Apart from the Fruits Basket remake, shoujo romance has honestly started to feel more and more like a dying niche these last few years. Shounen romance has been dominating the scene instead, so when I heard of a cutesy old-school shoujo romance directed by the same guy who did One Week Friends airing this season, I was extatic. Extatic to the point that I was willing to ignore multiple warning signs along the way, only to realize I can now feel my own brain actively trying to stop me from pressing play on episode 8...
Bibliophile Princess is about a bookish royal lady that's engaged to the crown prince of a country. They like each other but she's shy about it, other girls want to have him but for some damn reason he treats her like she's God's gift to mankind or something and every now and then they get wrapped up in insufferably boring sociopolitical stuff that I could not for the life of me care to try and follow. (Also I think the second half of the show is building up to some larger conspiracy but I just cannot bring myself to be bothered anymore...)
You would think a show like this would at least make the characters interesting to make up for the lack of plot, but you'd be wrong. Eliana feels like a 13-year-old wattpad writer's Mary Sue self insert. I wouldn't be so mad at the whole smart yet gullible sheltered princess archetype if this damn show was self-aware enough to make her face some sort of consequence for her naïvety, but no: everytime she messes up she's got some pawn there to save the day for her. Hence, her default is passive, polite and inoffensive except if someone dares to even look at a book the wrong way - then the little wallflower suddenly goes badass mode like straight out of a 2011 "don't fck with me, you wouldn't want me to unleash my dark side" tumblr post. And it's not epic or cool. It's embarassing.
Prince Chris has a few decent moments of characterization here and there but really, everybody else barely matters because dialogue that could have been used to establish the personalities of a nice little supporting cast is instead spent explaining historical backgrounds and politics that noone watching this for the romance actually gives a shit about.
One of the saving graces of this show seems to be that it's pretty - at first glance... While the character designs might not be the most original, I do still find them pleasing to look at, especially the many lovingly designed dresses worn by the main character. However, the problem here is that they're obviously made for pictures in a light novel rather than fluid animation. So by the time episode 4 rolls around, movements have become stiff, proportions have gotten wonky, shot composition and camera angles are now boring and even the few action scenes are disorientating and almost impossible to follow. It is also around the same time that the show completely abandons the rule of "show don't tell", so if unlike me you're actually a fan of creative depictions of fantasy politics, forget about it. It's literally just pictures of two people talking with some lip flabs on top of it.
The audio of this show too is all in all forgettable; the opening is cute but nothing special, I have never once bothered to listen to the ending all the way through and I can't remember any track on the OST sticking out to me either. The voice actors' emotional range is extremely limited by the fact that firstly, 99% of the dialogue is dull exposition dumping and secondly, they are for the most part constricted to this frustratingly calm and polite court language that allows for almost no real feelings. Basically, if you want to hear some good Reina Ueda, watch Hanayamata, and if you want to hear some good Ryouhei Kimura, watch Haikyuu; this show will not be the one to sell you on their talent.
I think, what upsets me the most is that this review isn't even coming from a place of hatred (not as long as there's a show about a sentient fcking ASMR microphone airing at the same time...) but rather from a place of disappointment. I wanted to like this so bad, I kept clinging to it because I wanted this to be my new Earl & Fairy, my new Snow White with the Red Hair but it just isn't. I can maybe see someone who is into all those royal palace isekai webtoons giving this a 6 or even a 7 but I've just had enough and will now be learning to be okay with the fact that I have ended up dropping the first promising-looking shoujo romance in years.
