Review of Fena: Pirate Princess

This show makes me so sad. Not because of any emotions I felt while actually watching the stupid confusing ending, but for another story of missed potential in an anime Original. I was having so much fun the first couple episodes. This show felt like a weird mishmash of Pirates of the Caribbean and Princess Bride with ninjas thrown in and I was loving it. It was like a bunch of things I like, and they did this weird thing where they gave the main girl a personality. She wasn't just Princess Buttercup or that girl from the pirate movie played by I'm going to sayNatalie Portman, she was a gap moe anime girl who acted nothing like her prim appearance would lead you to think.

Then the show starts listing off myths and legends like Joan of Arc, the lost city of El Derodo and the like and it started to lose me a bit. It's fine to send them after secret treasures, they're pirate ninjas after all, but it's like pick a lane and stay in it already. They were swerving from idea to idea too fast and before you know it, in a single scene we get a huge plot dump where our main girl basically figures out all the mysteries just by expositting to herself for long enough, making ludicrous leaps in logic because the plot needs them to be along now and they don't have time to actually search these things out.

By the time they got to mcguffin island I was pretty much completely checked out. Then they go with a dumb amnesia ending where it's literally like none of it ever happened. The story itself admits that it was all meaningless, because at the end of the day she really hadn't spent all that much time with the people on the ship and it probably wouldn't take very long for her to get to know them all just as well again. Amnesia is the dumbest and laziest plot device ever and the only time I can remember seeing it used to proper dramatic effect was with "who's Rem."

Watch like the first 3 episodes of this if you want to have a really fun adventure and then just make up the rest in your head. Pretend that any of the characters are given fleshed out backstories or motivations and that it doesn't go on to just be 9 more episodes of people doing stuff for no reason. The only thing that comes close to a character arc is the romance and they even managed to fumble that. 7/10 for trying I guess.