When I first started watching Princess Principal, I thought I had it all figured out, an ultimately unexciting ride that wouldn’t stick with me. Oh how wrong I was…

Princess Principal is beautiful, with wonderful animation and solid voice acting. The design direction stood out above most other anime. The steampunk world wasn’t just for aesthetics but a core part of the narrative; a story of a nation reaching higher technological and military power before other nations and the power balancing act that ensues.

Princess Principal starts off a lot like a Saturday morning cartoon; adventures of the spies and the assignment they are allocated to. As the story develops it reveals personality aspects of each character and pushes the plot forward.



A good portion of the first half is spent introducing characters and world-building elements to help give us a better idea of what we can expect, be it all fun and whimsical. It genuinely felt like so little could oppose our fantastical spies and their assignments, but after a while, it got so dark and genuinely surprised me, never backing off how grim it made everything. It brought tears to my eyes when certain parts of the story advanced because it was so clever. I was overwhelmed to see something so good come from such a humble show.

Princess Principal finishes off the first arc and I pray that we get more, or alternatively resort to the manga to conclude the story. Though the pitch shift is very real, as the show continues, it hints at darker themes and then fully embraces them at a point, making it a crazy watch. I think the below screenshot will really illustrate this.



From an animation standpoint, the fight scenes were fluid and clean which is generally the sign of a good studio. Instead of using animation tricks to get around fully animating scenes, they went the whole way with each scene. The CGI used was blended incredibly well and hardly noticeable unless you were looking for it and the characters mannerisms and expressions are used to present exactly what was meant to be shown in subtle ways.

The music and voice acting are to be noted too. For once, both stood out after many seasons and shows. Each major scene has quite a unique piece of music added to it to give it a memorable feeling as opposed to just generic ambient noise. Voice acting was varied and our protagonist was able to swap between sombre serious to loud outrageous just as a spy would very well.

Over all, Princess Principal was a thoroughly enjoyable watch. If it gets a season two in order to conclude it, the score will definitely be revised to a ten. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys things like Darker than Black, Gunslinger Girl, Phantom and the other, more serious anime with a slightly more grounded premise.