Petite Princess Yucie Vol 1:Princess

Rating:
Summary: Underaged girls in miniskirts! Yes!
Review: I came upon this title by a recommendation from a friend, and really, I felt a little awkward watching it at first because the title and the character designs seems to accommodate lolita fetishes (the character Glenda, for example, flaunts her 10-year-old cleavage), and the fact that it's produced by Gainax can be both a blessing and a curse in this respect. After viewing the entirety of the first volume of this series however, I'm relieved to say that this title provides a great deal of enjoyment withOUT the need for perversion.

While not many people know of this series, they may have at least heard of the game called Princess Maker, where the player takes on the role of a knight who finds a girl amidst a battlefield and accepts the responsibility of being her adoptive father. The player then has to make the necessary decisions for the young girl, give her part-time jobs, and teach her lessons in order to produce a proper princess when the game concludes--or at least, that's what I've heard, since I haven't played the game myself. But being that the game was made by Gainax, this series is their animated adaption of the concept, and fans of the game may recognize many familiar aspects within the anime. For instance, the character designs of Yucie and Cube were directly taken from designs in the game.

More in line with the events that occur over the course of this DVD are the part-time jobs; the first two episodes are mostly introductory, but onward from Episode Three, the Petite Princesses find themselves signing up for various oddjobs, not for their wallets, but for their hearts to grow--it is part of the training to become a princess, after all! And while it's typical of many shoujo anime to have these kinds of "filler episodes" for the purpose of character development, the part-time job episodes in Petite Princess Yucie have a different feel which makes them more fun and entertaining compared to other shoujo titles despite not having much in the place of plot advancement.

Another thing with which I was particularly pleased was the voice acting in these episodes. The first episode was decent, but from the second episode on, Rachel Rivera, who plays the voice of Yucie, truly adapts to her character and makes Yucie come alive with her enthusiastic and convincing skills in acting; she captures the essence of the 17-year-old-stuck-in-a-10-year-old's-body elegantly without sounding forced or flat whatsoever. The voice actress for Glenda, despite having a much lower pitch than her Japanese counterpart, also maanges conveys the demon princess's personality to a T, and the quarrels between her and Yucie are a joy to watch. But while I was admittedly not as taken by the rest of the cast at first, by the end of the fifth episode, all the voice actors had demonstrated a likeable quality that reflected in the characters they play, and I look forward to seeing the chemistry between them unfold in future episodes of this endearing series.

Petite Princess Yucie is targeted for girls, no doubt about it, but even guys who are willing to sacrifice their masculinity for the duration of this DVD will find themselves amused and entertained; it may be cute and full of fluff, but the characters are genuine, the directing is excellent, the animation is high-quality, and while we don't see much of it, the plot looks to be promising. For this first installment, it turned out to be a pleasant surprise with hopefully many good things to come.