[(belated) Februaryuri 2025] Princess Principal
My initial plan for the free space of my Februaryuri 2025 bingo was to either make a brief review list of all the yuri animes I knew, including anime adaptations, or to cover Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. As it turns out, I ended up not feeling motivated enough by covering many animes at once, and not enthusiastic enough about GWitch to review it1.
But I watched Princess Principal in October, and I liked it somehow, so here it is I guess!
(base post on Februaryuri 2025 here!)
Princess Principal (2017)
by studios 3Hz and Actas, directed by Masaki Tachibana, written by Ichirou Oukouchi, with music by Yuki Kajiura2
+
Princess Principal: Crown Handler (several movies, 2021-present)
by studio Actas, directed by Masaki Tachibana, written by Noboru Kimura, with music by Yuki Kajiura
12 episodes + 6 movies (4 released so far, one hour each)
Summary
At the turn of the 20th century, London has been split into two between the powerful Kingdom of Albion, armed with a gravity-defying substance called cavorite and a powerful air fleet; and the Commonwealth, which revolted from the Kingdom a decade ago. This divide is literal: a giant wall crosses the city, limiting the crossing of the border between the two neighboring countries.
In this unstable political situation, the two nations have been playing a long game of espionage. Through a nonlinear collection of snapshots from their missions, we follow one of the spy teams working for the Commonwealth, Team Principal, as they attempt to infiltrate and destabilize the royal family of Albion.
Between smaller cases like investigating people or fetching some secret documents, Team Principal is tasked with eliminating the Princess of Albion, Charlotte, and getting her impersonated by their most talented member Ange. Yet when Charlotte learns about the plot against her, she offers to betray the Kingdom and join Team Principal herself - that is, if they help her become Queen, unify the country and tear down the wall.
And somehow, Ange and her seem to know each other from a decade ago...
CW
- gun use and violence throughout (as expected of an espionage series)
- slight bits of latent sexualization in a few promotional images
- Chise's cultural difference (as she comes from Japan) is sometimes interesting and addressed as such, but often very stereotypical
- Beatrice's backstory hints at parental physical abuse and a nonconsensual vocal surgery on her, and this is never really acknowledged as horrible
- Dorothy is often sexualized directly within flirt scenes with men, mostly through shots of her breasts
- Dorothy's backstory contains parental physical abuse and alcoholism, wrapped in a bit of an ableist trope
- general stereotypical depictions of physically violent men, all from lower classes
- very fraught representation of dark-skinned characters. The series contains only one (whose codename is Gazelle...) and the movies adds one (who is somewhat stereotypical in his vague Native American background). Both are cut from the same cloth: skilled, taciturn henchpersons and secondary characters at the service of an antagonist. This sucks.
- this may be on me, but there's one scene in the fourth movie where Beatrice is threatened in a way that is framed, to me, as sexual threat, even if it is not explicitly stated and immediately foiled. Take care while watching.
Comment
When I first tried Princess Principal among my anime watchlist, nestled somewhere between the wholly unrelated Princess Jellyfish and Princess Tutu from the 2000s, I knew nothing of it except its name, and naively thought it'd be a mundane anime at an all-girls school or something because there was "principal" in its name. I surely didn't expect what immediately greeted me with its visual and jazzy music: Victorian steampunk yuri espionage.
Sure, several things in its finer details make me roll my eyes sometimes3, but for the most of it, it's been such a breeze to watch. It's straightforward and action-packed in just what you'd expect for such a setting. You know, chasing that mcguffin, finding that person, tailing this one, pondering if a given authority figure is on your side or will betray you, infiltrating a secret mine, deciphering ciphers in the newspaper, fighting onboard a train, fighting onboard a boat, fighting onboard a zeppelin, that kind of classic spy stuff. And lead spy Ange also has a small gravity-bending device4, which really doesn't hurt this anime's case. The coolness factor is there.
I also really like its episodic, nonlinear narrative. It's not used to make the story complicated; it's just a fun and efficient structure in independent "cases" where we first see the complete team in action then slowly learn how they came together through disjoint missions. I just really like it.
Another thing I've been enjoying is the anime's OST - once again, perfectly delivering what you'd expect for that kind of classic steampunk London setting. The opening in particular just tells you everything you need to know about Princess Principal. It's catchy as hell.
