Shamanic Princess

There is something surreal but sublime about this. Have you ever had a dream where the more you try to press on it to interpret it the more confusing it becomes, it's similar to this.

The 90s anime style, pacing, music and focus on scenery make it feel like a nostalgic portal to a faraway world lost to you except through glimpses. It's following the magical girl genre but it's much more dark than you'd think of anime from that genre.

The anime is out of order, but it's recommended to watch it this way -- but I could understand that this and the fact ... that its obscurantist at times isn't for everyone.

This is the good stuff

Full BESM-mode pseudo magical girl situation with obtuse tulpa summoning mechanics. There's an intriguing sense of mystery, with all these figures from the magical realm duking it out in a charmingly rendered European town.
Protag bishoujo is not drawn half bad, and she gets her kit off a bit, but she also takes names so it's all good.

The pacing is borked, redditlords will tell you to watch the last two episodes first, but the absolute whiplash of getting 90% of the context after the fact is the only way to experience this dreamy OVA.

It's cool, trust me

I went into Shamanic Princess knowing very little about it other than it had a short non-canonical crossover episode with Magic User’s Club, so I had no real expectations going into this. I’m not going to say that I’m disappointed, but more just underwhelmed with it. That’s not saying that it’s bad by any stretch, but the series overall could have been much better with a few minor changes.

This 6 episode OVA follows Tiara, a special agent from the Guardian World, the home of mages, who has been sent to earth disguised as an ordinary high school student to recover the stolen Throne of Yord, ... a powerful mystical object which is the source of magic energy in the Guardian World. During her hunt for the Throne of Yord, she discovers that it has a terrible secret when some of her friends and colleagues from the Guardian World fight to keep her from retrieving it.

This series has a lot going for it. It has good animation and art, a decent premise, a great soundtrack by Yoshikazu Suo that is appropriately moody and fits the series well, and has an darker atmosphere and themes that could drag you in if it’s something that especially appeals to you. But as I mentioned earlier, it does have a few problems that just prevent it from being a great series instead of just being an OK one.

For some reason, the first four episodes of this series seem to really rush through it’s plot. As if either the series didn’t have the budget or time to properly flesh it out. One scene goes to another without any real transition and doesn’t really give any breathing room, making the pacing of the show just feel off. By the time you’ve realized what’s going on, you’re already half way through the scene. There is even a plot point early on where out main character goes to a human high school to fit in as to not arouse suspicion that goes nowhere. It’s probably why those first four episodes are so confusing and hard to keep track of at first, it’s too busy rushing through it’s own story. Maybe the series could have done with at least one other episode just to give the series a better pace.

My biggest problem with this series are the last two episodes. Those last two episodes contain all of the character development and establishing plot points that lead up to the first four episodes of the series. Which begs the question, why are these last two episodes not the first two episodes? These two episodes feel like they were moved around just so the series could have some sort of twist at the end. If the people behind this series wanted to tell something out of order, they could have had these two episodes be flashbacks placed at certain points throughout the series. At least that way, it would have given the rest of the series a better pace, and it still could have lead up to some sort of “twist” if that’s what the creators wanted.

Shamanic Princess isn’t a bad series by any stretch, but the idea to have the last two episodes be where they are really drags down the series as a whole, making it more confusing than it needs to be, and the series as a whole would have been much better if they were located somewhere else. I’d recommend Shamanic Princess to anyone who like their series with some darker themes and more atmospheric presentation.