Story: There’s a story here, but you’d barely know that. Our main character Hiro is killed 5 minutes into the show when some steel beams randomly fall from nowhere, and he pushes Hime out of the way, thus saving her. In return, she grants him half-immortality and makes him one of her servants, as apparently here entire family is trying to kill each other over some right of succession. Not that you’d ever know that though, as you effectively see 4 of the siblings in the show, and there is only a single 2-part arc where any of them seriously fight. So, the show revolves around a war between siblings, that isn’t in the show! Outside of that, it’s truly a random monster of the week format, where they introduce some new monster during each episode that our hero’s have to defeat, and half the time, said monsters are sent as assassins by the siblings that you never see, but are supposedly out there trying to kill Hime. This show never, ever, EVER goes anywhere! There’s no more conclusion to the whole sibling war at the end of the show, than there was at the beginning of the show. Actually, you don’t even know how many siblings there are! There could be a thousand, or five, you never know, but by about a third of the way through, you simply won’t care.
Characters: This show’s one claim to fame is that it sports literally the single most useless character in the history of the world! Hiro, Hime’s first servant in the anime, is your average teenage boy, no powers, no martial skills. For some shows, that’s perfectly fine, but in a show where supernatural monsters are trying to kill your boss, normal teenage boys aren’t particularly useful. The only thing he ever really does effectively is throw himself in front of attacks, and DIE! I actually lost track of how many times he dies, and after a short bit, you simply kinda wait for his inevitable death and resurrection. It’s not like any of the other characters are all that useful either though. Riza, the half-werewolf has about two or three episodes where she’s actually useful, most of the rest of the time, she sucks almost as bad as Hiro. There’s the vampire Reiri, but she’s got a reason not to fight almost every time. And then there’s Hime (who goes by that since she’s a Princess and apparently hates her name) who for the life of me, I can’t understand how she’s survived. She’s got no real powers other than granting half-immortality to others, and the first one she goes and does that for, leads her enemies straight back to her half the time. The robots….ugghhhh…if I hear “Huga” one more freaking time! The bottom line, these characters suck! They don’t progress, there’s no depth to any of them. They each boil down to being a single thought regurgitated throughout the entire series. There’s about a half an ounce of personality between ALL of the characters combined, they aren’t likable, and by the end of the show, I was actually rooting for them to die.
Presentation: The music isn’t good, but it won’t make your ears bleed, so I guess that’s a bonus. There really isn’t much else to say about the sound, it’s passable if you aren’t looking to remember it five seconds after it’s passed. The art is not good, but not terrible. The characters are plain and boring, with the princess being the only character that’s remotely interesting, and only because of her eyes. The backgrounds are flat and uninspired, and the colors are pretty much a complete wash. In the end, I suppose it’s all done with competence, and if this show were put together by college students, it’d be alright. There’s very little to keep you interested from an artistic view point. Also, I think this a good place to point out that I did actually buy these from Sentai Filmworks. If these DVD’s are indicative of their work, I’ll never buy their products again, and I will actually highly suggest people simply get fansubs. If you’re only putting out a subtitled product, then your subtitles had better be good. But these aren’t even ACURATE! Characters names are misspelled, there are mistakes and missing letters in the subtitles, and worst of all, the subtitles aren’t even on by default!! It’s a sub only DVD, and you actually have to turn ON the subtitles. Thinking about this makes my head hurt, so I’m moving on.
Enjoyment: There’s none to be had, at all!!
In the end, this is a show that doesn’t quite veer into my depths of truly god-awful, but it’s certainly bad on almost every level. There’s really nothing to keep you interested in watching this show, as the 20th episode is exactly the same as say the 5th, and that’s not a good thing. The characters are dull and boring, if not downright offensive (Hiro’s naturally huge breasted sister borders on mentally handicapped). Even if you were just looking for mindless fan-service, this show wouldn’t deliver. There’s no real story, no character development, sub-par art and music, and no mind-less fun to be had. There’s really nothing redeeming about this show, so simply avoid it, trust me, you’ll be better off for it.
