Archive for the Guest Review Category


Yuri Manga: Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl Volume 8 (English) Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc

April 17th, 2019

Welcome back to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we have a special Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc of 3DComics! His love for Kiss & White Lily is infectious. Let’s all be whisked away by his enthusiasm!

“Love is not gazing at each other, but looking in the same direction together.”

So opens Volume 8 of Canno’s Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl from Yen Press (translation by Leighann Harvey, lettering by Alexis Eckerman), and it’s as romantic a spin as can possibly be put on this volume’s tsundere vs. tsundere cover stars. Hikari Torayama (reddish-brown hair, Tiger type, Ayaka analogue with her long hair and headband) and Nagisa Tatsumi (silver hair, Dragon type, Yurine analogue with her cool personality) are rivals for the position of Student Council President. Who can’t stand each other. And who also, as luck would have it, live together – a twist of fate has landed Hikari as a guest in Nagisa’s house. We need this plot device to force them to spend time together, because otherwise they’d avoid each other like the plague and we’d have a different pair of girls on the cover. Which would be a shame, because once I got over the fact that these two are not going to be acting lovey-dovey and give me anything to swoon over, I started to enjoy their relationship, which exists as a mirror for Ayaka and Yurine. Ayaka and Yurine are rivals who want to be more than just that, while Hikari and Nagisa can’t think of anything they’d rather be than rivals with each other. “Even if we stop being rivals someday…we might eventually see eye-to-eye,” Ayaka tells Hikari…”But just as classmates, of course!” she adds, still in denial.

The Tao of Canno

It’s easy to suppose how Canno came up with Hikari and Nagisa – start with the idea of tsundere vs tsundere, and then inform their personalities and rivalry with Tiger vs. Dragon, the eternally-opposed yin and yang of Taoist mythology (the kanji in Hikari’s last name means “tiger” and “mountain,” while Nagisa’s means “dragon” and “sea”). Both are symbols of strength, of course, and both girls dominate over the rest of Seiran High School: they excel in academics, they’re in competition for Student Council President, and they feel ‘larger than life’ compared to everyone else; they’re the boss characters, if Kiss & White Lily were a video game brawler (now there’s a thought!). Of Tiger traits, Hikari demonstrates protection: “She’s good at taking care of people.” She’s concerned about the smaller, more vulnerable clubs, and picks up after Nagisa at home. Of the Dragon traits, Nagisa demonstrates prosperity: she favors the larger clubs, and acknowledges that “My family is relatively well off.” They hang out on the forbidden school roof a lot (the heavens); naturally, the little white cat they’re looking after together adores Hikari and hates Nagisa. Maybe they complement each other, maybe they even need each other, but it’s no accident that we don’t see them exchanging chocolates in next volume’s Valentine’s Day back-up story. All the same, through their three chapters together, it’s fun not only watching them bicker, but also seeing how they react whenever something threatens to send them in different directions.

Our Returning Champions, Ayaka and Yurine

The book opens with Ayaka considering her own run at the presidency, which organically introduces our cover stars who go on to enjoy the spotlight in the next three chapters. Yurine has started to act goofy and awkward around Ayaka, a result of her growing and changing feelings towards her, especially after Ayaka helped her out of her depressive episode last volume. She’s torn between wanting to support her friend, knowing she could help the school as much as she helped her, but also knowing she won’t get to see as much of her if she wins. When Ayaka tells her her decision concerning the elections, it helps Yurine realize her true feelings for her, and grow out of her selfish and simplistic ‘deredere’ (constantly, clingingly affectionate) archetype. She can finally be honest with herself, something Ayaka is still struggling with when we see them again in the fifth and final chapter.

Speaking of this last chapter, Ayaka’s cousin and roommate Mizuki has had just about enough of Ayaka’s blitheness. She’s graduating soon, and, having been her emotional support for the past several years, wants to make sure Ayaka will have someone she can talk to after she’s gone. When she realizes that Ayaka still doesn’t even have so much as Yurine’s phone number, she demands that she asks her for it first thing in the morning, later hinting that she needs to be way more honest with herself.

