Time: Princess Principal

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If there's one thing that I appreciate in any sort of media, it's a character that's good at hiding their true intentions and has a good poker face until they're ready to finally show their true colors. Shows like Madoka Magica, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and a number of other shows I could list but won't because I'm a lazy bastard, all show this sort of semblance.

Princess Principal has this sort of trope in spades. Based around a theme of constant spying and deception, it's no wonder this James Bond-eqsue show ranks pretty damn high in my shows of 2017. My only regret from watching this show? It took me until this week to watch the damn thing when I've had access to it for nearly a year. As for gripes, the series did not end well in my opinion, but hopefully this will get rectified in the near future.

Story:

The show's story is set in a fictitious London where the fictional country of Albion is split between two warring parties: the Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Both sides are involved in a Cold War-style conflict where they deploy spies and agents in order to acquire intelligence on the opposing side in order to further themselves towards one ultimate goal: the destruction of the enemy side and reestablishment of the country as a whole. These goals, in turn, lead to a number of complications for the agents of the story.

Characters:

The characters of Princess Principal make up what I believe to be the meat of the series, specifically between the two main leads Ange and Princess. On the surface, most would think that the two are generic trope performing characters such as the cold and emotionless distant one and the seemingly perfect one. However, as one progresses into the series, the realize that the two leads are certainly not who they seem, both on the inside and out.

As for the supporting cast (if you could call them that), most of them are rather enjoyable to watch with their interactions with the main leads. The only real complaint I could lodge about the supporting cast is that some characters (Chise and Dorothy) get more screen-time/development than others (Beatrice).

Audio:

I'd like to get one thing out of the way before I talk about this section in any way: I love the OP. I've listened to it more times that I can count and hit the replay button on YouTube so many times that it's suing me for assault. (Please, if there is a God, please don't remove the OP from YouTube. It's all I have).

Anyway...I quite enjoyed the voicing of the characters of the show. Each of the seiyus perfectly fit their respective roles, but special love goes out to Ayaka Inamura for voicing Ange with her ability to change her voice from being high-pitched to medium at the drop of a hat. As for a dub, to the best of my knowledge, there is none in the works. But seeing that the license holder of this series is Sentai Filmworks and their track record of sub-par dubs, I see this more as a blessing than an annoyance.

Finally, I can't stress how much I loved the overall music for the series by Yuki Kajiura (maybe it's just because I've been spoiled by her music, but whatever). She seems to mix Madoka Magica-style music, but also somehow making the music sound like it was made by a jazz band. Hats off to you.

Art:

Animation and art for Princess Principal was done by the people over at Studio 3Hz. I can't exactly comment of their track record because of that fact that I haven't watched anything of theirs as of yet. However, I feel that they have done a marvelous job at impressing me with their stellar background art, action sequences, and even the 3D animation for the car scenes (which, in my opinion, is a rather impressive feat due to the fact that 3D animation is rather ugly in it of itself.)

Verdict:

As of right now, I can say that this series is definitely worth a watch for those who are a fan of either steampunk, espionage-type shows, and/or plot twists, but proceed cautiously due to the fact that this is an original series that is currently unfinished due to a film series of the show slated to be released in 2019. I, for one, am certainly looking forward to more from this series, but I'm also being careful as to not get my hopes up in the event that the