Murder Princess

After a sudden coup d'etat by the court scientist Dr. Akamashi results in the king's death, Princess Alita Castilia Arago Forland is forced to flee the capital. During her mad dash for survival deep into the forest, Alita collides with the brutal and temperamental bounty hunter Falis, which causes the two women to magically switch bodies.

Using her original body as collateral, Alita convinces Falis—and her henchmen Dominikov and Pete—to help take back the capital from the treasonous scientist by pretending to be the real princess. However, while the plan was initially successful, the only diplomacy Falis knows is with her sword. Alita must now work hard to make sure the kingdom is not trading one royal scandal for another, all while the two displaced women look for a way to return to their original bodies.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Murder Princess

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Characters & Voice Actors

Falis

Main

Park, Romi
Japanese

Forland, Alita Castilia Arago

Main

Koshimizu, Ami
Japanese

Dominikov

Supporting

Yao, Kazuki
Japanese

Yuna

Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa
Japanese

Kaito

Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke
Japanese

Ana

Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa
Japanese

Armstrong, Pete

Supporting

Takase, Akimitsu
Japanese

Entolasia, Jodo

Supporting

Ishimori, Takkou
Japanese

Cecilia

Supporting

Toyoguchi, Megumi
Japanese

Dr. Akamashi

Supporting

Tsuchida, Hiroshi
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Maru, Ryouji

Producer

Kurokawa, Tomoyuki

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Takakuwa, Hajime

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"Hikari Sasuhou" by BACK-ON

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Ending Theme

"Naked Flower" by Romi Paku

Reviews

Feb 9, 2022

DykeViews

Recommended

If you're here because you're looking for WLW content, look no further. Go watch it now. The hardest decision is to binge-watch it all at once or save it for several viewings. It's six 25min Sword Lesbian episodes. No comphet distractions. A few fanservice-y moments (episode 2), but they work for wlw-watchers and not just for boys. As with most wlw-leaning pieces, it could be stronger and more explicit (i.e., dykier), but it's impressive for a 2005 piece and holds up 15+ years later.

As much as I love this, I find it hard to write a 500-character review of. It's cool, medieval steampunk-y, female-led, well-paced. ...

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Mar 13, 2022

nozomiEX

Mixed Feelings

Going into this, I made sure to set my expectations low, and I still left underwhelmed. With only six episodes to adapt a similarly short manga that was forced to a rushed conclusion because of the publication it ran in, I knew to not expect everything to be fully fleshed out but I'm still disappointed with how little substance there really is.

If you took the story beats and characters on paper, in a vacuum, this story is fine, with great potential to be enjoyable. Not much in the way of complexity or novelty, but still a solid framework for a fun romp through ... a fantasy setting. Now just develop this over the 120 minutes or so that you have and it should work. Sadly, this happens so little in Murder Princess, telling only the minimum needed to get from A to B to C and so on. Characters have almost no depth to them at all, only a handful of traits, simple and shallow motivations (if they even get them at all,) very little interaction between characters outside of propelling the plot, and surprisingly little in the way of levity. You very well could count on your hands (maybe, maaaaybe your toes) how many intentional jokes or moments intended to be humorous there are over the entire run time of the series. The plot is bare bones and especially in the last two episodes sped up to the point that ass pulls and deus ex machinas are dropped on a by-the-minute basis. Exposition dumps make up half the dialogue: tell, don't show is the reigning paradigm here. Compounding these issues are numerous oversights in basically every department. For example, characters addressing others by name when they haven't even been introduced to each other. Sure, you could excuse it and say "they got to know each other off screen," but having to constantly cope and do the heavy lifting for the show does not make for an enjoyable experience.

All this is to say nothing of the poor "animation." This is a very stiff show, lots of slideshows and panning, flashes and cuts. Fights VERY often being one swing and it's over. Sparse sets and little detail make this a very un-stimulating visual experience, so it's going to be up to you to make yourself pay attention, and when the plot, characters, and all the little things that fill in the gaps are in large part MIA, it's very likely to be a chore.

Ultimately, my time watching this was mostly spent trying to excuse things on its behalf and the other part lamenting how much better it could've been with only more competent, passionate hands. It may seem easy to excuse a 6 episode OVA for not accomplishing a lot in its run time but 120 minutes is actually quite a lot to work with to tell an engaging story. Even ignoring the entirety of filmdom, there are even SHORTER OVA series that still manage to make what they're given to work with into a compelling, enjoyable experience that far outlives its runtime in the hearts and minds of those who view it, and this is not one of them.

PS (Actual postscript, lol): I went and read the manga to see if any of that potential was realized better. There two are almost entirely different plotwise, save for several key points. I'd actually say the plot in the anime is more complete but the characters in the manga feel marginally more developed, or at least a couple of them, and it's more humorous. The fact that you can breeze through the manga in an hour or two makes it feel much less like a chore to get through, but ultimately both are unsatisfying with how little anything gets fleshed out.

