Review of Fena: Pirate Princess

For something that had a unique and interesting premise, this severely did not deliver. Fena was a princess...a witch...a prostitute...a maiden... a pirate...pretty much anything you can think of, she was. Not only was this confusing for the audience, it was confusing for Fena. In one episode, she explained that she had all these coined names given to her, but despite that, she didn't know who she really was. And dejectedly, the ending didn't answer that for us. As a protagonist, because she was unaware of her own purpose in the world, she often relied on others to get where she needed to go. Evenwhen she had moments of "clarity," if you will, when she no longer doubted her choices, it seemed as though it was not really Fena making the decision, but rather an entity possessing/guiding her, if you will. Which, was somewhat confirmed in the end. And despite the fact that Fena was clearly on a journey of self-discovery, we, as the audience, aren't shown any of her character development. We don't know her as a person at the beginning, and we don't know by the end.

The side characters were alright. They served their purpose of moving the story along, but many ended up being poorly executed, such as Abel. He had much potential, but his storyline made him irrelevant by his end.

The love interest - Yukimaru, I liked well enough, but I didn't love him.

The plot started off exciting. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes and couldn't wait to see how things would unfold. Sadly, this suffered the fate of too many storylines and resulted in a convoluted and unresolved mess. The end didn't explain anything to me. If anything, it only brought on more questions. I think they were trying too hard to be different, to be emotional, and bring on this "shock value," but it failed.

This was very disappointing. It had a lot to offer and delivered none of it.