It isn’t until the walk home from school that day that Ayaka finally does clumsily take the next step, managing to ask Yurine for her number. She tells her “Sorry. I kept you waiting too long” when she makes her miss her crosswalk light, but I think it’s meant to apply to more than just that.

This entire chapter, Yurine has been the model example of supportive. She knows Ayaka’s been trying to tell her something, and gently gives her the opportunity. Instead of making a huge embarassing deal out of getting her number, she just lets her know that she can call her anytime. Which is good, because Ayaka’s mom phones her that very night, triggering one of those depressive episodes that Mizuki was so worried about. Yurine handles it like a frigging champ, though. She didn’t really know what she was doing when she helped her out of a similar episode in vol.5 (we see an allusion to this episode on this chapter’s title page), but between that experience, and the help she got from Ayaka last volume, she’s become the epitome of everything you’d want in a friend helping you out when you’re at your lowest.

Lastly, we’re treated to two bonus stories at the end of the book. I didn’t really need an origin story for how Nagisa was recruited into the student council, but it did at least give Canno an excuse to bring back the eternally beleagured treasurer from vol.3 (who Yukina kept butting heads with…she even gets a name in this volume!). The other story brings back Amane, Ryou and Nina, the cover stars from vol.6, to show where the little white cat came from.

In fact, there’s a ton of returning characters this volume, obscure and otherwise: Rika “not good with her hands” Kouno is in one panel, who was only ever in two pages in vol.4. Tsubasa and Karin appear in one panel at the dorm, who likewise were only ever on two pages from vol.2 (Tsubasa was the one who accidentally locked Chiharu and Maya in the dorm’s storeroom together). We see members of the public relations committee again from vol.5, and, charmingly, their club sign that’s still only taped up over the more permanent “science” placard underneath. Characters who had leading roles in previous volumes play supporting roles here as well (we only get the back of Izumi’s head in one panel, but she’s there!). Not only does this provide more of an ensemble feel for the book, but it’s a good bit of world-building that makes Seiran High School feel more ‘real’ and lived-in. Further realism is established via small details like how Nagisa has a ‘lazy’ version of her hairstyle when she’s lounging at home, and how she and Hikari are on a first-name basis, sans honorifics, when noone else is around. This all makes re-reads a lot more interesting for me, because it always feels like I’m catching some small detail or other that I hadn’t noticed before. We’ll be seeing more adherence to continuity, as well as progress on Ayaka and Yurine’s relationship, in the penultimate Volume 9, due out very soon on May 21st, 2019 from Yen Press.

Ratings

Art – 7 I feel so petty bringing this up, but the English edition again uses significantly thicker blacks than the Japanese version, which causes tones and shading to suffer on occasion. Worse, however, are the jpeg compression artifacts visible on the front and back covers. As for the art itself, it is as detailed and charming as ever. Hair in particular has a great deal of definition and shading, rendering it with a great deal of volume and depth, and the snow and moon in the last chapter are rendered beautifully. (I’ll admit that maybe…in the right light…Canno isn’t all that great at drawing cats, but that just adds to the charm for me)

Story – 9 I average an 8 for Hikari and Nagisa, and a 10 for Ayaka and Yurine. We’re nearing their endgame, and watching Yurine be there for Ayaka was one of my favorite chapters in the series. Leighann Harvey has done a wonderful job translating every word, barring a weird side note concerning the quotation at the start of the book: my wife recognized the quotation, which is from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince (uncredited here). The quotation at the start of the Japanese edition is already in English, and is closer to the more proper quotation “Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.” I think Leighann Harvey must have translated the Japanese version of the quote into English, ignoring the English version that was already there, all of which says nothing of the original French version of the quotation (!). Not a big deal, just a neat peek behind the curtains of translation.

Characters – 9 There’s a ton of character development going on in this volume.

Yuri – 7 That might seem like a high number considering three out of four main characters are tsundere, but you have to keep in mind that nearly everyone at Seiran is in some form of Yuri relationship.

