Learning to ride and tame dragons comes easy to most students at Ansarivan Dragonar Academy - except for first-year student Ash Blake, who is known by his fellow classmates as the "number-one problem child." Poor Ash is the laughing stock at school because, despite his unfashionably large star-shaped brand that marks him as a future dragon master, he has nothing to show for it. His dragon has never appeared - until now, that is. One fateful day, Ash's dragon awakes in full glory, but appea...

Eunbyul's life is one long, awkward punchline. She's stuck in a dead-end job, broke, single, and clinging to the one thing she actually loves--her tiny apartment. But her peaceful little world flips upside down when a cranky pop idol accuses her of being a stalker after a bizarre rooftop mix-up.Trying to clear her name turns into a full-blown catastrophe. She runs into an old crush--now a famous webtoon artist. Then she loses her job, hits rock bottom, and finds her only hope of surviving ...

The students of Ansullivan Dragonar Academy are abuzz with excitement: the school's annual invitational training camp is coming up, and only the best and brightest will be chosen to attend. Ash Blake is stunned to find he's been selected - he may have unusual gifts, but his Steed, Eco, has a human body. How can a Dragonar who can't ride his dragon possibly participate? Yet the biggest surprise is not Ash's selection. When a girl named Lucca Sarlinen is chosen, speculation runs rampant. Luc...

In the capital city of Fontaine, at the mausoleum where the royal family's dragons are laid to rest, several tombs have been robbed. Among them, the remains of the dragon belonging to Sylvia's brother are missing! When Milgauss arrives in the city to attend a conference and masquerade ball, it portends dark things for Ash, his friends, and everyone around them.

Ash hasn't had much time to figure out the mystery of Eco's appearance. Ansullivan is under attack by a kind of dragon no one's ever seen before - one that smells like death and regenerates when injured. As if that's not enough for a young dragon rider to deal with, the student council is recruiting, and a tempestuous member of the royal family is about to pay Ansullivan a fateful visit.

This two-volume set LNCS 16174-16175 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition, ACPR 2025, held in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, in November 10–13, 2025.The 60 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 118submissions. The ACPR 2025 Conference focuses on four important areas of pattern recognition: pattern recognition and machine learning; computer vision and robot vision; signal, speech and video processing; and docu...

Han Eunbyul continues to be tormented by visions of the past when she touches certain objects, as well as her overly demanding brat of a boss, the superstar celebrity Kang Bin. However, throughout her efforts as his English tutor, she sees glimpses beneath his icy mask. Much to her surprise, the two have quite a bit in common, and she even finds herself appreciating the passion he puts into his work.Despite the amount of time he takes up, she also grows closer to her childhood friend turne...

Sylvia, the fourth princess of Lautreamont, has grown up feeling overshadowed by her eldest sister's accomplishments, while Veronica, a battle-hardened war hero, is ruthless in demanding that her younger sister live up to her expectations. When the infamous terrorist known as Avdocha comes to Lautreamont, wanting nothing less than to take Veronica's head, the younger Sylvia becomes her bait that will lure Veronica into a trap. Ash Blake must use his ability to command any dragon at will in...

This Springer Brief represents a comprehensive review of information theoretic methods for robust recognition. A variety of information theoretic methods have been proffered in the past decade, in a large variety of computer vision applications; this work brings them together, attempts to impart the theory, optimization and usage of information entropy.The authors resort to a new information theoretic concept, correntropy, as a robust measure and apply it to solve robust face recog...

Eunbyul Han thought it was the worst day of her life when a misunderstanding resulted in her neighbor--superstar Kang Bin--thinking she was a stalker. Little did she know, the nightmare had only just begun! Thanks to Kang's bodyguard being a dear childhood friend and Eunbyul desperately needing a job, she finds herself tutoring the brattiest student ever.That leaves her precious little time to reconnect with another person from her past, Choi Junghoon, who seems to want to take their frien...

Ash, Eco, Sylvia, and Lucca venture to Willingham Mausoleum in search of Lucca's dragon, Gawain, hoping to convince him to reestablish his bond with Lucca before it's too late. However, instead of finding Gawain, the evil Milgauss lies in wait with a horrible surprise. A horde of undead dragons known as necromancia attack Ash and his friends, while countless more swarm towards the nearby dragon rider's camp. Are the best and brightest of Ansullivan Dragonar Academy up to the task of fendin...

Mona and Asahi are finally facing off against each other in a heated one-on-one swimsuit battle! Which one of them will ultimately earn the right to “confess” to Medaka?! As the much-anticipated final round arrives and the winner carries out her fake confession, the whole crowd goes wild! At the same time, Tomo is going through some emotional turmoil…