Review of Fena: Pirate Princess
If you're looking for a disney princess story written by someone who doesn't actually spend any time with women, then this is the story for you. STORY: 4 Between the wacked out geography - how, exactly, does a ninja family shipwreck in Europe? - the weird history twisting that adds nothing whatsoever other than to remind us that Japanese content has a love affair with Joan of Arc, this series just feels like they threw tropes at a wall and caught the one that fell. ART: 9 Honestly, the art ranges from gorgeous to glorious and the character designs are a cool mesh of true historic costuming and steampunkwith a twist, which is exactly what the characters and setting call for.
The settings are so varied and creative, yet fit both the time period and the history revision concept. They're incredibly detailed and well thought out, particularly the ships, it's hard not to love them on sight.
CHARACTER; 5
Ugh.
It's blatanatly obvious whoever wrote poor Fena's character hasn't spent a lot of time with women. She's only traumatized when it make the men look like heroes. She's completely incapable of doing anything worthwhile to the plot unless she's basically magically hypnotized, which is horrifying. She knows medicine and healing but that only comes up to make the men look tough because they "don't need it", rendering her even more useless. I can't even argue she's a Mary Sue, because she's so utterly boring she almost might as well been replaced by a talking dog.
The Ninjas, at least, are a collection of quirky - if painfully tropey - characters. The twins are just Japanese Weasleys. Karen is your usual mad inventor token female. Yukimaru is the stoic love interest who blushes on his ears, because he has to show emotion somewhere, I guess.
Sadly, the entire ship full of actually powerful, cool women are pretty well reduced to villainous idiots. Ugh.
SOUND: 7
They clearly spent a bit too much on impressively loud canon blasts, solid OP and ED songs, and a good acting cast. A shame, when the score is composed of far too much basic piano music and cheesy one-liners.