently, Akira chooses to assist Jin in rescuing Toa a number of times before eventually leaving the ISDA. However, she still felt as though the Lindworm unit was her friends and never hesitated to assist them when they were in trouble and needed help.

In the manga, Akira is considered the youngest member of the Lindworm unit, having been the last one to join and perform a resonance with a dragon. In the anime Jin’s childhood friend Tachibana Kazuki is considered the newest member. Also, in the manga, the affection that Akira feels towards Jin is more romantic in nature and apparently puts her, for a time, in slight conflict with Toa and Sieglinde. I haven’t followed the manga that closely so I cannot vouch for the latter claim.

Akira’s partner, Machina, has an affinity for water and ice based attacks. While in her communicator form (human-like appearance) she can form whips out of water that she uses to fight with and can manipulate water. When in her dragon form she can form concentrated balls of water along with her water whips. She also gains the ability to manipulate ice and shower the enemy with countless ice crystals from her wings. In the anime, after Akira’s murder at the hands of Garnet, Machina goes berserk as a result of her resonance being broken. Unlike Gio and the original dragons, she needs Akira, her human partner, to keep sane. During Gio and Garnet’s aerial fight in their dragon forms, Machina musters up her last remaining strength and gathers her sanity one last time in order to block Garnet’s attack on Gio, which would have been fatal. With what power is left to her, she takes Akira with her to the bottom of a chasm and encases herself and Akira in ice so that will always be together.

Media Treat!

Available for you to download, for a limited time mind you, is the full length version of the second ending theme for Dragonaut – The Resonance: Fight or Flight by Yuu Kobayashi

Please right-click and select “save as” (IE) or “save link as” (FF). Do not direct-link to this file and please do not play it in your browser, both of these eat up unnecessary bandwidth.

Last 5 issues of FAnime Friday:

• Issue #22, January 18, 2008: Bleach: The DiamondDust Rebellion
• Issue #21, December 28, 2007: Sky Girls
• Issue #20, December 14, 2007: Kage Kara Mamoru
• Issue #19, November 16, 2007: Sai
• Issue #18, November 2, 2007: Doujin Work

Read the rest of the FAnime Friday issues on the FAnime Friday page! ^_^