4th wall broken
One of the best points this anime had, was that they kept breaking the 4th wall over and over again. It was ridiculous! But it made for a great experience.
Like this one. Until this moment I felt like it would be just your old historical anime, maybe some food porn. But when they pulled out their phones, consoles... I knew I was wrong. Funny, charming and incredibly stupid - that's how I would describe this show if I had nothing bad to say about it.
Talking about the comedy aspect - the torture was one. Of course, you expected it from the teaser, but it is a strange take on what torture really means. Feeling so good it's actually a torture... hmm, interesting take!
If we wanted to get psychological (and let's for a second) it was actually pretty sad. They tortured her with the nicest things and she kept saying how she was "immune" to them because she had a rough training. Wow. Really puts thing into perspective...
And these little boxes were fun as well:
Lovable characters
Let's start with Hell Lord. Maou was soo fun. The way he spoke, the way he showed his character, how good of a person he was, it was so nice to see! To me, it felt really fresh. I loved him as a father and as a husband. He was better than my own parents sometimes, he was just incredible.
His family, Maomao and his wife were so beautiful and so cute. Same goes for Giant. I loved her so much. Torture was... well, I could keep naming. Simply put, the women were beautiful, the girls were fun. Worth mentioning is Youki and Inki's friendship that was slightly homoerotic but so incredibly adorable.
The mysterious knight who tried to save the princess a few times was hilarious. Ex's VA Chikahiro Kobayashi was doing an amazing work and I ate him up every time.
I appreciated almost every character because they all added to the story (even Datarma, Tortura's assistant).
Who I didn't care for much was Kral and Vanilla, whose personalities just didn't sit right with me.
Repetitive to the point I wanted to ... myself
The first episode was sooo good. I had such high hopes. And then after that I wanted to drop it every weak, not wanting to watch any more. It was still the same! Even if the plot itself was different (food, beach episode, fishing, relaxing...) even if we got two or three tortures in one episode, I was just so bored.
There were literal weeks when I had NOTHING to say about the episode, and I talk like crazy.
Which is so rough, because like I said, the comedy of this show was so breezy and clever... It felt awful, not to be able to sit through the whole episode.
It is the reason why I dropped the second cour - I am not going to watch it because I would just suffer. Maybe one day, when I don't know what to do with my life, but not now.
Conclusion: absolutely mixed feelings
While interesting, it has many weak spots. You can go and enjoy it, but if you have higher standards or are expecting some higher level of entertainment you will get burned.
If you know how to relax while watching, Hime-sama is a great way to do it. If you watch anime for action, for drama, for good laughs... this might not be it.