Princess Principal
a review by R2R
a review by R2R
And then you have, Cute Girls doing Spy things, which is "Princess Principal".
Princess Principal is an Espionage Anime in an alternate London where the gentlemen finally realized that cute girls are the most deceiving things in the world because they aren't real, and made them spies to do spy things. As someone who watches SoL a lot and finds almost every cute girl in SoL to be the most delightful thing to watch, seeing an Anime with cute & cool girls is kinda refreshing for me. While this is a refreshing thing to watch, it certainly couldn't keep up with it's interesting take. So, let's talk about the show.
It's an Espionage action Anime and it does this so well, despite having cute girls. When I hear the term "Cute Girls", my mind instantly goes to that comfy side of things and I find it really interesting how well the Anime pulled off the serious tone while constantly reminding that these are infact just cute girls. There's no light hearted fluff, no moe bullshit and not many Anime-ish tropes to make me roll my eyes. It presents itself as a "Action/Mystery with cute girls" and it doesn't waver from that.
She's the first character you see as you enter the show and I was so captivated by her presence. Like just look at this clip from the opening!
It goes like this, if you wanna know.
Case 01 - Episode 02
Case 02 - Episode 03
Case 07 - Episode 05
Case 09 - Episode 04
Case 11 - Episode 08
Case 13 - Episode 01
Case 16 - Episode 06
Case 18 - Episode 07
Case 20 - Episode 09
Case 22 - Episode 10
Case 23 - Episode 11
Case 24 - Episode 12
Non-linear narrative, means it shows events out of chronological order which generally makes it a little confusing to watch. While I do find it interesting, I think this just made this unnecessarily confusing. Now, I'm NOT saying "confusing=bad", but I really thought it's unnecessary. Like, from episode 1 to 8, you follow the individual story of each character from the team revealing little things or backstories about them. If it's just wanna explore characters, it can do that with normal narrative and it possibly doesn't change anything. After episode 8, the Anime felt like, it's getting a little generic. With a somewhat of a recap, a filler that added nothing to the plot or characters and completely stopped using Non linear narrative & went with the normal flow of time in the final episodes. I think, non linear narrative is useful (or more interesting), when the focus is on the plot instead of characters. And this brings me to the next problem.
Despite having such an intriguing setting, the world isn't really well thought. The organizations came off really poor political parties without making them interesting whatsoever. The princess said she's the 4th in line up for the throne, then where are the first 3? Are the others not planning to do something to claim the throne or do they even exist? The Non linear narrative just used as a cheap trick to make sure that it looks like it's an actually "well written plot" when in reality, it's far from that.
There isn't really nothing great about the art style, you can even call it as generic but I found it pretty good. It makes sure the girls look cute & cool and males look boring & sometimes even ugly (I need equality! xD). Character designs are pretty OK. While Ange looks cool, remaining are just so-so. And characters are pretty OK too. They stick to the variety of cute girls trope you see in any CDGCT Anime, but they came off pretty good.
The fights in this are enjoyable. They aren't well choreographed, as you expect from an action show but they do a good job at keeping the entertaining value. There are guns, swords, bombs and some sci-fi tech that defies gravity. As far as action and entertainment goes, it does a good job at not loosing the viewership. There's some CGI in it, but thankfully that was taken care well enough to not interfere with what's happening.
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