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How to have a great night with your fellow nerd friends:

step 1.) skip this damn anime
step 2.) if you happen to fail step one, get yourself some alcohol. This author recommends a dash of malibu coconut rum mixed with some cola.
step 3.) play the following drinking game; http://missfrancesxd.tumblr.com/post/102982668560/diabolik-lovers-drinking-game

Additional rules, in case you really want to forget you ever watched this cinematic crafted piece of well polished but poorly constructed trash can;

1. Drink when:
* Yui is being called any downgrading nickname (e.g. Pancake, Masochistic Kitten)
... * Every time you make a noise in suffering because something unfortunate happened.
* For some reason or another, characters are suddenly in the shot, but you have not been made aware they actually moved to this very location. (Also works for when they leave a shot without explanation).

2. When your friend leaves for whatever reason, keep counting how many sips they have missed. If they missed too many, they have to down a whole glass in one go.

3. Once you start this anime and you are drinking, you have to finish it within this very session. (Suffer, then find your salvation.)

- - -

REVIEW (it's mandatory, here we go)

[ Story ]
There is none, plus the ending is left open for when a third season might be made. Hopefully never, expectation tragically happening.

[ Art ]
It's okay. Screenshots look fine. Animation is non-existent. You really got to exercise your noodles and imagine them jumping from a car. Fantastic. The anime is full with opportunities for brain growth. It's like I am playing Brain Academy all over again.

[ Sound ]
Voice actors are nice, but they unfortunately have bad lines. You are allowed to blame the alcohol, but I don't remember anything of the songs or background music.

[ Character ]
Designs are nice. Characterization could be better. Every new vampire is introduced and has an episode dedicated to them. Following this pattern of events precisely:
1.) They are an asshole
2.) We see their tragic backstory with help of a neat montage of a flashback
3.) You are supposed to pity them
4.) Yui feels sympathy for them despite the fact she did not experience this flashback
5.) You do not care

[ Enjoyment ]
Nobody wanted to watch this sober. Even with some alcohol, there were moments I wanted to commit sudoku. I had an existential crisis-- maybe five, actually. Perhaps the best part of this experience was walking away and returning to being told you have to down the whole glass of malibu cola you had left.

[ Overall ]
We do not recommend this experience, especially if you are not of legal drinking age, but I am a simple drunk reviewer on MyAnimeList.com with a personal vendetta against these god forsaken vampires.

- - -

I am not very sober, but that's how life is. Suck you laAaAaater

A disappointment at its finest. Even if you're a puzzle lover, fluent in both Japanese and English; I doubt you would enjoy this anime.

I am going to summarize my review because this anime is not worth anyone's time in my opinion:

- Boring story telling structure. You quickly realize that each puzzle takes 2 episodes for it to have introduced setting, characters and solution. It was so predictable that I stopped watching it every week and just watched it two episodes at a time.
- A 90 second opening for a 7 minute episode. Every. Single. Time. This just made me angry. What happened to "being short ... on time" because the main character can't get to a puzzle and solve it in the very same episode?
- Characters are not memorable. I already forgot their names.
- No character development.
- Animation is very mediocre. Low quality compared to any other anime.
- I think there was an attempt at humour at certain points, but I never laughed.
- A potential rival gets introduced in episode 9. You think that this might make things a little more interesting, but she never shows up again.
- I am going to be honest: I forgot how the series ended. That was how much it lacked significance.
- And I cannot express how much I hated the outfits in Quizzun. Shameless attempt at fan service that even my lesbian ass could not appreciate.


How I think the series could have been better. Several possibilities:

1. Make every puzzle span one episode. It's not like they expect the viewers to solve it themselves anyway. (Or do they? I found it highly unlikely.)

2. More character! More character development! I know nothing about the main character except that she likes hanging with the other girls, loud movies, puzzles and that she maybe had a boyfriend before.

3. Introduce the rival earlier and make her actually mean something. Not just "that hot ex-cabaret girl who SURELY sucked up to someone to get her job."

4. Maybe. Maybe get a cuter or funnier or more memorable mascot character. I feel nothing towards the pig/rabbit mascot. Sorry. I feel like they could have shown a talking glass of milk and I would have shown more emotion.

5. Get a bit more into showing the background story for Quizzun and its purpose. Why was that pig/rabbit collecting Q-stones? Who knows! What is Quizzun? Not sure. Did someone die yet? No!!! I wish! That would have maybe made things more interesting!


And there you have it. Please don't watch this anime. If you really want good short anime, then I recommend something like Nyanpire, Aggressive Retsuko or Space Patrol Luluco. You will have a much better time. I promise.

This movie is mostly a recap of Selector Infected WIXOSS and Selector Spread WIXOSS. It greatly reduced my enjoyment of the movie.

A few new things are introduced throughout the movie, with a focus on certain characters. To be honest, I didn't understand those parts because the rest of the movie bored me to the point I lost concentration.

I would say the last 20 minutes were worth watching and I highly enjoyed them. The ending of the movie didn't contain recap scenes and made a beautiful final to the series.

