Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday! Today we welcome back Guest Reviewer Eric P with a spy story. So let us please give him our attention. Take it away, Eric!

Early 20^th-Century Albion (England in this universe) saw the discovery of an anti-gravity substance called Cavorite, making possible the invention of airships and other weapons, enabling Albion power over the rest of the world. This scientific revolution also gave birth to the London Revolution, where the oppressed rose against the elite. As a result the great London Wall was constructed through Albion, separating the Kingdom from the Commonwealth. In this divided world the Commonwealth tasks a special group of teenage female spies with Operation Changeling, to replace the 4^th-in-line princess with one of their own due to their similar appearances and infiltrate the Kingdom. The Princess finds them out, but instead of blowing their cover she instead offers herself as a fellow agent to help in their missions, in exchange for their help in her claiming the throne so she can undertake her own mission in reunifying the country.

Princess Principal is a solid spy action series with creative steampunk elements, and the action scenes are fun enough to watch one does not care how over the top they can get (in the interview booklet of the Premium Edition, the staff admit that if anyone drove the cars of this era like these spies do, they would break apart rather fast). At a glance it may seem like another anime with moe-designed girls as femme fatale heroines, but in this story there really is logic applied to the importance of their age as well as their gender in the missions they get assigned, and they continually prove themselves capable in their unique ways.

There is the big sister of the group, Dorothy, a 20-year-old going undercover as a high-schooler (I swear this must be a self-aware inside joke), and the one who resorts to her assets when the situation calls for it. Chise is the token Japanese samurai whose fish-out-of-water culture clashes make for some humorous moments, but is by no means dumb. Beato, the youngest member and an amateur, proves useful with her artificial voice-mimic box, created from traumatic experiments done by her father. There is Ange, a consistent liar-by-nature who harbors the most deceptive, calculating mind of the group despite her placid demeanor. Then there is the Princess herself, Charlotte, who dons a mask of class and pride but like Ange also hides a calculating mind. It was Ange who was hired to replace Charlotte, but unbeknownst to anyone else the two share a history, and now they hatch a mutual scheme against their own sides to pursue an alternate route to the same goal.

In an ANN interview with director Masaki Tachibana, he was asked if the bond between Ange and Charlotte was meant to be seen as more than friendship, to which he responded, “For that, I say we leave that up to your imagination.” Ask this reviewer, and if you were to watch this series with strict hetero-lens, it is still not easy to pretend that Ange and Charlotte are just mere friends.

After a forced separation due to the revolution, their committed, even single-minded devotion to each other made their reunion happen after ten years. Ange shows her true face to Charlotte, and the very first thing she speaks of is for them to run away from the world and live out their lives together in an isolated house. But Charlotte puts that idea to the side and instead declares her own in restructuring the world so that no wall would ever come between them again. Since then and all through the series the two engage in affectionate talks that differ from the rest of the group (in the interview booklet, one of the staff expressed belief they were straight-up flirting). And in the very last scene of the last episode, Chise says, “I can never picture Ange in a romantic relationship”, to which an annoyed Ange replies with “I’ll have you know…” before she gets cut off. One might say that could imply anything, but watching Ange and Charlotte’s last scenes in the final episode really illustrates their true relationship, especially with the way it was put to the test toward the story’s end.

For those who are dub fans or are at least open to them, Sentai delivers a strong English audio track. There might be listeners who are keener on accents than I am, but speaking for myself the British accents felt true to the story’s time and place while also bringing distinctive charm to the characters. Chise’s Japanese accent in particular felt right without being overdone. The worst one can really say about the dub is the girls sound a bit more mature than their actual ages, which is often typical. Yet for those who feel the girls are a little too near-moe in design for one’s tastes, their older-sounding English voices do kind of help counterbalance that.

While the main story the series tells comes thematically full-circle in the end, the overall story remains inconclusive—the London wall still remains and the enemies our heroines faced against remain in play without getting quite the expansion one would expect, not to mention several other subplots they could have explored. But then, it was announced Princess Principal would continue via a six-part film series due out this very year. We might well get stories filling in the gaps the episodes did not cover, and perhaps a further exploration of Ange and Charlotte if we are lucky.

Ratings:

Art – 9 (they were going for Production I.G.-level quality, and it shows)
Story –8.5 (Told chronologically out of order, and requires suspension of disbelief in many areas—especially with how the spy network actually functions—but still makes up for everything with entertainment value)
Characters – 8.5 (The dynamics are strong and charming and each character gets their moments to shine—although the one episode that may rub viewers the wrong way is where Dorothy tries to find redemption in her past-abusive father)
Service – 3 (Aside from Dorothy’s seductive measures and Ange’s spy outfit that admittedly shows quite some leg, service is rather light. This is one of the rare female-centered action series where the heroines are overdressed rather than underdressed—a rather refreshing change in pace)
Yuri – 3 (the director will not confirm either way, but is openly not against the interpretation that seemed obvious to many viewers)

Overall– 8.5

Both the Japanese and English versions are available to view on HIDIVE and Amazon Prime Video. And, for the compulsive collectors with holes in their pockets (like me, admittedly) the Premium Edition box set comes with a pretty fabric poster, a storyboard book of the first episode, artbook, and near-ridiculously extensive interview book with the crew and cast. Assuming that Sentai will later license the film series, one could even remove the physical goodies and make room for six future blu-ray discs.