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Sep 21, 2023

Cayusashi

Not Recommended

Just looking at the name of the anime you should know what you're getting into. I thought, "Murder Princess is one of the most on the nose and cheesiest names for any anime I've ever seen and it's only six episodes, so it can't be THAT bad. There should at least some entertainment value here." This has to be some of the most boring and soulless 2 hours of my life. This anime was so boring that I couldn't even watch it all in one sitting which is really saying something for the minimal content present.

The anime starts with a bounty hunter searching for her ... mark while the Forlund Kingdom is undergoing a coup from the scholar, Dr. Onion (not his real name), and his two robot lolis. The princess who escaped before they arrived in the keep runs into the bounty hunter causing them to fall off a cliff together and somehow switch bodies?? Yeah, I have no idea either, but ok. Don't expect this to get explained well or rectified in any way. Milano (the name the princess in bounty hunter's body eventually goes with) makes Alita (bounty hunter in the princess's body claiming the princess's original name) promise to protect the kingdom seeing as Alita is much stronger than Milano could ever be. The remaining five episodes follow the two as they adapt to their new lives and thwart the plot which runs deeper than they originally thought. While unoriginal there was still potential for the plot to be interesting despite the anime's short length. However, nothing really happens. There's the coup plot sure, but we have basically no motivations for anybody involved. They're just doing things either because they're being forced to or are good/evil. The big episode four plot twist was stupid, made zero sense, wnd was never fully explained. In one episode Dr. Onion and lolis attended a ball "undercover" without any disguises. Who is just letting these terrorists in? To top it off the world building was stuffed into three minutes of episode five. It felt like we got the first and last three episodes of a show but are completely missing the middle 5-6.

The characters are completely lifeless. I've already said how nobody has any real motivations and how people are just doing things. There are no real personalities for anybody, they're all two dimensional. Milano is shy and cowardly but stands up for what she believes in only if it's in front of Alita. Alita is strong and kills people with a somewhat good moral compass. Pete and Franky (not his real name, just voiced by Franky from One Piece) are the friends of Alita when she was a bounty hunter and want to protect bother her and Milano. The lolis kill people and love their creator Dr. Onion. The main antagonists are evil just because. The only somewhat interesting character dynamic was between Milano and Alita who were a little gay for each other which is shown a few times without being explored deeper. I can confidently say I'm not going to remember a single character name a week after writing this review.

The animation was cheap. It looked acceptable but was clearly the bare minimum for what they needed to do. There's errors in layering from time to time. The battles were especially boring which is terrible for a show called "Murder Princess." It was slow with minimal choreography other than a few punches and slashes before its over. Very dissappinting.

The music sounds like it was chosen from a library of action shows and movies from the 2000s. It was fine but sounded like every other action sequence you've heard in your life. The opening was good but the ending was a snooze. The voice actors were clearly in it for the check with only the main female leads putting forth any effort. I love Kazuki Yao, but he was really phoning it in with this one and giving his vocal cords a rest.

If you couldn't tell, I really didn't enjoy Murder Princess. I don't get why they needed a body swap plot line if they were never going to do anything with it. These types of plots only work when we have a sense for the characters and their dynamics. One Piece and Futurama have terrific body swap episodes and actually do something with the concept. Just make the show called "Murder Princess" about a Princess who goes to battle or something. You don't need to overcomplicate it with this much nothing. I believe the reason this is six episodes and not just a movie is because the studio wanted to spend as little money on this property as possible and try to turn a quick buck. If you really want to watch it, go ahead. It's not like I can stop you. But don't say I didn't warn you about this boring turd.

Plot: 3/10
Characters: 4/10
Animation: 4/10
Sound/Music: 5/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 3.8/10

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Poll: Murder Princess Episode 2 Discussion itainteazy - May 2, 2007	22 replies	by KikiTheDestroyer »» Jun 27, 2023 12:28 AM
Poll: Murder Princess Episode 5 Discussion Faust721 - Aug 3, 2007	18 replies	by Foreall908 »» Apr 18, 2022 8:36 PM
Poll: Murder Princess Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 ) cyruz - Sep 3, 2007	51 replies	by FMmatron »» Nov 7, 2021 11:51 AM
Poll: Murder Princess Episode 1 Discussion cyruz - Apr 5, 2007	36 replies	by GodOfWolves »» May 6, 2021 4:00 PM
Poll: Murder Princess Episode 4 Discussion Faust721 - Jul 12, 2007	15 replies	by bloodiemonster »» Mar 26, 2015 5:05 PM

Murder Princess

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Forland, Alita Castilia Arago

Dominikov

Yuna

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Entolasia, Jodo

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Murder Princess

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Information

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