Princess Lover! Picture Drama

While I'm not a big endorser of the main series or any of these spin-off titles, I was actually quite surprised and even impressed with the Picture Drama.

It was longer than most picture dramas, showed off a lot more animating (for what it was worth in a picture drama...) than most, and seemed to care enough to do more than bad puns and gags.

While clearly not a significantly well made picture drama, everything that was put into it was put in thoughtfully, and the characters pointed out its own flaws and accepted them gracefully without trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big ... deal. It wasn't a big deal... I mean, it's a six episode dvd bonus, but this Picture Drama made it fully known that it was nothing special. I liked that.
It took itself as seriously as it thought it needed to be.

That said, the story was really no better than the main series. Worse in fact, because of course there was a lot less time to do anything, yet each episode felt the way a longer episode would have felt if it was shortened. It didn't waste time.

Speaking of time, one of the things I was most impressed by was the length of each episode! I'm not used to picture dramas being as long as these were. That only made the voice acting even more noticeable.

The sound was good. No great, and nothing short of good... just, good. The sound didn't need to be anything specific or hilarious, or dramatic (despite it being a picture "drama"). The voices, provided by professional voice actors of course, weren't any less for being a dvd bonus. I have to hand it to the voice actors for being good at their jobs no matter what series they're working on. Even Princess Lover (which again, I'm not a big fan of).

Overall, it seems just as good as something as simple as this could be. Not very... which is to say, it's about as good as the work put in. The sincerity of it pulled out in the end I guess, because it stayed completely true to the main series, but was meta/comical/candid enough and I had to give it a little higher a score than I normally would have if those things weren't as gently provided as they were.

The Prnincess Lover! Picture Drama is a llot better than most Picture Dramas out there, or at least a lot better than the ones I've seen. Don't take my word for gospel though, see it yourself. I haven't seen a lot of picture dramas, so maybe the one's I've seen before were just flukes.

6/10