Rating: 
Summary: A quiet treasure
Review: [Review applies to Vols. 1-6; some spoilers. I watch the subtitled version with the original Japanese voice actors. The English dub cast here is OK, but as is almost always true in my experience, the original is better and more enjoyable.]Princess Nine is a wonderful series, a straight arrow that strikes the heart. If I were older and had a junior high school-aged daughter, I'd point her toward this series in a second. There are few gimmicks here: no mecha or fantasy, no violence or obvious fan service, and no pervasive self-reference (as in the admittedly excellent mecha series Evangelion and Nadesico, which came out around the same time). It's a story about the ups and downs of a bunch of teenage girls who come together from all over Japan to become friends as teammates on fancy Kisaragi Girls' High School's baseball team. The character designs are bright, honest, and appealing. The background music gains a surprising layer of depth from the use of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. The animation is mostly solid, with a few exceptions (e.g. Episode # 19, "Hearts and Diamonds," a great episode full of romantic twists, is marred by some stretches of bad animation). The characters display well-developed, distinct personalities, and while the story arc is familiar to anyone who's seen a classic coming-of-age sports drama, the twists and turns are handled with a deft touch that is rewarding to watch. The series gets better and better as it progresses. One of the notable things about Princess Nine is how successful the writers are at conveying the _goodness_ of many of the principal characters. We are given several believable, well realized individuals whose most salient trait is their good-heartedness. That includes not only the heroine Ryo Hayakawa herself, but at least two others. One is the gallant Hiroki Takasugi, a star baseball player at Kisaragi (Boys') High who falls for Ryo as soon as he meets her. The third - and one of the secret hearts of the series - is Koharu Hotta, a wiry girl from a fishing village who swings a mean bat for the Kisaragi girls' team and is as unpretentiously kind as the day is long. (Aside for P9 buffs: is the small fish symbol on Koharu's blue sleeveless T-shirt (over her heart) also a Christian allusion?) Most of the other team members are also memorable. There is no shortage of fans out there for redheaded Seira Morimura, the bad-girl second baseman ("loser coach!"), or Nene Mori, the team's sweetly spoiled manager. Ryo's rival Izumi Himuro is a prickly, complex creation in her own right. I'm particularly fond of gabby, grinning Hikaru Yoshimoto, the first baseman. She's a pistol. One P9 fan describes Hikaru-chan as "the evil Punky Brewster," which fails to capture how down-to-earth she is. Her trademark is saying, in her Osaka accent, what the rest of the team is thinking. That the boisterous Hikaru eventually goes sweet on Ryo's shy, scholarly childhood chum Seishiro is a great touch. (OK, I'm also a sucker for ponytails.) There's real drama here, big ups and downs. You won't find many scenes in anime better realized than the sad, sad vignette between Ryo and Takasugi in the cabin during the rain, in Volume 5. It is intimate, heartbreaking and tastefully restrained at the same time. That was not the only time I teared up watching this series. (Here is another: "Kaze ('wind')..."). Princess Nine will make you frustrated with the state of animation in America. I know that in some ways things are improving - there are some funny US series on at night for slackers, and Cartoon Network has done a solid job of bringing over Japanese mecha, fantasy and action titles for American audiences. But at the level of general, family-friendly animation with integrity, there's not much out there beyond the corporate, smarmy features cranked out by Disney - wherein for some asinine reason, every character from a pelican to an ancient mythical creature is required to talk in 90s slang and crack wise. Spare me. American audiences have fallen before for quietly excellent, slice-of-life TV series like "The Wonder Years" and "My So-Called Life." There's no good reason why a strong animated series like Princess Nine shouldn't be able to find a similar niche here. There is one other frustrating aspect of watching this series. As many other reviewers have noted, it deserves - it cries out for - a second season. There are so many good characters, so many hooks left open in the first season. But sadly, it appears it's not to be. It's been five years now since Princess Nine ran in Japan. Unless _Zeta Princess Nine_ is secretly under wraps somewhere (anime joke), we'll have to content ourselves with these twenty-six fine episodes.
Kisaragi - Fight! Cue the opening: "Ashita o shinjiruno / Tada sore dake ..."
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