Now to get into the less-polished things, the political setting is... obviously wobbly here or there. A lot of the various "fetch this thing, capture that person" missions handed to Team Principal by the Commonwealth are not really detailed in their moral and political aim - they're just narrative pretenses for a new case. For the most of it, the series doesn't try to delve into politics too seriously - even with a London wall clearly inspired by the Berlin wall - and that's a good thing for something that's mostly cool spy vibes in a gritty city. It's just, you know, political intrigues the way you'd expect them.
This changes around the end of the series, though, with rumbles of revolution - notably from its colonies - against the Kingdom; while the Commonwealth itself is momentarily taken over by the military. The series doesn't have the backbone to handle all this stuff too deeply, and it shows; but I half-expected it to completely stumble, and I don't think it really does? I mean, it even explicitly acknowledges Princess Charlotte's ambition in ultimately ending her family's reign: to become the country's last Queen yet siding with a revolution against the monarchy that will probably end her life. It's not perfect in doing that, but such a revolution is still presented as just, and that counts.
It also helps that the series tackles elements of the deep class divide between the people of Albion both in the backstory of several of our core characters, but also in side cases - there's an episode where the group literally helps laundry workers retake their means of production, without stepping in in a way that would remove their agency. This is a general trend of the series: in small ways, our team of spies - in the midst of their job - repeatedly do what they can against the capitalist exploitation and impoverishment of most of the lower-class people they meet. Once again, it's not executed perfectly or with nuance, and it remains within the bounds of an overall cliché steampunk London - but it matters.
Speaking of main characters, they are... admittedly on the tropey side5. Notably, Beatrice is the earnest and easily scared kid; Chise is the loyal Japanese cliché ninja-samurai6; Dorothy is the one adult, and therefore drinks a lot and flirts with guys when needed for a mission - scenes which are a pretext for short but really eye-rolling tidbits of breast fanservice every two episodes7; and Ange is the deadpan spy genius hiding all of her emotions (but more on her right below).
Yet it works, somehow. The characters still shine in their smaller interactions and their group chemistry. They're a lot of fun to follow throughout their missions - and their tragic backstories8, while stereotypical themselves, have their touching moments too.
The show really benefits from its episodic structure in all this: it allows some episodes to lean more into the motivations of this one or that one of our main characters, and to focus on subsets of our Team working together, depending on who is picked for which mission.
Let's mention the yuri a bit, as closure to this whole comment.
There's immediately an apparent familiarity between Ange and Princess Charlotte, who cryptically refer to a common background several times throughout the series. They repeatedly say "no one should know about our relationship, we need to make the wall fall to be open about it" with the exact kind of romantic subtext you'd expect. And while some of the details are confusing at first, it is satisfying (if simple) when finally revealed, and a great additional layer to both their characters. It is doubly so when that gay-sounding plotline could've gone wrong many times, for instance by saying that they were secretly sisters; but it never betrays the audience's expectations, which is extremely appreciated.
And while it stays romantic subtext throughout, that romantic aspect increases, too. Honestly, one of the things that dazzled me the most was that the show ends with as many yuri signifiers as it can without directly saying that these two love each other. This includes a promise, a wonderful princess carry, some meaningfully-framed handholding, Ange almost saying she's in love as an offhanded remark, and even a letter from one to the other addressed to "my turtledove". And then you have official art like this or this. It's just really here.
It's also really rewarding to see protagonist Ange slowly expand beyond her professional spy persona, notably through her romance with Charlotte. More generally, her feeling of comfort with her team, who eventually adapt to her aloof atitude and occasional non sequitur jokes, is palpable by the end. While she has yet to put down her walls completely, she increasingly accepts her emotions in a satisfying character arc - and a compelling heavily-romantic-coded ending.
Funnily enough, I realized after watching Princess Principal that I had once seen an excellent meme of it. It is, of course, an exaggerated version of what actually happens. But honestly? On some level, this is clearly how the series ends.
Extra
There's a series of one-hour sequel movies! Four of them have been released (two in 2021, one in 2023, one in 2025), and two still remain.
