It’s a small moment of dialogue as the action kicks off, but it’s very deliberately placed.Ī trap that fantasy (or even sci-fi) can fall into is stopping the story in its tracks to explain the magical elements to the audience. The scientist she kidnaps/rescues in this scene sees this and exclaims “cavorite?” so from that we can infer this is an example of this mysterious science-fantasy element. The immediate “I wonder what that is” question is answered when we see that it’s our spy protagonist Ange, using a strange metal orb that lights up glowing green and makes her, and anything she touches, float. In the show’s opening shots that I talked about above, we see flashes of mysterious bright green. The opening episode doesn’t deign to answer my “but what the heck is cavorite?” question concretely, but again, it gives you enough information to rifle through and begin to put some answers together yourself. Like, what is cavorite? How does it work? What does it have to do with the civil war, if anything? And who is that mysterious girl the camera focused on for a moment there? We’re handed enough information to dive into the story with some sense of a guidebook in hand, but we’re also filled with questions that the show gives us the tools to answer once it’s piqued our curiosity and made sure we know what’s important. The interesting thing to me about Princess Principal’s opening spiel was that in many ways it raised more questions than it answered, very much inviting you to figure things out on your own. Opening with narration explaining the way the world works isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though when done wrong it can feel a bit like you’re being lectured and not trusted to figure things out on your own. This opening exposition-via-narration technique is common among fantasy and stories set in alternate worlds-think Galadriel’s monologue at the start of The Fellowship of the Ring that gets you up to speed with the history of Middle-earth and who the Bad Guys and Good Guys are. The premiere opens with a short, narrated introduction in the style of an old-fashioned newsreel telling us the basic details of how this fantasy world works: chiefly, we’re told that Albion is the greatest military power in the world thanks to having a monopoly on cavorite, and that Albion has been split in half by revolution. The smoggy darkness backlit with orange and red from the cog-work also creates a foreboding atmosphere that leads you into the coming chase scene… and makes the little flashes of bright green we’re shown stand out even more.Īs well as the cogs, pipeworks, and airships we can plainly see dotted around the landscape, the main factor that sets this fantasy version of England (here named “ Albion”) apart from the real one is the presence of a fantastical substance called cavorite, and it’s this that sits at the heart of the show’s neat worldbuilding. But the addition of the pipes spitting steam from the background and the shots of our main spy, Ange, observing said street from on top of some sort of smoking mechanical mess of cog-work, immediately tells you this is not Sherlock Holmes’s London. The set and costume design all weave together to create an intricate and solid steampunk aesthetic that makes it both familiar and alien at once: the gaslit street shrouded in fog and lined with terrace buildings is a quintessential Victorian image. Princess Principal is set in an alternate version of Victorian Britain, though you will have a much better time if you accept this show as fantasy rather than trying to figure out what aspects of real-world history carry over and if we’re going to meet steampunk anime Queen Victoria at any point. I think I’ll tryyyyy defyyying graviityyyy. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that this show that I picked up solely for its geeky Cool Factor is… actually really damned good, delivering consistently sharp writing, interesting and layered characters, and some wonderfully efficient and intriguing magical worldbuilding that makes fantastic use of that old writing adage “show, don’t tell” that paints a vivid picture of its fantasy world from its very first scene.īecause it did such a good job laying the groundwork and piquing this viewer’s interest, let’s look just at the show’s first episode, and the small but important details the premiere gives us (and how) that let us build a picture of the world… without leaning too heavily on narration, pausing or cutting into the action to explain what’s going on, or having an audience point-of-view character that others teach things to. Young women kicking ass as spies in a steampunk fantasy version of turn-of-the-century London, set to a jazzy soundtrack and wrapped up in science-magic? Yes, please. I’ll admit it, I started watching Princess Principal because it just looked fun.
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