Princess Principal

“When you create a web of lies, you'll inevitably trap yourself and become everyone's meal instead”- someone, somewhere, sometime

Princess Principal is an unorthodox title to be sure. Steampunk, non-linear storytelling, and rule of cool. Sounds like it should've been a winner, but it was a case doomed to fail as soon as it set out, exposing itself rather quickly as a fraud and a disaster. It's stupid, it's uncool, and most of all, it's insulting. It tried desperately to confuse you and come off as smart and then it tries to patronize you.

Princess Principal is the condescending and obnoxious dreck from the same team ... that gave us one of last year’s most crushing disappointments, Izetta the Last Witch. As blasphemous as this sounds, that show was still better than this one in every single way. Keep in mind, Izetta was sort of a train wreck and plenty were hurt by its unkept promises despite the setting and premise. However, it's like this show decided to do it one worse yet still be seen as better. Let the truth be heard, let this series be exposed for its lies, and let it be cannibalized and demonized for ruining my hopes and dreams of having a better Izetta, just like with Youjo Senki only half a year prior! Let me, the man it deceived the cruelest, have my vengeance, for the lies end here!

Case ST 2

When a narrative starts out on such an awful foot as to have narrator exposition of the past as the opening scene and then have a bunch of asspull revelations and stupid moments (few of which ever come to make sense later), then your narrative needs to do a lot to make a recovery. It never does. In fact, those asspull revelations are occasionally present, like the ballerina revelation in episode 1. It tries to play itself as smart by creating information (that it claims that we missed) out of thin air; that obviously not smart. It does this a few times and it's annoying every time. The technology doesn't make any sense either and is poorly explained. Apparently, there is this C-ball that the main character has and at one point they try to steal the prototype that was just finished, except they already have the original so that officially makes no sense. Lastly, the factions are insanely difficult to keep up with thanks to how the executed their non-linear storytelling, and we don't even k is which side between the commonwealth and the royals is the east or west side.

As stated earlier, this show treats you like an idiot. The asspull revelations that never add up aren't the only example of this. Hell, they're not even the most egregious. What’s more egregious is the fact that this show constantly beats you over the head. Every single episode, the show constantly drives home the fact that spies lie and that they're not good people, as well as that everyone always lies. More than 5% of the total dialogue is centered around these three things. The dialogue is so condescending and terrible overall, and with all this thrown in the pot, it's just an especially big insult to the audience's intelligence. “Did you know that spies are liars?” Gee, I sure did, hell, so did everyone watching. You don't have to remind us constantly. Anywhere between 3 and 25 times an episode, especially in the early episodes. Not everyone knows when they're being mocked or patronized but when you realize that it's happening to you, it's aggravating, so a show shouldn't ever do that to the viewer, who is maybe trying to use this as an escape from reality. Instead, Princess Principal, how about you instead focus on telling a coherent story and SHUT THE FUCK U-

Lying is bad

That being said, there are times where you can see a glimmer of hope in the narrative. As predictable as episode 6 is, the finale and tragic irony of the song to the situation at hand is brilliant, almost reminiscent of some of the other works this writer has worked on, specifically the final scene of the 23rd episode of Code Geass, a personal favorite. This series, especially in the second half, starts actually trying to elicit emotion, but it's not always effective at it. Sure there are good moments like episode 7 which was the only really solid episode of the show barring some of 6, but then we get episode 8 which while that did provide context to some scenes from earlier, it actually reveals another problem and missed opportunity in episode 2, one of the worst of the series; this isn't even speaking of the embarrassingly bad and mind-numbingly stereotypical episode 9 which feels like it would normally be a sappy kids show episode that also patronizes the audience. In a way, it's almost trying to be the reverse Izetta where instead of starting off decently and turning to complete shit later on, it starts off horrendously and gets better later, except it stumbles as that hallways through the second half anyway and ends up back where it started. Too little too late comes to mind. Besides, the finale is a sequel bait disaster anyway and anytime the show takes a step forward, it takes a stab back as well.

