KAIZOKU OUJO

DESCRIPTION

CAST

REVIEWS

• 

  Juliko25

  55/100
  It tried way too hard to be something but lacked the necessary ingredients to make them all work in a coherent manner

  Dear lord, you have no idea how much I wanted to like this show. I really wanted to like this. I really did. More so than Demon Slayer, even. When Crunchyroll decided they wanted to try their hand at producing their own anime, a lot of people had mixed emotions, excitement and trepidation. Unfortunately, the latter wound up being more justified, as the majority of Crunchyroll's self-produced anime usually wound up being either mediocre (Tower of God and God of High School) or outright bad (Gibiate and Ex-Arm). The only one I was even remotely looking forward to was Fena: Pirate Princess, which promised to be a rip-roaring adventure series in the vein of stuff like Future Boy Conan and Mysterious Cities of Gold. So you'd think after the disasters that were their previous shows, that Crunchyroll would finally step up and make something that would actually be genuinely good, right? Well...at first, Fena seemed like it would go that way, but...it crashed and burned at the end. Not nearly as bad as, say, Wonder Egg Priority, but seriously, Fena: Pirate Princess as a whole is a massive disappointment on every level.

  As a young girl, Fena Houtman was forced to watch as her family was slaughtered before her eyes. A friend of hers, Yukimaru, only managed to save her by sending her out to sea before her family's killers could pursue her. She winds up on an island called Shangri-La, and is forced to live in a brothel. The only thing she really remembers is her father's message: "Go to Eden." Years later, she's still there, and is considered at the age where she is expected to partake in sex work against her will. When an attempt to escape goes awry, a band of pirates manages to take her away from Shangri-La, Yukimaru being one of them. But her father's final message is still a mystery to her, and she and the pirates decide to try and find Eden in order to piece together Fena's lost memories and unlock the many secrets surrounding her life.

  I wanted to be much more generous, especially with my rating for it, but the more I watched it and got closer to the finale, the more I began to realize that Fena, as a show, has really stupid writing. For one, it always seems to jump from one plot point to another without really bothering to either flesh them out or follow up on it. Fena's older retainers are taken hostage? Don't pay attention to them, we've got to find out who commissioned Fena's crystal! We find out who made the crystal? Oh, pish posh! We've got to find the coordinates for El Dorado! Wait, what's El Dorado? Who gives a shit! We need to have Fena be kidnapped by a group of female pirates and their crazy boss! A character's been sent to go after our group because they went against their main mission? Nope, we don't give a shit! Yukimaru needs to save Fena! What's this thing you call character development? You need to care that these characters are going from place to place even though they're being given no time to show what they're like outside of trying to save the world! Do you see what the problem is here? With the show being only 12 episodes long, it's given literally no time to really flesh out all the ideas it has or even follow up on them. It's like ten different writers are being called to write the script, but they can't seem to decide which ideas they want to focus on, so they just throw them all into a blender without considering if the end result will even work or not. As a result, the characters only act based on what's convenient to advance the plot and make really bizarre leaps in logic. Add to that, the story is just full of underutilized ideas, Deus Ex Machinas, and inconsequential philosophical bullcrap that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. This is a pretty clear case of too many cooks spoiling the soup.

  As a result of this show's messy writing decisions, none of the characters are really all that interesting. The show tries to make us care for the band of pirates that Fena joins up with, but they're all so one-note and cliche that they feel more like props to move the story forward than three-dimensional people. We're never shown what their lives are like outside of the adventure they're on, save for a few short flashbacks that don't really do much of anything, and instead, the show makes the case that we, the audience, should care about them just because it says so, rather than, y'know, making the effort to make its own case for why we should. If you're going to make a rip-roaring adventure show, caring about the characters and their plight should be paramount, right?! Speaking of characters I can't bring myself to give a shit about, Yukimaru. Honestly, I never liked this guy. He always came off to me like an overly angsty emo edgelord who acts needlessly dickish towards Fena because the writers think it'll demean his masculinity if he doesn't. I honestly could not believe that this guy could ever have any friendly feelings towards Fena because of the way he treats her when he first appears. For one, he legitimately calls Fena a coward because she can't remember how to get to Eden, implying that she is somehow a bad person for her memories being blocked due to the trauma she experienced, even though there is absolutely nothing that says Fena did it out of malicious intent. The fuck?! Secondly, when Fena tries to learn how to use a weapon in order to help the pirates, Yukimaru shoots her down because he thinks she'll only cause trouble and says that she should just sit and do nothing. We're seriously supposed to like this guy?! Granted, the show seems to have realized how bad his first impression came across and tried to tone down his jackass behavior in the second half, thank God, but it still did nothing to really make me care about him as a person. Out of all the characters who never seemed to get any development at all, Tsubaki and the band of antagonistic female pirates are the more egregious examples, as we learn nothing about Tsubaki other than that he's often exasperated by everyone's antics, and...literally absolutely nothing about the female pirates. They just pursue the main group, kidnap Fena, with one lady being unnecessarily jealous of Fena for reasons that are literally out of her control, and getting killed when their ship gets hit with a cannon...and just randomly coming back to life in the final episode with literally no explanation for how they even survived. WHAT?! Hello, show?! You cannot have your characters go through a situation that is guaranteed to kill them, and then just randomly bring them back to life with zero explanation whatsoever!!