Service – 1, by default. (I thought it was a cute touch when Nagisa’s mom told her to stop laying around in her underwear, but Canno withheld such salaciousness from the visuals)

Overall – 9





Yuriten 2019 in Osaka, Guest Report by Zoey B.

April 12th, 2019

This week is a super-special week – we had a guest review from Christian LeBlanc earlier this week and today, we have a special Guest Event Report! Zoey B. has once more been able to visit the Yuriten Exhibit in Osaka and has returned bearing pictures and a report for us all! I hope you will all welcome Zoey back once more and make her feel welcome. Take it away, Zoey!

Yuriten is a small exhibition and shop of all things related to Yuri held yearly, hosted by Village Vanguard and Kadokawa. It focuses on Yuri in manga as well photographers and illustrators whose work is on the theme of Girls Love. It began in 2016 and this year is being held in over 5 different locations across Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, Sendai, Nagoya, and Fukuoka. The Osaka exhibit has just finished, and starting this weekend will move to Sendai.

This time of the year brings warmer weather and cherry blossoms across Japan, making for picturesque romantic scenes under the cherry blossoms trees – and also, all the Yuri you could ask for! This year’s event is bigger, and if I might say, better than last year’s – not only just in the number of locations, but the participating authors and material on display as well. I was fortunate to attend last year’s event in Osaka, and again this year.

The Osaka event was held in the same place as last year – in the event hall atop a huge shopping centre, Namba Parks, in the center of the city. People were free to come and go as they pleased, which made the amount of people there heartening. I went with my wife again this year – which I think is becoming a yearly tradition. We were fortunate to go on a weekday, at a quieter hour, as we were able to take our time with each one and not feel rushed. I say that, because we actually went again this past weekend to quickly purchase something and the amount of people there was quite significant!

As you walk in, the employees usher you towards the set route that’s laid out, going through the displayed artwork, sectioned off by author, photographer, or illustrator. I could tell immediately the difference from last year’s – there were a lot more on display than before! The route goes through the artworks and any messages from the authors, and also has some nice surprises, such as a poster for the event covered in the signatures of the participants.

 

 

 

 

At the end of artwork displays, it opens up into the shop. The amount of goods in the shop also helps to show how much bigger the event is this year. Like the exhibit, each participant or series had its own display and respective goods, and the area where you lined up to pay was full of all kinds of Yuri-related publications. Last year had a good range of the popular series, but we were happy to see some we’d had never come across, and other less-known works being collected and released by various publishers. From Comic Yuri Hime serializations and Galette Works, to probably some manga that I could argue weren’t Yuri, but maybe had some elements – there was a pretty vast range.
However, something special to note this year had to be the Yuriten Chronicle. It’s a nicely-printed A4 book, collecting of all the featured artists and artwork showcased at Yuriten from 2016-2018.

 

 

 

You can have the chance to get one of your manga signed by your favourite author, if you  attend and make a purchase on the weekend. This is done by lottery, as you can imagine the amount of people jumping at the chance. We did not partake in this, sadly, but it seemed like a relatively organized and calm affair.

Yuriten all finishes off as you exit the shop, with massive boards full of sticky notes – any visitor can write a message or draw an image, and these are really sweet to read through as you leave. My personal favourite had to be the person who wrote, “I want a 2DK, G-Pen anime”. On our second visit, my wife pointed out that the sticky notes began filling up the walls as well. Seeing all the little notes is a great reminder that there is an audience for this event! And that people are just as excited about Yuri as you are.

 

 

Yuriten may not have the craziness that Comiket or Comitia bring, but as an event, it has its own charm. Both my wife and I look forward to seeing how it grows from here. If you get a chance to attend one these events whether this year or in the future and are a fan of Yuri (or even just interested!), I would definitely recommend paying a visit.