Case C 2

With the exception of Ange and Charlotte, none of the characters have any semblance of chemistry. Hell, none of the are memorable. Their personalities are beyond basic and not-fleshed out or progressed at all. There is no one worth giving a damn about, for they are so lifeless and static. If this show I supposed to be a rule of cool series, why does only one character try for this angle (the girl with the tits), and why isn't it one of the more prominent characters? They're so plain and tired, and one of them, names Beatrice, starts out especially bad and hypocritical. She’s the typical “princess loli bodyguard” trope except more annoying, and then she becomes a mod benign version of this exact same trope with little to no progression. Hell, all of these people are little more than tropes! The two “best” characters are Ange and Dorothy. Dorothy because she tries at rule of cool and she’s hot (and she actually has an explored past), and Ange because she has this weird thing about the Black Lizard Planet she keeps lying about nonchalantly. Oh, and she and this princess kinda sorta love each other...I suppose. Reasonings loosely related to it are dumb though. Regardless fact that such straws need to be grasped just to say something interesting about these characters is proof of their failure as a cast. This isn't even speaking of the other characters that come later, since they're not worth mentioning and they exacerbate this issue.

Case A 4

The show’s visuals do not fare much better. Studios Actas and 3Hz did a joint effort for this project, and if nothing else, they were consistent...ly bad.The Light Novel default artstyle aggravates and does not look appealing in the slightest, and the designs range from mediocre to abysmal, with the worst being Chise’s design. The rest of the art looks decent and occasionally pretty detailed, like with the C-ball, and that's the only praise I'll give the visuals. The animation is ok at best, though the fights are pretty badly choreographed. The CGI ranges from mediocre (for the cars) to abysmal (for the people) and there is even a moment with a CGI room for the foreground and background and it causes a long 7 seconds of bad slowdown (what is it with anime that have CGI and slowdown and why are all of them always shitty anime?). When we see rads backgrounds in situations of motion, or any time for that matter, they look terrible, and so does the photorealistic backgrounds of the school garden, which you will see from time to time. Shame since the steampunk-esque setting is an interesting one in terms of potential visuals yet these don't warrant much merit.

Case SO 6

One of the most renowned composers in the industry, Yuki Kajiura did the music for this anime. This is honestly one of the weaker OSTs I've experinced from her to date. The songs are mostly pretty reserved and thus aren't very memorable, and the few that are more blaring and interesting aren't nearly of the same quality of some of the best tracks of her other works, like the SAO and Fate/Zero OSTs. The tracks are repeated quite often too to make matters worse. The OP, "The Other Side of the Wall" by Void_Chords feat.MARU, is easily one of the best of the season. It emphasizes rule of cool and is filled with the frantic energy that makes you pumped to watch each episode of the show, as awful as this show is; it is the only real good thing I could find in this show, which is unfortunate. The ED, "A Page of My Story" by Ange (Ayaka Imamura), Princess (Akira Sekine), Dorothy (You Taichi), Beatrice (Akari Kageyama), Chise (Nozomi Furuki), fares nowhere near as well, as contrarian as this apparently sounds. It is an ok enough track on its own but intro in particular gives me major mood whiplash every time I finish an episode. Overall, it was a decent enough repertoire of music but little was special and it was honestly underwhelming on the whole.

Case E 3

This show was very difficult to enjoy. The action wasn't even that competent, the characters were unbelievably dull and bad, the plot was wrecked beyond belief, and the show treats the audience like a dunce. The most enjoyment I got out of it was listening to the OP theme by you can do that as well as engage in the full version without having to see the show anyway. Not to say that the experience was heinous but it was continually frustrating and I am left bitter for it.

Case O 3

With that, the case is closed. Princess Principal is hereby found guilty of lying about being a good show, treating its audience like an imbecile, being caught so far up a web of lies and lack of proper establishing that everything is convoluted, and all around being a massive disappointment. For a rule of cool show, this didn't even try that hard in any aspect, even visually or musically, and for a show of emotion, it shot itself in the foot almost every time it tried. It's off to the cellar, Princess Principal; good riddance.

Princess Principal is a show I would have been unlikely to put high priority on watching, but the fact that a bunch of people I knew were planning to watch and review it instantly got it on the table for me. While I was far too slow to join them, I nonetheless made sure to push through later, and here we are. And Princess Principal's concept IS interesting enough. You don't really get a lot of anime spy shows, for example. The recent Joker Game anime, which I still need to watch, was one of the first examples to come to my head. Joker Game, ... from what I saw, looked a bit underwhelming, so I went into Princess Principal hopeful it would be better.

