Genre: Action, Fantasy, Romance, Comedy
Number of Episodes: 24 + 3 OVA
Score: 9/10
Production Year: 2014
Yona is the pampered princess of Kouka Kingdom who has always been given whatever she wants, and her father loves her very much. However, the King of Kouka has a bad trait; he does not like war or weapons, so he tries to tolerate whatever his neighbors do. However, on Yona's 16th year birthday, the King of Kouka is killed by Yona's fiancee, Soo-won, and Soo-won takes the throne. No one knows that Soo-won was the one who did this, but Yona sees him that night of murder.
That's why Soo-won orders the soldiers to kill him, but Yona and Hak, Soo-won's childhood friend and also Yona's bodyguard, unites and run away. Son Hak in addition to his somewhat careless attitude and teasing Yona, he is a very strong warrior.
Escaping from Hiryuu Castle, this becomes not the end but beginning of a new story, as they learn afterwards - about the existence of 4 dragon warriors serving the Red King and begin to search for them.
The anime hooks you from the first episode and make your emotions dance. You experience the shock about the characters in the very beginning. You constantly wonder about the relationship between Soo-won, Yona-hime and Son Hak. The dialogues between Son Hak and Yona-hime will make you really laugh loudly.:) The story has indeed a good basis and also a decent progress as the episodes watched. The dragons' backgrounds are well designed within the story, except one - The Blond Dragon.
The amount of romance is high, but also somehow balanced by the existence of exciting action scenes. Ecchi, on the other hand, is almost none, which is another beauty.
The drawings show the shoujo impacts very well, and there is only one girl and she is quite beautiful. The men are all very nice. However, if there is a drawback for the anime, I would say, even it is not a typical reverse-harem type, the anime shows the symptoms of the genre. One weakness is also the story is not clearly ending. Still I would rate 9/10 for Akatsuki no Yona, because of the story, characters, nice art, relaxing environment, and friendship of the characters
References: Crunchyroll