 

Erica here: Thank you again Zoey! I’m very sorry I’m missing the event this year (I met Kawamoto-san from Kadoawa last February at Comitia and all we both could do is apologize to one another for poor timing,) but if anyone has a chance to see it in any of the other cities, please let us know. We’d love pictures of the setup! ^_^





Ms. Vampire Who Lives in my Neighborhood Anime (English) Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc

April 10th, 2019

Welcome back to Guest Review Wednesday! Today we have a special Guest Review by Christian Le Blanc of 3DComics! Christian has kindly watched an anime so I don’t have to, freeing me to finish up Princess Principal instead. ^_^ (About which I quite probably will do a review one day. ) So let’s please welcome Christian back and  give him our full attention. The floor is yours, Chris!

Sophie Twilight is, let me assure ya,
An anime fangirl vampira.
At the end of each night
In her coffin sleeps tight
With a bishoujo dakimakura.

Ms. Vampire Who Lives in my Neighbourhood (Tonari no Kyūketsuki-san), which is streaming on Crunchyroll, is a 12-episode comedic slice-of-life anime series based on the 4koma manga by Amatou serialized in Comic Cune magazine. Ms. Vampire herself, Sophie Twilight, is a centuries-old vampire who is practically the poster-girl for “Non-Threatening Vampires” magazine – she doesn’t drink blood straight from humans (she orders bottles of it online instead), and she enjoys manga, anime, and ordering anime statues and body pillows off the web. When she first meets our other main character, Amano Akari, she tells her “Don’t be afraid. I’m just your run-of-the-mill vampire passing by. Nobody suspicious.”

Akari is a normal…well, human, anyway…high school student obsessed with dolls, and becomes infatuated with the doll-like Sophie Twilight at their first meeting – so much so that, by the end of the first episode, she’s moved herself into Sophie’s house, much to her parents’ puzzling beatific indifference. Akari’s friend Hinata starts hanging out with them, as does Sophie’s vampire friend Ellie. Most of the humour comes from the culture clash of vampires and humans as they all spend time together – Ellie prescribes treatments for the human cold based on outdated concepts of the four humours, Sophie tries feeding nails to Akari because she doesn’t understand ‘food’, Akari makes a cold, bloody treat for Sophie which results in her penguin-shaped shaved ice maker looking like something removed from Silent Hill for being too disturbing, etc. Our cast enjoys each other’s company at Sophie’s house, the mall, high school, the beach, Akihabara, etc. Obscure bits of vampire lore come into play, but always in a cute manner, of course.

This being a moe comedy, almost everything about this show is light. The faux-baroque score is very whimsical and cute; nothing you’ll likely remember (aside from the opening and ending songs), everything just seems to fit the scene, and nothing really stands out as distracting. The color scheme is light as well – bright, pastel colors that suit the tone of the show and make it pleasant to watch. Any quarrels that *do* appear get resolved by the end of each segment; the first episode makes it look like Akari is going to become a constant harasser to a Sophie who just wants to be left alone (see: Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles), but Sophie quickly realizes she misses Akari when she’s not around. Even the fact that it’s based on a 4koma means that the pacing is generally quick and light, jumping from beat to beat.

Naturally, any Yuri in this show is light, as well – the four main characters are all just friends, although Akari plainly crushes on / lusts after Sophie – just like in Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles, our pursuer pictures herself and the pursued together in wedding dresses. Ellie, for her part, crushes on / lusts after almost any young girl she sees. Hinata also has a mild crush on Akari, just to round things out.

All in all, it’s mostly just a cute show to relax with if you want some light comedy and pleasant, fun character interactions without angst or drama, and just a smidgen of the supernatural with Yuri elements.

That said – when I first approached Erica about writing this review, there were only 3 or 4 episodes up. I could choose to review whatever episodes were already released, or, wait for the series to end and report back. While the chances were pretty slim, I decided to hold back and wait just in case any problematic issues came up that I should address. As you’ve probably guessed, I did find a little something.