Princess Principal's chief issue lies in the characters, as there is absolutely no character development throughout its twelve episode run time. Each character gets at least one background one shot story to give you an idea of how they joined the team or got to where they are, but they are essentially never relevant to the plot (Beatrice's in particular is barely even seen, let alone matters) and do not end up driving much of anything or even giving us much more of a sense of the characters. Chise's is the closest and it is still mostly tepid, although it at least has a full and complete self contained story...and then she got another generic focus episode that served solely to show off characters you don't care about who will never appear again and stuff you already knew!

I like the idea of how the background stories were structured, starting us with the team on a mission already and then slowly showing us how they got here while mixing in more present episodes, but the fact that these backstory episodes are totally lacking in substance just kills the concept in the crib. The princess was just about the only character I thought was interesting, although she is a pretty unrealistic character, because her episodes were executed somewhat different than normal via the latter episodes. It was more tied into the overall story than the one shots and offered more character insight in the process. Can't go into too much detail here since it'd be a spoiler, although you will most likely figure out what happened by the end of the second episode.

The overall series plot is only barely existent, with the series largely consisting of one shots and an ending 2-parter. The 2-parter would have definitely benefited from some foreshadowing. It wouldn't be hard to tie more of the one shots in to it when almost none do. For example the episode about smuggling nerve gas through could have instead been about smuggling through some materials which are used in the final episode. You know, basic stuff. Granted, the finale isn't good either and has one of the goofier villain exits I've seen as they escape the plot after suffering a minor setback.

The one shots aren't that great either and suffer from an issue that the first episode already kind of tries to spell out (albeit trying to spin it as a good thing) and which is obvious from just watching 1-2 episodes more: Nearly every episode of this show is going to have some kind of plot twist shoehorned into it. Once the viewer understands this, almost every episode becomes painfully predictable as despite the show trying to sell you on "twists" it never really tries to be inventive, do anything new or even execute what it does in a manner that advances the characters. I wouldn't mind the lack of inventiveness if not for the last point, as the execution is pretty much boring and expected without using it to enhance the show. Episode 6 was the height of this to me: Unless you either have somehow not gotten what this show is about at that point or have never seen this style of plot before, you will figure out exactly what is going to happen at least halfway through the episode if not sooner. It was extremely disappointing and going for a different ending which could further Dorothy's character would have made it much more engaging.

This is compounded by the fact that this is one of those series where all of the characters are unbelievably competent and thus makes it difficult to feel tension in scenes. Most of the time, their plots don't even go all that wrong and thus there is not a lot of challenge felt: There are a pair of recurring antagonists so forgettable I don't even remember their names and they always come off as less competent than the show presents them due to repeatedly losing and being foiled in frequently easy ways. When the show tries to end on a stinger of them preparing for future conflicts, it is difficult to take them seriously due to this. For an idea of how unbelievably competent some characters are, the backstory of one says that they cannot read or write, but that they then learned NINE LANGAUGES...without anyone helping them. While also learning about 10 other listed things! It completely destroys any willing suspension of disbelief when it is so outrageous, especially since the setting otherwise plays out as somewhat realistic but with some ill defined magitech.

If there's one thing Princess Principal did solidly enough, it was the art and sound. All of the girls are reasonably cute, the background art is at times fairly pretty, it has a very victorian feel to it mixed with some industrial stuff, so if nothing else that works. The CGI on the other hand is pretty hit or miss. Stuff like the car is usually fine if sometimes a bit jarring, but the last car chase scene for example looks pretty bad (the CGI train made me laugh for a bit, which is not what you want from your dramatic heart pounding scene usually!). The soundtrack was a bit more forgettable, but there were some decent background tracks and the OP and ED are solid. Overall, this was one area where Princess Principal largely felt reasonable.

I was honestly somewhat surprised by how much I disliked this series by the end of it. It started off fairly standard and I thought it would be some general 4-6 star anime fodder. Instead the complete lack of character progression, lackluster one shot plots, lack of an overarching story and absence of tension completely stifled the show for me and left it a pointless slog. I would recommend avoiding this anime unless you are a hardcore spy fan (although you might even be more annoyed by me at how lackluster it is if you're hardcore into the genre), have some character design or part of the concept really jump out or simply want to watch as much anime as possible.