How many times can a magical girl save the world? And how many times can she fail? How many powers can there be to learn, how many people can she save? The answer to all, too many, and a question that Shamanic Princess begs not to solve, but to add, in a lightning pan-flash of a moment, done-in-six-episodes, no-bake O(riginal)V(ideo)A(nimation) from the 90’s!
See, Shamanic Princess does what I’m a sucker for - starting in media res, smack dab in the center of it all, and expanding outward from there. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a charm in over-long explanations of powers, because when they finally delve into the depths of battle it makes it all the more satisfying, even as they’re naming out attacks from the “you don’t quite know what they do still”s! But your Hunter X Hunters and Jojo’s-es are very different than Shamanic Princess. It has these spiritual, familiar partner-like beings that you get the gist of, and that’s all you gotta know. The gist!
It’s surprising then, at how much depth Shamanic gets into…if not with its explicit text, with its atmosphere, the manual nature of it all, the rugged rigamarole of dressing yourself up in a suit to save the world, and knowing you’re the only one that can save it. Something about magical girls in this mundanity, these painted, almost liminal spaces, no, liminal indeed, because, outside of school, there’s no one to occupy the spaces - these characters are left in this bleak, barren world that only they belong to, that no one else can enter, and it’s a confusing one at that. The Hell is the Throne of Whatever?! What’s the true evil threatening the life of an old friend? In rifts of never-ending school drama, when it comes down to brass tax, who’s good and who’s evil?!
I’m making the show sound more desperate than it is. Be warned! It contains thick slices of 90’s cheese: from a talking ferret (recalling CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura?) to form-fitting latex and Devilman transformations, this show’s exactly what it seems to be in those ways! But equally is it in so many, not! So surprising is the storytelling, flipping between odd tranquil intermezzos, that (if confusing) riddle the plot with more complications it just becomes this massive conglomerate bursting at the seams with ideas, spells, expressions, and tonal intricacies that you couldn’t get out of anything but a 90’s OVA! Ramped up drama, funny lines and slick storytelling combine into one helluva package….that ends, on the fourth episode.
The OVA has six total.
What follows is this two episode sojourn, an odd dissection of itself, a unnecessary explanation of how things came to be, but an intriguing one, a footnote in the grander narrative that not only adds to the weight of it all before, but makes it weighty in the moment. Be it ritual dances, old partners, shattered masks or beams of light, Shamanic Princess takes stride in its lengthened runtime and expands the world far beyond its original horizons.
Don’t get me wrong, the product would’ve been fine “AS-IS”…this classic supernatural blitzkrieg into a world gone dark, a rescue for a kidnapped soul, full of twists and turns, yet devoid of further context. But it’s with that extra bit of context that fluffs Shamanic Princess out into an entrancing entity. Gone are the flickering city lights, they’re brushed away with softly bouncing tree leaves, centuries-old monasteries, and snappy summer wind.
The denotation of seasons physically transporting us before the “storm”, before the “fall”, before it all went down - the simpler times. The characters talk as we remember them, sure, but it’s all layered in a sense of naivety. They aren’t who we know them to be yet. Tiara struggles to gain her footing in her magical studies, cranking through a dripping inferiority complex you can almost see, from her over-devotion to studies and neglect of her partners. The rival-to-be Lena’s got the same chiding tone as ever, but she’s not so heartbreaking - something made her that cutting ice queen. Love interest pretty boy Kagetsu is scattered, away in his own mind, scrambling all over the place to recover the sister he’s already lost. Everyone’s tripping over themselves, and it’s these events here that we see that’ll lead to the plot we know now.
Steep it all in this unforgiving magical world, and it gets messy real quick. From diabolical underworld plots to kidnappings and trite drama, I’m utterly taken by just how much is packed into each of these thirty-minute chunks. By the end of Shamanic Princess, we’re back where we begun, but it feels like we’ve been around the world. By ending where we start, it creates this loop, this cycle, this feeling that “here we go again” the characters are bound to this path, shackled to this destiny. Born to lose and damned if they don’t try anyway.
Everyone in Shamanic Princess is utterly horrible at casting magic. Everyone in Shamanic Princess is utterly horrible at communication, everyone is horrible with context clues, they’re non-intelligent dips that fall into something larger than themselves. And that’s okay, and it’s funny, and it’s all just exactly how magic would be if real people got their hands on the stuff!
I think it’s easy to get lost in painting superficial niceties - we all want to be the best versions of ourselves. These superheroes, these illustrious idols we’ve cooked up in our minds to be the peak of the self. Never, though, are there focuses on the process, the journey. Shamanic Princess is one of the few that shows its characters making these mistakes, messing up spells, letting toxic relationships fester, ignoring blatant issues, and to hell with the world because “I just feel a little lost right now” (our protag Tiara’s so, so good at that last part).
Everyone’s a damned, wishy-washy, dramatic mess.
It’s all sloppy, and no Shakespeare, but the spirit, oh the spirit! The overwhelming sincerity behind every zipper snap, hair tuck and scream slams into this video conglomeration of a kid’s sketchbook - a world all encompassing, that reaches far beyond itself, promising a world so huge and so abrasive that the less than perfected scratches aren’t flaws - they’re a feature. There’s something so sweet in something so slapdash, so heart-on-the-sleeve, and that’s Shamanic Princess. Complete creativity in a six episode box.
