Princess Sara

Shoukoujo Sara, or A Little Princess Sara, is based upon the world’s classic book, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and is part of the World Masterpiece Theater. As per usual when it comes to this collection, this work has the distinct traits of the main character(s) being played by the vicissitudes of fate and having to overcome multiple obstacles until finally a reward is at the end of their difficult journey.

The story revolves around Sara who was raised as a proper young lady by her father and later, being entrusted to a famous boarding school to obtain education of a higher level/quality. Soon, ... of course, everything is ruined when the news of her father’s bankruptcy and death leave her alone surrounded by a pack of wolves that has no use of her anymore. While the premise and plot of the story are quite simple, World Masterpiece Theater always expands the original story in many directions to cover more of their daily lives and mainly, the cruelty of the world. And that is where my problem with the pacing lies.

From start to finish, we follow Sara’s life and how she copes with the people around her. There is a long start explaining her circumstances and how she makes friends, while gallantly silencing her jealous classmates. After that, there is a longer part of how mistreated she is and various adventures or incidents that happen along the way. That brings variety to the show undoubtedly, since we learn more about the people around her and we get more emotionally attached to them, but on the other hand it can get pretty redundant and tiring, as sometimes it feels like there is no real development and it is just repeating itself. Many of those adventures just keep recycling the same feelings and show more of the same behavior with no justice given, leaving one feeling rather impatient. Moreover, it (very) slowly builds up the story to its climax and by then, the viewer wants a form of divine retribution to all the cruel individuals but… personally, I felt unsatisfied and cheated by the ending.

Moving on to the characters, Sara is, more or less, a typical character of a series such as this: an adorable and smart girl who never lets herself give up and be defeated by the environment she ended up in. One can see that she was raised with love and care and she has learnt to be mindful of others and be generous. However she was abused and mistreated, she would always stand up and reply with a smile on her face, proving she was the bigger person, which of course made everyone be even crueler to her. One cannot dislike Sara, but like the pacing, sometimes it feels too much. Sometimes she is too good, sometimes she will put down herself for no apparent reason, sometimes she seems so much into her princess act that it gets annoying. Her behavior annoyed me a lot towards the end of the series and unfortunately, I enjoyed it even less that I expected. There was not much development either, she stayed the same girl with the heart of gold whatever the world threw at her.

The rest of the cast is pretty much a stereotypical cast of a classic story like this. There is a villain, Miss Minchin, who values money and finds a sadistic pleasure into indirectly torturing Sara, the young girl that had everything from her birth; there is a loyal friend, Becky, who is a servant at the boarding school and always tries to help in any way that she can; there is a jealous rival, Lavinia, who cannot accept anyone that is better than her and tries to humiliate Sara in every possibly way that she can think of and will always be there for a revenge plan; there are the jealous rival’s sidekicks, whose hearts are almost as black as Lavinia's, but will follow the one that has more power; there is the jack-of-all-trades friend, who knows all about the outside, poor world and will find solutions for almost any kind of problem she has.

I would lie if I said all of them or even most of them got a lot of development, but it is enough for this kind of story. Throughout all those adventures, we see a different character close to the center every time, giving us more insight to their personality and their thought process. Unfortunately, as the pacing recycles the same feelings, the characters get recycled in a similar manner, as we see the same kind of reactions and behaviors again and again and even though, there are some rare signs of change, they will fall into their usual pattern in the end. At least, each of them executes their role pretty well and makes you feel for them, either positively or negatively.

As for art and sound, I am not a proper judge of these, since I rarely mind them. I can say though, that the art is a pretty standard one for a ‘80s series with simple art, low variety of colors, toned down pallet and pretty common design. Apart from the cast that appears often, the rest are not so easily distinguishable. The animation is fluid enough and since there are no fast paced scenes, there is no real gap. The sound contains a lot of low tone melodies that fit this kind of story, but certainly nothing that will be remembered after one has finished the series.

All in all, I enjoyed it sufficiently and more people should watch this. I admit that first I was more excited and interested in it since I love these kind of classic stories, but along the way I could not help being discouraged by some elements and could not finish it with the same interest as before.

This is a recorded conversation between an anonymous producer and screen writer.

Producer (Mr.P): So I want a story that moves people's heart. Can you somehow make that happen?

Screen Writer guy (SW): But I don't understand human's psychology or emotion sir. I don't think I can grasp common sense.

Mr.P: So how about this? We get rid of all that.

SW: Brilliant sir, how about a story about a little angel got abused for almost all the runtime?

... Mr.P: Uhmm I don't think people will like a story about children got abused though?

SW: But with that story, we can have a forced happy ending sir. I think viewers will love it. Besides, I feels quite lazy.

Mr.P: I'm interested. So who's gonna be in it?

SW: Doesn't matter sirs. We will put a little girl as nice as an angel with the most despicable assholes and bullies we can find in the history of cinema.

Mr.P : But isn't that torturous? What about those not bully?

SW: Remember sir? Happy ending? Those others aren't really that important since they're crying half of the time. Aren't girls those time all like that?

Mr.P: Oh right right. My bad, I forgot.

SW: Alright sir. So I think that's it. What do you think?

Mr.P: That's it. So we're gonna have a story about a little girl fell ill to fate (melodrama) who would get abused for almost all the time and somehow got a forced happy end? Without ever fighting for it?

SW: Yeah sir.

Mr.P: I think we got ourself a masterpiece in the making Screen Writer-san. Wrap it up, wrap it up. We're gonna make some sweet money.

All jokes aside, I found princess Sara is amongst the weakest of World Masterpiece Theater. I like her, to be honest, Sara is super kind, I would love to protect her with all my might. But I can't forgive that writing style, be that I warned you before watching this.