  Personally though, Fena herself, the main character, is yet another victim of the show's bad writing decisions. At first, it seemed like she was going to be a plucky girl who'd join up with the pirates and learn to be more self-sufficient, kind of like Yona from Yona of the Dawn, or Shirayuki from Snow White With the Red Hair. After all, who doesn't like watching a character grow from being weak and helpless to stronger and more proactive, even if she decides to learn fighting skills or more practical skills like medicine or strategy? But here's the thing: Fena is never allowed to do anything on her own throughout the entire show. All she ever does is get kidnapped or have the plot explained to her, and the show seems to go out of its way to make sure Fena herself is never allowed any agency or autonomy. That time she led the pirates into the cave where the coordinates to El Dorado/Eden were? Fena didn't find out on her own, it's because a magic voice told her where to go to find it! And Fena never actively seeks answers out on her own. It's either always in her repressed memories, or someone else just hands them to her, and she always gets dragged around by the other characters, so she's literally little more than a prop. To me, it just felt like Fena was just there to be a macguffin damsel in distress, which is really sad, because she actually does have a personality and a lot of potential as a character that goes completely unutilized! If the show wanted to, they didn't have to necessarily make her some action girl who kicks ass and takes names by killing people. She could have just as easily become their captain or maybe become a tactician and led the pirates through her own efforts. Instead, she's just pushed around and only made to act whenever the story calls for it, and...if you ask me, it kind of reeks of sexism here. And no, the dumbass revelation in the final two episodes absolutely does not justify this at all, no matter how much it tries to.

  In all honesty, the only good things Fena has going for it are the animation, done by Production IG, and to a lesser extent, the soundtrack. I say to a lesser extent because while I've always admired Yuki Kajiura's music, her work here doesn't sound as good as her previous stuff. It doesn't have a whole lot of oomph to it like her soundtracks for .Hack//Sign, Pandora Hearts, Madoka Magica, and Demon Slayer did, or even Sword Art Online, for that matter! Tl;dr, Fena is a show with a lot of potential that got squandered by trying to do way too much, and not enough with elements that could have worked had it actually gave a damn about them. Seriously, I could write a better version of this story! Fena is basically a knock-off of much better adventure shows, like Future Boy Conan, which was the first of its kind and laid the groundwork for the entire premise, and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which is revered by all who saw it because of how much care and effort that was put into it, and is pretty much everything an adventure series should be. Fena tries to be like both shows, but completely lacking in the things that made the two I mentioned above so good, and there are reasons why those two anime are revered to this day.

  And yet, having said all that...out of all the shows Crunchyroll has made, I have to begrudgingly say that this is actually the best one they've made. Tower of God and God of High School are just compressed adaptations of longer Korean webtoons, Gibiate was just a complete mess of a show that suffered from a lot of the same problems Fena did, I haven't seen Tonikawa, Onyx Equinox, or Spider Isekai, and I don't think I need to mention what an absolute trainwreck Ex-Arm turned out to be. But all in all, Fena: Pirate Princess is just a cheap cash grab that tries to emulate previous adventure anime while failing to execute any of its ideas in any meaningful ways. I'm just glad to finally be done with this and move on to something else. I'm gonna wait for High Guardian Spice to come out and see how that fares now that it's finally going to be released.

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• 

  AftershockWolf

  85/100
  The story of my favorite Disney princess.

  __SPOILERS AHEAD__ "I'll never forget you, not ever! No matter where you might be! Even if you've forgotten who you are! I'll find you, no matter what!" -- Yukimaru

  I know this anime is a collaborative work between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim, so it's surreal to me how much this show felt more like an animated Disney movie than anything else it could've been.

  A Disney Movie. That's the quickest and easiest way I could summarize this anime - by calling it a movie from a company that isn't associated with it at all, in fact, a movie by a company that is a direct competitor to Adult Swim, a network that has found a home on places like Cartoon Network in recent years.

  Yet, even knowing all of that, I can't change my answer. Fena: Pirate Princess isn't just another Crunchyroll Original like we've seen before, nor is it like any other anime we've seen air on Adult Swim. It's not K, it's not Trigun, and it's definitely not another Fullmetal Alchemist... but that doesn't mean it's another Star Wars: Visions or Pirates of the Caribbean either.

  

  There are many reasons I immediately jump to relating an anime like Fena to a movie along the same lines as Frozen or Beauty and the Beast, and if you've seen this anime, maybe you know what I mean. If you don't get it though, let me explain.

