(Sorry was a bit busy the other day)
Anyway, this being the last review I am doing this year, I thought of covering a Christmas special or a Christmas-themed episode from an anime series. However, I came to this conclusion-most of these are pretty crappy. So, instead, I'm doing an obscure entry of one of my favorite genres in anime: Detatoko Princess, a wacky fantasy OVA from the late '90s. Oh, joy to the flippin' world.
This lovely little piece comes to us from the folks at JC Staff, who seemed to do a lot of OVAs in the 1990s, this being one of them. This was also directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, the same guy who directed the 2nd Galaxy Fraulein Yuna OVA (see my review on that back in October). This is also based off of a manga that was out around the time the OVA came out. Unfortunately, it has never made it stateside (and I doubt it will).
Anyway, the plot involves Princess Lapis of SorcerLand and her adventures with her band of friends. She's blonde, ditzy and has a pudding fixation (yes really xD). Her friends include tiny flowergirl Nandre, immortal fighter Kohaku and Jii, Lapis' teacher mage. Their adventures involve running into Lady Topaz, Wicked Witch of the North who has a legion of pretty little girls in pokeballs (She got a thing for them). They also fight off a giant konnyaku golem and finally a trio of sickly fitness brothers. Yeah, it is rather insane.
First off, the positives. For one thing, it is nicely animated, which is a common feature of most OVAs. Also, kudos to the director. Akiyuki Shinbo, as I noted in my GFY Returns OVA, likes doing two approaches to his anime: either dark and disturbing or funny, wacky parody/comedy. Here, he does the wacky, silly parody/comedy shtick. It works for the most time as I was laughing through the whole thing.
Now, my two pet peeves. First, it applies to the phrase "Characters instead of caricatures". There are not really any characters as there are caricatures, exaggeration of common Fantasy RPG characters. Granted, the characters are rather quirky and eccentric (especially Lady Topaz,. a female OTT villain whose got a thing for little girls-only in anime xD). Secondly, the length (again). It is only 3 episodes long, and leaves me wanting more. There is even a sequel hook at the end of the credits of the third and last episode, so odds are they were planning to do more, but didn't. Oh well.
Final Score is 6/10. It is just above average in terms of story, animation and direction. But it lacks character development and length to sustain a lot of audience attention. However, I would recommend it to fans of fantasy anime at the least. It's a fun little sit and a good way to burn off an afternoon. Of course, if u want something similar, I can recommend "Thos Who Hunt Elves" or "Rune Soldier Louie" for much longer series that are fantasy comedy series.
So, yeah, my last review of the year. I will return with reviews starting weekend of January 7th. I'm sure that will be more to come for this review series.
Until then, laterz-EclecticDude
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