And... I don't really know how I feel about them. The first two movies are mostly ok-tier larger episodes - with some more flourish here or there, because they're movies, but they feel a bit lacking for their hour-long duration. On the more interesting side, they still paint a bigger picture of the royal family of Albion and of the general political situation Charlotte is tangled up in.
The third movie has been the best of the batch so far, because it reaches an extremely tense point at last! But the fourth movie9 partly squanders and postpones that tension with its return to a lower-stake mission - even if it also subtly shifts the statu quo, and introduces very naturally some promising cracks in the main team regarding Ange's devotion to Charlotte's safety.
So, yeah. It's uneven. I do not know how much of this is due to the change of screenwriter from the series.
Overall, while I'm still hoping for a more climatic finale - with the rythm of their releases so far, maybe in 2029? - it feels like the movies have been wasting, or at least misusing, some parts of their lengthier runtime. They do deserve a watch if you like the series, as they still play with some interesting ideas; but they feel less tight than they could be. They're more like a slow buildup to the fifth and maybe sixth movies, where the real big things will happen.
I also need to point out how the yuri has taken a clear backseat in these sequels so far. While there's still a lot bubbling under the surface, I wish the movies followed up more clearly on the extremely romantic conclusion of the series. But hey, maybe their own ending will be as openly lesbian as it deserves to be... and hopefully, not too much of a mess.
Until then, I'll still be happy to follow the adventures of this team of spies some more.
That being said, GWitch is an important piece of recent yuri history! One of its leads shatters the conservative viewpoint that two girls couldn't get engaged in the very first episode, and the two leads are canonically married by the end of the series - even if their romantic tension never gets to be entirely addressed upfront, clearly in part due to pressure from the right holders. Heck, the same right holders have been egregiously saying that the leads' relation is "up to interpretation", with that classic ugly attempt at erasing sapphic representations onscreen rearing its head. GWitch remains a major step in the right direction no matter what, though; and it is also a good standalone entry to the massive Gundam franchise AND some kind of homage to Utena in its very premise. It deserves all the enthusiasm, really. I just ended up feeling... lukewarm from my own watch, sadly: in spite of my initial excitement and appreciation for the two leads, many moments throughout the series felt a bit perfunctory, and most characters remained too paper-thin even after 24 episodes. And high stakes and interesting themes on paper (like the manipulation of children into war and their subsequent trauma, or the discrimination against and exploitation of Earthians) were often resolved in ways I didn't find very interesting. I don't know. It just didn't hook me. But it may hook you though!↩
I realized when writing this that it was the same composer as Madoka's OST. Now I can't unhear it. I'm amazed.↩
like its frustratingly lacking representation of people of color aside from one henchwoman literally named Gazelle. Steampunk, like many other (a)historical fantasies and sci-fi subgenres, is always envisioned as predominantly white. Ugh.↩
Did you know that cavorite, the mysterious gravity-bending substance used in this setting, actually originates from an H.G. Wells book and has been referenced in many sci-fi media since? I didn't before writing this, and I think it's a fun thing!↩
not addressing the obvious fact that all of them except Dorothy are also teenagers :') But hey, fictions like Totally Spies would tell you that the best spies are teenage girls anyway.↩
even if Chise's plotline also involves fighting the background xenophobia of English people against her Japanese origins, and her puzzlement over various cultural differences between Japan and England. Those are interesting themes, and they're not badly handled overall! They just feel a bit shallower when she is also kind of a Japanese warrior cliché.↩
you know, at least Dorothy isn't a minor. It shouldn't be a particularly high bar to clear but somehow it is, and at least Princess Principal focuses the fanservice on her...↩
except Beatrice somehow, who gets a tragic backstory mention early on with a lot of potential for trauma, and the show never does anything with it except mentioning it in passing occasionally. I'm sorry Beatrice.↩
I watched that fourth movie in the middle of writing this paragraph, and it wasn't such a good idea. While I'm still eager to see how the whole situation will finally blow up, I was more enthusiastic of the movie series while still on the third one. That fourth movie also made me uncomfortable in the way it threatens Beatrice somewhere in the middle, and wastes a golden opportunity of acknowledging her traumatic backstory as such. I'm sorry Beatrice. Again.↩