Name: Starts strong with fun action spycraft, but loses its way with non-chronological episodes and dull, generic politics
Item: Princess Principal
Rating: 55
Author: Kalladry

Waifra

Starts strong with fun action spycraft, but loses its way with non-chronological episodes and dull, generic politics · Waifora

At the end of the 19th century, the Kingdom of Albion has been split into East and West sides by a giant wall. Five girls attend Queen’s Mayfaire, a conventional and prestigious school in London. In the guise of regular high school girls, they act as spies under cover. Disguise, reconnaissance, infiltration, car chases… Each girl uses their own set of special skills to dart around the world of shadow.

So, we have a steampunkish pseudo-England, and spies featuring high school girls. Sounds good, right?

Many of the episodes are just pure fun–this is action!spycraft, not something that really requires subtleties. Even when the girls do things that require a lot of sneaking around (such as getting into top-secret areas), they don’t seem particularly concerned that their faces are seen, or that they can (or should, at least, if anyone thought about it) be identified as teenage girls.

One thing I really disliked was how the episodes are primarily told out of chronological order. It started OK–the first episode just drops us in the middle of a mission and is very entertaining and compelling, and then in episode two we get some backstory and setup. The Wikipedia page actually provides an option to sort episodes by chronological order, which ends up being:

2, 3, 5, 4, 8, 1, 7, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12

While the ending, at least, actually is the ending, it was annoying spending two-thirds of the series trying to determine whether this episode was set before or after the one I’d just watched.

The show is at its best when it’s focused on the characters themselves, and zooming in on a specific plot. I could never remember which Albion side was which, and the show doesn’t flesh out the politics enough to make them interesting, so I thought the bits that had to do with the politics behind the spying, and treasonous plots and whatnot, were boring.

(Unfortunately, this is also the driving force behind the final few episodes, making this a show that ended leaving me more bored than the first few episodes.)

(Like, look at this! This is so much more interesting than secret identities and assassination plots in a church.)

There’s a movie that came out earlier this year (2021) that continues the story, the first of 6 eventual films that pick up where the series left off. I might eventually try to watch the films–if they lean in to the series’ strengths of fun cute girls doing ridiculous fighting feats and have a complete story arc in each film, it’ll work well. But the show didn't leave me enthused about continuing.

I feel a bit bad having such a meh response to the series, when the buzz from various reviewers elsewhere (particularly Anime News Network) seems much more positive, but Princess Principal tried to fit more story into fewer episodes than they needed.

Verdict

English dub? Yes, but not available on Prime where I watched

Visuals: They exist. (Okay, this is another area I’m meh on, as I don’t think they’re standout. Not bad, but I just think most of the main characters have boring designs.)

Worth watching? Maybe. Other reviews I’ve seen online have been more enthusiastic than I feel. It’s the kind of thing I’d recommend if someone already liked its subject matter, but I won’t be rewatching.