Ellie (Sophie’s vampire friend), as I mentioned above, is the thirstiest character on the show. She’s also the youngest-looking character on the show – in fact, they spend time addressing the fact that she was turned into a vampire right around the onset of puberty, so she laments that she never got to grow more mature-looking. Akari’s human friend Hinata even mistakes her for a child at first, prompting Ellie to grope Hinata’s chest in anger before storming off, which makes poor Hinata depart in tears (wait, wasn’t this a comedy?). Ellie’s portrayed as a sex-positive 400-year-old vampire, who looks and acts like a child most of the time…which makes it ultra-gross when she gropes Akari’s butt at the hot springs, wears a revealing succubus costume for Halloween, suggests Sophie buy Akari a thong for Christmas, etc. It’s not that the characters are being flirty and suggestive from time to time that bugs me, it’s that they’re doing this while looking and acting like little kids who are drawn, and written, much younger than they are. It’s creepy enough seeing the camera pan slowly across Akari’s butt dimples at the beach, but watching her play with her dolls later in the same episode encreepens it that much more.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 4 (not necessarily bad, just nothing really eventful happens)
Characters – 4
Yuri – 3
Service – yes, unfortunately.

Overall – 5

If you’ve read all this and it still mostly sounds like something you’d enjoy if it didn’t have the problematic bits, then give it a try and, depending on your tolerance, you may want to just skip past the first halves of episodes 5 & 7, the post-credits scene of episode 9, and episode 10 in general. You might even watch this and feel that I’m overreacting, and, that’s ok; I’m not out to spoil your fun, but I definitely want you to understand why this show might not be someone else’s idea of fun.

Erica here: Comic Cune is, of course, the home of moe, creepy characters, creepy not-quite Yuri and cake. If the service of the anime irks, but you like the premise, take a look at the magazine. The fan service tends more towards what cake are we eating today?

I also want to shoot a stern look at Disney for forcing this absurd title on the anime when clearly “My Neighbor the Vampire” should have been the translation. This translation absolutely ruins the flow.

Thanks Christian for taking a look at this for us!





Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka Anime Guest Review by Mariko S. (English)

April 3rd, 2019

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu. Always one of my favorite days, as you know.  Today I am so very pleased to welcome back Guest Reviewer Mariko S. with a terrific perspective on an anime I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter disinfected pole. ^_^ So let’s get right to it, please give Mariko a warm welcome back and praise in the comments!

Years ago on the Onion AVClub site, Nathan Rabin wrote a column called “My Year of Flops,” where he revisited and reviewed movies that failed at the box office for one reason or another. At the end of each review he categorized the movie he’d just talked about as one of three things: Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. I’m sure that the “Secret Successes” brought some pleasure to unearth, and the “Failures” were easy enough to talk about. But you always got the impression that the “Fiascos” were the ones he really relished the chance to dissect. It’s easy but boring to trash a truly terrible work of entertainment; it’s much more fun to try to figure out what happened with a hot mess of good and bad ideas mashed together in ways that don’t really work, but are nevertheless fascinating.

Today I want to tell you a little bit about the utter fiasco that is Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

The latest in the post-Madoka trend of “gritty,” “grim” magical girl series, MGSOA begins with an interesting setup: the war is already over. A few years ago, an invading army from an evil parallel universe called the Disas attempted to destroy the earth with magical power, against which humanity had no defense. However, a friendly spirit realm reached out to aid us, and provided the mechanism to allow the creation of magical girls – teenage girls with a special affinity for magic who could be imbued with it to battle the Disas. In the end, they defeated the enemy leader and won the war, but at terrible cost to both humanity and the ranks of the girls drafted into the fight – of the 11 who began the battle, only the lauded Final 5 returned. But of course, in reality, beating the bad guy doesn’t create world peace – so now the girls and the world are adjusting to the new normal of dealing with magical problems in addition to more mundane types of crime and war.

