Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100-nin no Oujisama

(I've never played the game, this review is in the eyes of someone who only watched the anime.)

*Warning: Spoilers*

Dreams are wonderful things. We can make anything fictional into reality in our dreams, we can go from here, to the ends of the universe in our dreams, even if we cannot remember them.

In Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100-nin no Ouji-sama, they took the dreams-can-be-taken-away-concept and made it into an absolute mess.

This summer, my goal was to watch and rate every single otome game anime adaptation that's ever been made. I've cringed, I've cried, and I've wanted to die. But, no matter how bad any of those ... animes were, they weren't boring. They had a good concept, just portrayed terribly. But, Yume Oukoku isn't like that. Yume Oukoku is just, well. Boring. Very boring. Hell, they couldn't even stick with the story 50% of the time. (I'll go more into detail about that later.)

Now, let's begin my review on Yume Oukoku.


Story: 5/10
In Yume Oukoku, a young girl (whom we never learn the name of cause they literally just call her Princess.) has found herself transported to another world. She is apparently the "Princess" that's supposed to awaken every single one of the boys inside a Royal Ring. Except, they literally only do it once. "Why are they inside a Royal Ring?! @_@" You may ask. Around whatever years ago every single prince from every country teamed up to attack the dream-eaters, but they have been sealed away into their royal families ring. From that, it sounds interesting, right? A young girl traveling across the world to save all these princes?! Well. They only save 1 prince, and the rest of the entire show is them traveling across the world helping princes who are supposed to be sealed away. They don't keep up with the story at all, it's boring. Honestly, in my opinion, I'd prefer it for them to go to awaken princes.

Art: 4/10
Honestly, the art, in the beginning, was really okay, I feel like as the show went on, it got lazier, messier, and awkwarder (is that a word?). When the shots would be from far away, their eyes would be too big, when we were close up their mouths looked out of place, or too big.

Sound: 3/10
I don't know if the room they were in was echoey, but sometimes the characters sounded really far away from the microphone, even in normal scenes. It was really distracting.

Character: 3/10
So, we have the normal personality-less female lead, we have the bubbly male lead #1, and we have the edgy male lead #2. The female lead was really annoying. Both male leads were annoying. I only tolerated like a character in this and it was that mermaid dude, he had like 3 lines but still had more personality than the mcs.

Enjoyment: 4/10
At first, I thought this anime was gonna be cute n cool, oh boy was I wrong. I ended up skipping through 4 episodes cause nothing plot development worthy was happening. Rather than having fun, watching this felt like a chore like I HAD to watch it. I was very, very bored.

Overall: 5/10
I think this anime had a lot going for it in the beginning, I feel like the team working on this got lazier as each episode passed, like they didn't wanna keep working on it like they were working on it cause they had too. This anime is very uneventful, boring, and cliched. I'd recommend you watch Meiji Tokyo Renka instead of this.

EARLY TL,DR: Do you play 100 sleeping princes (like I do)? You might actually enjoy this anime. Otherwise, be wary.

STORY:
As usual, it's your typical reverse harem in a fantasy setting. Don't expect anything groundbreaking as they don't really dive into the specifications of the heroine's powers, or the stats and skills of the princes, or the relevance of their typing, or anything that they do in the game. I feel like they could have referenced those more, as it would add at least more to the princes. The arcs are very straightforward and simple, I wish more could be done but given the time frame ... and the VAST amount of princes in the game, it would be difficult to accommodate.

CHARACTERS:
Other than Prince Avi and Kihel, the other characters don't really get a chance to grow to a big extent. I was a fan of several of the princes already shown, so I did enjoy the screentime, but them going away in favour of a new arc in a matter of 2 episodes just made me upset and longing to know them better, if that made any sense.

SOUND:
Didn't really enjoy the OSTs, they were really generic. BUT I do like that they implemented some of the music from the mobile game into the anime.

ART:
Basically, it's decent. Nothing extraordinary, but nothing I visibly cringed at either.

ENJOYMENT:
Here's the thing- I'm trash for the mobile game. The reason I find myself liking this anime is because I love playing it's game equivalent. If I had not been a fan of the game beforehand and had not been attached to the princes ***CHARACTER NAME SPOILER*** (particularly Avi, Douglas, and Graysia), I would not enjoy this series.

OVERALL:
Honestly, taking out my own personal enjoyment it'd be around a 5.5-6 for someone who's not familiar with the franchise.

Edit: If you're interested in seeing more of the princes, the shorts you can watch through the game itself give more personality and relationships to the princes- except the heroine princess isn't there.

A better effort than Senjuushi, just with subpar story plot, art and animation. That's all folks!
Or was it...?

In the times of recent, there is more anime popping up hoping to garner the niche female target audience, and yep, we all know how all these end up: un-original, un-inspiring and boring. And Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100-nin no Ouji-sama (The Dream Kingdom and the 100 Sleeping Princes) is no different.

Welp, another reverse-harem isekai? No, not anymore, yadda yadda, so please stop!

Story;
Can you believe it? Senjuushi-esque formula with ACTUAL plot!
(Nah, just kidding, not a good one either.)
...
Just like Senjuushi, don't expect the number in the title to purposefully reflect itself in the anime as it has a lot of loopholes apart from the game source. Now I have never played the game, but after watching this adaptation, it's immediately apparent that the production staff didn't have a complete whack of ideas how to progress this, and just said: "Hey, let's dumb down the game representation to our kingdom Princess and the various male Princes and let them commune with one another! And while at it, let's have some dream-eater villains participate in what seems to be some nonsensical stuff!" And believe me, I was stoned from beginning to end, no feelings, no cheats.

Director Yukina Hiiro, coming from her hit series Hitorijime My Hero, most likely did not find anything to talk about the source material, but tried the best she could to accommodate, and the sorry ass effort of the production staff backfired much.

Characters:
Let's just say that with the boring storyline comes equally boring MCs: namely the curious late-actress Princess of Traumere (it's so weird that she is not given a name, but then again it won't help either), and the 2 main princes (Avi and Kihel) who are like her personal bodyguards, travelling with her on the journey to rid of dream-eaters who are attacking the "many" Princes who have their dreams stolen. Other than that, the character designs are unappealing (female fans cry out loud?).

Art and animation:
I have never expected anything from Project No. 9, much alone their prowess in quality animation. The initial moment this anime appeared in the beginning with no studio representation (in MAL), I fully know the extent that this anime will fly under the radar and be unnoticeable for the future to come. The last time the studio was impressive (by that I mean the highest-registered MAL score) is on Ryuuou no Oshigoto this Winter and Netoge no Yome wa Onnanoko ja Nai to Omotta? in 2016. That should tell you how much quality was sacrificed to input for good storytelling.

Music:
At least this series had the cheek to have a decent OST. Both the OP by Moumoon and the ED by Prince Avi and Kihel are pleasant indeed to listen to. But that's the only good thing to make this series stand out and be noteworthy. Other than that, there is nothing much to say about everything else.

I will say this much: Unless you are a female fan of such anime like this AND are invested in the game, check this out. To the many others, just let this glide through your list, forget all about it and go for others instead.