I mean, Scrapped Princess is technically proficient. That’s probably the best thing I can say about it. It’s got great animation, decent music, and a strong voice cast. The execution though…not so much.
you'd never guess that mogudan did the original art for the light novel
There’s two big problems with the show, which go hand in hand with each other. The first is that the story itself seems like it doesn’t really know how much to draw from which of the many light novels that this series originates from. There’s a lot of what feels like aimless wandering from the characters. With a tighter plot and brisker pacing, this could generate an exciting story of narrow escapes while they try to figure out just what exactly is going on. Instead, rather than drive the story forward, the wandering basically provides opportunities in the storyline for others to do things to them.
Related to this is the fact that the series does a pretty bad job with the whole world-building element of its setting. The original feel of the setting for the story is a pretty standard high fantasy world. There’s magic, knights, and a prophecy around the main character, Pacifica. So far so good. A few episodes later, we learn about a religious cult that seems like it will figure somewhat prominently. Again, no problem. However, now the characters are really starting to build up.
oops, spoke too soon
This is making me wary. The show doesn’t really seem like they can handle them all, as they go away and come back with just bad enough timing that they’ll leave too early and I won’t catch who they were, or they’ll stay away too long and I’ll forget why I should care. Shortly after this point, we start getting tons of made up terms. Dragoons, guardians, peacemakers, whoa slow down here. We’re ending up like that one xkcd strip, and things are not looking good.
We’re at about the halfway point now, and then we get another big suspension of disbelief bomb: there’s also these aliens in their spaceships going around affecting the Earth. Alright, now this has gone too far. Fantasy and sci-fi go together all the time, but haphazard world-building just makes the whole thing seem half-assed, like they’re just tossing in every idea that they can think of. if they had built up to this a little bit better ahead of time, it would feel like a satisfying reveal rather than yet another thing that should be cool (like say, dragon mecha fighting in space) but isn’t because I just don’t care any more.
Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? Honestly, I didn’t expect this series to be as terrible as it ended up being.
Yeah. I was kind of pissed with the show when they introduced the mage sister, then ignored her, then the dragons, then ignored them, then the main got amnesia and the entire show stopped for about 4 episodes. Then she regained her memory and completely forgot everything she did when she had amnesia and ALIENS.
So… yeah, I expected a lot better from it too.
Heh.. you’ve described almost all the anime from 2003. I couldn’t harsh on Scrapped Princess at the time for the points you made, because everything seemed to suffer from such issues (Wolf’s Rain? Last Exile?)
I really can’t harsh it so much even today.. crap execution has plagued anime for a long time. When something comes along that’s better than “crap” it usually becomes a gem. Hooray, 2000′s anime industry, for lowering my standards just like the videogame industry did!
I also just want to mention that I’d find “dragon mecha fighting in space” incredibly lame… unless it was a GAR-ish parody like Gurren Lagann
I was mainly disappointed because I expect more from Bones than I do from other studios. They’re generally pretty good when it comes to execution.
I rather liked Scrapped Princess because of the acting and characterization. I don’t know why is setting that big of a deal for you because they did reveal it the way you say it should, which is build it up slowly. They only saved the “big” thing for the middle-series reveal, but by then you already know enough to figure it out. the biggest problem is perhaps that they don’t fill all the gaps so some of it can be confusing at first (which is something Bones never/always do lol).
Scrapped Princess was mildly entertaining, and carried itself far better than Wolf’s Rain did. I just wonder what kind of eugenics they carried out to ensure that all females had at least a B-cup?
Anyway, it was full of sub-par storytelling techniques, but they at least managed to keep it interesting with me wondering what the hell I just watched at the end (a la Wolfs Rain, Last Exile.. hmm.. temperus, you might be onto something :S)
Was the source material that much better than the anime? If so, I’d love to revisit this story. I probably wouldn’t re-watch the anime, unless there was a convenient abridged series on YouTube, but if the light novels were more coherent then I’d love to find ‘em…
I think Tokyopop released a few of the light novels?
Yeah, I think the first 2 of the 13 novels are translated to English, but that the rest are on the usual hiatus. I guess I can splurge, just thought I’d check with someone who seems in-the-know before spending the time reading. Thanks!
Heh.. seems my drunken roommate was using my computer. The last comment was mine.
the biggest fault of scrapped princess is that it slowed down incredibly at the half way point. It lost all it’s steam and only managed to gain a little of it back right before the end and by that point it was too late.
by comparison even Zero no Tsukaima with all its fanservice created more believable and intriguing world imho… complete with social tensions between magic-usng aristocracy and commoners, and power politics of the many kingdoms
Needed more Raquel-nee :/
They’re terrible.
Ditto on the light novels being terrible. In comparison, the anime is much better (I did like the anime, though, and I’ve only read the first three light novels, which is all TP released).
I enjoyed this show a lot and totally loved the twist, but of course I was watching this back in 2003 when it was airing. I only had about 50 shows under my belt. I wonder how I’d feel watching it now 250 shows later? Hmm…
I kept assuming this show would be 52 episodes because of how slow the pacing became around the halfway mark. The end just was a final kick to the balls.
I, for one, like high fantasy shit, so to me this show isn’t too bad. It’s certainly better than a lot of other crap.