The biggest thing I have to give this show credit for is, I never knew what was going to happen next. With its frankly astounding mashup of tropes, fetishes, and screeching plot turns, even up to the last episode I could have equally seen it ending with the brutal murder of half the characters we know, or with a healing miracle and a love confession. It definitely wasn’t generally a comfortable feeling, but it is a rare one with how formulaic anime can be. The show also devotes a surprising amount of screen time to interesting exploration of ideas like dealing with PTSD, the warping effects of bullying, the ways that being caught in the crossfire of a magical girl battle would actually affect people, and the crushing burden of being The Only One Who Can Save Us at such a vulnerable age. I also really liked the juxtaposition of the stereotypical cutesy MOTD baddies and cuddly animal sidekicks (each replete with its own unique sentence-ending affect) and the more realistic imagining of strategizing against them and the consequences of the fights.

Oh, but the bad is there. And it’s so, so bad. I guess they thought that the violence and genre twist weren’t enough to entice potential viewers, so they decided to throw in the kitchen sink of anime fetishes, too. Are all of the magical girls improbably busty, even though they’re technically supposed to have been in middle school when they started fighting? Yep! Does the magical combat division of the JSDF run a maid cafe as their cover for some reason? Of course! Can we somehow shoehorn in trips to the pool and the beach for the flimsiest reasons? You betcha! Add to that the occasional torture and domestic violence, and there was often a whiplash inducing effect as the show swung from slice-of-life cheesecake to affecting emotional drama to exploitative violence from scene to scene. Thankfully, the show never pushed things into outright nihilism, as many of the vogue grimdark series are so guilty of. The biggest problem I had with the show was its overreliance on the villains basically being omniscient – no matter what the heroes planned or did, the villains basically deadpanned that this is exactly what they expected and it played right into their hands. It got old to have so little nuance and no back and forth – the villains basically just always won until it was time for them not to.

As for Yuri, it’s present but not a major focus. Many of the female characters show attraction to Asuka, but in particular her best friend and fellow magical girl (War Nurse) Kurumi is deeply infatuated with her. Kurumi’s in many ways unhealthy attachment to Asuka as the one who saved her from her life as a doormat for bullies is played throughout the show for both pathos and laughs. Toward the end of the series, we find out that the former leader of the magical girl team made a lot of sex jokes about the other members, if you want to count that. Also, the General of the good spirit world, taking the form of (of course) a beautiful, busty woman, is apparently *really* fond of her magical girls and tries to cajole them into lewd things when they reunite. And in a very brief scene we find out that the illegal magical girl, Abigail, who so lovingly spoke of the series’ masked antagonist as her “Queen,” has a physical relationship with said queen.

On the technical side, in general this is not a particularly well-animated show. Characters are rarely on model and the animation tends to be stiff and focused on moving as few parts as possible (ideally just mouths). They clearly were trying to save as much money as possible for the action scenes, which in general were pretty well done. The opening and ending songs were nice, and the eyecatch military staccato felt appropriate, but otherwise the soundtrack was fairly forgettable/unobtrusive (depending on your perspective).

So, back to that fiasco thing – sometimes the show takes its characters seriously, and explores their emotions in ways beyond what most shows would. Other times it turns them into an eroge caricature. Sometimes it gets meditative about war and violence and the consequences of thrusting tremendous fighting power onto someone so immature, then banks into a boob joke. It’s fitting, then, that the show ends on a question mark instead of an exclamation point. I can’t really recommend it, but I also can’t really dissuade you either. It’s compelling in its own way – if you can abide the fetishes and find the smart things it wants to talk about interesting, give it a shot. If you take a pass, I also think that’s a perfectly reasonable choice. Truly, YMMV.

Ratings:

Art – 5 I liked the character designs but the animation itself was sub-par.
Story – 7 A nice twist on the familiar with some trenchant takes on interesting topics that gets bogged down by the fetish elements.
Characters – 6 Asuka and Kurumi are given some nice layers, but most everyone else is a little underwritten. +1 for Sacchu, the heroes’ mascot, who is pretty awesome.
Yuri – 3
Service – 7

Overall – 5

Erica here: Well, thank you very much , Mariko for another fab review! Sometimes, I think my Guest Reviewers ought to get hazard pay as you all take on the stuff I don’t want to. ^_^





Princess Principal Anime (English) Guest Review by Eric P

February 13th, 2019

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 20th-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 4th-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.