This Week in Anime

What Makes Princess Principal So Engrossing?

Jacob
Hey Steve! Can't believe it took this long for us newbies to take over this week in anime together! >:D

Yes, what better way to conquer our column than with the most anime thing possible: this moe steampunk bullshit

the principal cast follows a princess around? that's all I got ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Same! I came in with the assumption that it would be Colossally Stupid because it's written by Ichiro Okouchi of Valvrave the Liberator and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress fame. Both shows I greatly enjoyed for entirely the wrong reasons.

I mean I would absolutely prefer to forget Guilty Crown, but I know I can't.

At the same time, I think it's important to separate his work with Hiroyuki Yoshino from his work by himself. Things get exponentially sillier when Yoshino's involved, as he was on Geass and Guilty Crown. Okouchi tends to verge darker and include greater attempts at commentary without Yoshino's influence, but I didn't expect that to actually result in a GOOD show for once.

So I guess we should talk about what makes Princess Principal easier to take seriously than his other work. Cuz it ain't the premise.

I actually wasn't talking so much about the Steampunk part as the All Girls' Academy of Spies (which includes the literal princess of the country) part! Like how is she hiding this level of subterfuge from her own government? The spies' original plan was to REPLACE HER WITH A DOPPELGANGER, and she's like "cool I wanna join!" Tho we found out last week that there's an extra special reason for this that runs a little deeper.

Absolutely! But why would anyone on either side let you?

Princess Principal definitely works more on "this is cool" first and "this makes sense" second, but that's okay for the tone it's striving to achieve. It's ironically much less serious in concept than what Okouchi was going for in Valvrave or Kabaneri which makes it, somehow, less silly. The attempted tone and the achieved tone match up better.

Yeah, silly plot aside, Okouchi takes these girls and their motivations seriously, and every new spy adventure is always about their own personal journeys. The actual details of the War or the Empire or the Wall basically never matter in the end.

not that the otaku-friendly hallmarks of his style aren't as front and center as ever

You certainly are, Dorothy.

The show's premise is that everyone is lying about everything most of the time, which makes each episode an exercise in discovering who the girls REALLY are underneath who they claim to be.

Mind you, this doesn't mean their characters are particularly complex or nuanced in nature:

You see. The Princess is on a bridge. Which separates two worlds. And one step too far means certain disaster. It's very subtle, I'll give you a moment to process it.

Yeah, the important thing is that each reveal is compelling, not that it's mind-blowing. Since this franchise is relevant atm, it's kinda similar to the Death Note approach of executing on betrayal of expectations at the right time, rather than betraying those expectations in a thought-provoking way. These are all backstories and spy adventures we've seen many times before, but timing is everything, and Princess Principal has a real entertainer's spirit driving it forward.

I feel like I should stress that both moe and victorian-ass steampunk are equally Not My Aesthetic, and this show still has me completely wrapped up in what's happening every minute. Director Masaki Tachibana certainly knows how to keep things interesting! It seems like just the right marriage of director and writer, which is always heartening to see.

Yeah I wasn't even talking animation, (altho it has its moments, Chise's episode was baller!) but that sense of timing and storyboarding is impeccable. Even the silliest reveals feel resonant in the moment. For example, Dorothy's episode really bothers me on paper. She became a spy after running away from her abusive father, and the whole episode is basically geared around her accepting that he wasn't that bad before killing him off in the most Expected Way Possible.

YER A GONER, DANNY

But you know what? It's the best episode of the show.

It's easy to interrogate its message and predictable plot beats on paper, but people constantly underestimate how important execution is to compelling entertainment. The emotions land, the reveals land, you care. Caring is what matters, even if you don't agree with the writing choices or perspective.

Tho Beatrice's circumstances were a little more Anime:

WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE, RIGHT GUYS? STILL GONNA CALL HIM ON FATHER'S DAY~

Right? It's not like he's suddenly become a radically different writer. But I think he found his bliss and the right team to let it flourish for what it is. Princess Principal (for the most part) isn't overreaching for depth or darkness. Hell, neither was the first half of Kabaneri. That second half is the only thing that sunk it. So maybe he really is growing as a writer.

Right. I think a LOT of that lies in the direction. None of the most uncomfortable material gets wrung out for shock value, it just sort of "is." Even fantasy-era Victorian England is a pretty ugly place. And while this gets overstated in dialogue a lot (because Okouchi), the execution just lets it sit at a distance so the audience can make what they want of it. I think it wants us to accept that these girls have to make their own happiness even in a gruesome profession, and being spies gives them a real sense of joy and purpose as they work to change the country from the inside, without the show getting too high-minded for its capacity to say exactly how that's supposed to work.

So on that note: WHO IS BEST SPY?

Ha ha, she's actually the one I like least. Maybe because she's the closest to being a "sexy spy with daddy issues" trope. But honestly there's not a bad character in the bunch, because they all get a lot of levity and have this refreshingly blase acceptance of their awful pasts.

On the note of levity, I gotta go with Chise. She gets the best jokes and the best action, even if she has the shallowest character. Gotta have fun in this show! But I'm excited to see where Ange and Princess's story is going too.

VARIETY'S THE SPICE~

And the best voices! Being a victim of abominable scientific experimentation has its perks!

Not if Beatrice has anything to say about it!

HOLY SHIT, THERE IS! just now noticed... OTL

spy heart, spyin' on your identical lesbians

I wouldn't be even a little surprised. But yuri jokes aside, Ange and Princess's story is the quintessential example of a dumb obvious idea (Prince and the Pauper, taken straight-up beat-for-beat) being elevated through just the right build-up and payoff. I think everyone guessed that was going to be the twist in episode two or so, but the show makes us care about it by the reveal in episode eight by exploring just WHAT this switcheroo means to the two girls and how it's shaped the facades they wear now for their own very different goals. So it doesn't really matter if you "figured it out" beforehand, because the reveal itself is not the point. It's how that Reveal makes you Feel, dontcha know.

I am too! I think just the fact that I am rooting for characters in a moe steampunk Okouchi adventure is my favorite thing about the show. It took something that was an absolute Hard Sell for me, by a writer that I really didn't respect, and it surprised me. Sometimes people make the unfair assumption that critics WANT to dislike things, but that's not true of any honest critic I've known. We always want to be surprised, we want to see things we have our doubts about because of our history or experience with a genre or creator turn out to actually be good. Princess Principal is one of those things, and while it's not the second coming or anything, not my favorite kind of anime, or even one I may remember next year, it's wildly compelling entertainment with heaps of giveadamn behind it that I see really reaching an audience, at least over here.