From the POV of a fan who watched the two series just two months ago, I think ... I would have enjoyed the movie more if it left out the recap scenes/narration and put the rest together in a +/- 30 minute film.

So in short, I liked the story, but I didn't like how all of it was presented with so many old scenes.

(Bonus points: the ending song of the movie is crazy good. I LOVE it.)

A poor adaption of its highly likable cousin, the manga, Princess Princess is an anime that makes you suffer completely throughout it and is something you should probably watch with your friends to be able to endure.

I had decent expectations of this anime at first. Especially since the manga is one of my favourites of all time -- (I mean, who can resist Taishi Zaou's humour? It's just FABULOUS) -- and let's face it, Studio Deen is a great studio in itself too. There are so many elements to this that could have made it great.

The story starts out OK, presenting the same premise ... that the manga had shown, with some minor tweaks. The corner room in the dorms is now the P-room, the head of the dorm is apparently a senpai and... I don't recall Mikoto showing up in a dress at the very beginning? Since it's something only done for events and the like, but whatever.

Everything would have been fine if Studio Deen didn't decide on mixing up story lines and arcs just to fit every good moment they wanted into the anime. It's understandable, but surprising and didn't do the anime well. Characters get minimized or exaggerated as the story goes on and certain events lose their meaning in the progress.



[--- SKIP THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS ---]

Examples of this are:

Sayaka's episodes are over the top and that says a lot, since she was an extreme character already. Why does she threaten to throw herself off a hill? How did she get to accepting Tooru and Yuujirou together if only days/moments before she was tormenting Yuujirou endlessly for being Tooru's "boyfriend"?

Why did Yuujirou's family unexpectedly show up at the school festival? Why not make Tooru come along with Yuujirou to visit them at his home? The fact he traveled so far at Yuujirou's request in the manga made it extra significant. Heck, even Yuujirou's mom wondered in an extra comic if Tooru was his boyfriend because of that. "Do you think they are dating...? No one would travel that far for just a friend, right? And lately Yuujirou has been sparkling --" [a reference to the princess smile] "... It's what love does to someone, I suppose..."

And I can't believe how flat Tooru's decision at the end of the anime was (episode 12). Why was the whole school there to cheer? Why did all the other characters even know and meddle with this? And how come Studio Deen missed out on a chance to incorporate the Very Gay Scene™ between Tooru and Yuujirou if they skipped various story lines to get there? They could have animated Tooru telling Yuujirou "I wanted to hear it from you the most... that you would miss me."

Anyway, enough about how Studio Deen tried to gay it up and hecked up in the progress. I could talk about it forever.

[--- SPOILERS END HERE ---]



Continuing, I thought the art of the anime wasn't great. It might have been decent for a 2006 anime, but it still had a lot of still scenes, chibis and lack of action. Maybe it's not fair to compare it to BONES anime, but I thought FullMetal Alchemist (2003) and Ouran High School Host Club (2006) were a lot better in terms of animation in that time. Not that I expect a lot of budget for an anime like this.

Which brings me to the genre: shoujo. I was okay with the mangaka calling the Princess Princess manga a shoujo because it was acceptable. Okay, it felt a bit fake, but it wasn't like she was particularly aiming for it to be shounen-ai. Gay moments aside, of course.

But Studio Deen? MAN, THEY UPPED THEIR GAME. "This is a shoujo anime" they whisper, as they show the ending with only Tooru and Yuujirou, while dressing them up... can I just say "gay". I screamed "WHAT THE F*** IS THIS" when the ending first came up because it was so random and ... gay. I have no other words to describe it. And let's face it: Mikoto would be relieved to be left out of that ending. If Tooru and Yuujirou are just going to be sexy photoshoot models pretending to be a couple, then Mikoto wouldn't want to be a part of it.

Poor Mikoto is always left out. Do I even pity him or feel relief for him in this anime? I don't know anymore.

Either way, the music of this anime was okay. I don't even know what to say about the opening and ending songs anymore. I just experience second hand embarrassment with those. The songs are pretty good though, really. I just can't believe they were put with this anime.

Characters are... decent? They had strong source material to back them up, if that makes sense. As much as was possible with the jumbled story lines, the characters were as OK as they could be in that situation. Aside from Sayaka, I don't feel like they deviated too much from the manga. Though Yuujirou acted out of character in a few occasions too, but whatever.


Let's just end this review and say I didn't enjoy this anime. I'm not even funny. I just wanted to whine and complain about a failed adaption of a manga I liked to bits.

Please do read the manga though. I promise it's great and more consistent and logical. If you like the idea of BL, then it will be GREAT as well. Because who doesn't think Yuujirou is into Tooru? And if you don't like BL... then that's probably fine too. I've seen a lot of comments around of people who said "I don't want them to be gay... but I think they would fit great together? xD"

Honestly, do whatever you like. Sorry for comparing this to the manga so much and I'm sorry if you actually liked this anime a lot. If you liked it, then that's great! I'm glad you did.

I'm just relieved that I'm released from Puri Puri Hell now.

Au revoir Puri Puri. Thanks for letting me write a review at 1 AM.