How to Train Your Dragon Homecoming

After The Hidden World, I always wondered how would Hiccup's children reaction to Dragons. A charming yet rushed short, Homecoming answered that question and gives us the HTTYD feels we all love. Highly recommend.

+ Not ten seconds into the short and you get the feeling and nostalgia of the franchise.

+ Animation quality and direction are fantastic, unlike other Dragons shorts. Scenes and shifting are captured very well.

+ Outstanding Music reminiscent to the HTTYD theme, with new tweaks.

+ Hiccup and Astrid are yet again a remarkable duo. Strong writing for both of them.

+ Zephyr and Nightlights' characters are unique well-developed. Definitely the star of the short.

+ Remarkable voice acting for the children. Nuffing's accent!

+ The satisfying amount of content out of 20 minutes we all needed.

• Hiccup's voice acting hasn't been modified to suit his older self. Feels like same young Hiccup.

• Rushed. Could've used more time to develop scenes. We barely saw New Berk or it's traditions, and "three days" seemed like a couple of minutes.

• Missing characters.

🚨 SPOILERS follow 🚨

• Hiccup not emphasizing Gobber's memories for Stoick makes absolutely no sense given Hiccup known love for his father.

• Major characters missing. Most are supposedly 31 years old, why do they look young? Didn't they start families? With Vikings' life span, it makes no sense they're still young, even when Hiccup already has TWO children. Focus was definitely not given to the background.

Movie would be better than a short film. Looking forward to it.

I'm going to keep this review short and sweet just like this film; it is wonderful!

This is the second Christmas special for the franchise. In my opinion, it's quite inferior to its predecessor from eight years ago, "Gift of the Night Fury." Neither was scripted by Dean DeBlois, the man behind the three movies, but this one was unnecessary and brought nothing new to the story. Worst of all is that there's poor continuity between this and the epilogue of the final movie. The children's reactions are completely different, as was Toothless's. This lack of consistency made it difficult to reconcile this in the same universe. Watch this only if you're a completist superfan of the franchise. Despite enjoying all three movies, most of the specials and some of the TV episodes, I won't be watching it again myself.

My family loves the HTTYD series! We were all so excited to learn that we would get more of Toothless, Hiccup, and Co. We loved how the characters bond remained strong even over long distances and time. There are people that will always leave an impression on our hearts and this was a good reminder of that. We have made a promise to reach out to those who have touched our hearts this holiday season. This is a fun dive back into the characters that will leave you remembering why you love HTTYD so much.