  From start to finish this show felt like I was watching a Disney movie. The characters never really changed aside from the main two, it wasn’t ever perfect, and sometimes things got a little too fantastical but nonetheless, it’s something I’ll remember every little detail about and I feel like I could rewatch this series a hundred times without it ever losing its charm.

  It really wasn’t perfect by any means, and I’m sure someone more critical could break down everything that didn’t make sense about it, because like I said, sometimes it got too fantastical to make sense, but I call it a Disney movie for a reason - you watch these movies for that fantastical feeling, not because it needs to be a masterpiece, and it’s that feeling that these films give you that leaves you able to watch them over and over again without growing bored.

  

  Watching this show made me feel like a kid again, watching Aladdin or Frozen for the first time, and feeling these emotions I didn't understand. When Aladdin took Jasmine on a magic carpet ride, I was able to understand that nothing like that was possible, but it was the sense of "what if" that made it magical either way. Disney movies have this way of making you feel like a child no matter how old you are, and will always leave your imagination going wild with all the fantastical scenarios they present you with... and Fena does the same thing.

  Fena: Pirate Princess somehow managed to recreate that magical feeling that I got watching Miguel sing "Remember Me" to his grandmother. It didn't make a lot of sense every moment of its runtime, and it didn't try to stay on a realistic track, but that wasn't the point of the story. Fena wasn't meant to be realistic but was instead a journey that we could watch but never recreate. A journey we could lose ourselves in without reality pushing us down.

  From the beautiful love story between Fena and Yukimaru to the side characters who built a cast of absolutely loveable morons, like the twins who just screamed Sven and Kristoff every chance they got, to Eden, the show's final destination, Fena never left this magical world it built, and it created a story that we, as viewers, would want to get enthralled in, whether we meant to or not.

  

  I realize I'm talking in circles at this point, but there's really just one more thing I want to mention, and I did just bring it up, but Eden is one of the most beautiful, yet heartwrenching places I've ever seen in anime. It's a place that fits perfectly in this fantastical world that Fena has created, and a perfect fit for the theme of a... Disney movie.

  Since the gang entered Eden, where an island grew from the desolate land that just sat in its place, we could tell that Eden wasn't anything set in reality, but just what the name implies - heaven outside of the human realm. We saw treasure litter the floor and mysteries from all over the world find their way into one place. We watched as Fena put on a beautiful dance to create a staircase that led to the true land of Eden, and we watched as Abel, the main antagonist of this "movie" reach his final ending, with one of the most bittersweet scenes in the series where he finally found his love once more before succumbing to the effects of his own journey.

  Finally, Eden ends with us learning about who "Fena" is. The chosen maiden who gets to decide if life gets to go on as the world decided, or if the world will be reset for a better eternity. The chosen maiden who will forget this entire journey we just went through alongside her for the sake of a better tomorrow.

  

  Finally, the series ends with a new Fena building up her memories once more and moving on from the dream that she no longer gets to experience. The dream that WE however can experience again and again. A dream that I will want to experience again and again.

  Fena never stopped telling its own story to try to step back into the land of reality, because Fena's story wasn't one of reality. Fena's story was one set in fiction, both in our world and hers alike. Fena's story, while forgotten by her, won't be forgotten by anyone else who experienced the tale, both the characters that followed her journey and us, the ones who watched it from the outside.

  Fena: Pirate Princess might not have been a perfect anime, but it was a perfect dream. A perfect story. The perfect tale of my favorite Disney princess.

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• 

  ZNote

  62/100
  While fun, it struggles to appropriately balance the premise's comedy and drama.

  SPOILER-FREE!
  There really is something mystical about the sea, isn’t there? Whether it’s the idea of sailing off to a place that exists only in your imagination, or diving down into the depths to discover something that has yet to be discovered, its very mysteriousness acts as its great attractor for fiction. It’s no wonder why the sea and water are so often employed as dramatic devices in their literal or metaphorical form, or involves the creatures that dwell within it. Anime certainly is no stranger to this, as there’s some pirate-focused franchise that’s rather popular, but I cannot quite put my finger on what it is…

  Fena: Pirate Princess was the Summer 2021’s anime season’s new take on the idea of venturing out onto the seas. The last time that I made any sort of commitment to watching a pirate-oriented series was Pirates of the Caribbean, which frankly long-overstayed its welcome and became a tired, rickety old mess of a ship. But perhaps what the genre needed was a new animated venture to inject some life into the concept. No genre is ever truly dead after all, and all it can take is one show or property to demonstrate that there is always a new angle or approach to take moving forward.

  ---

  The story takes place in an alternate-universe 18th century. With hazy flashbacks to a ship burning, a boy crying out to her, and sailing away on a small boat, the white-haired Fena Houtman is sold off to be married. Though she plots her own escape, she ends up being rescued by an oddball group of pirates called The Goblin Knights. Among these pirates is Sanada Yukimaru, the young boy whom she remembered from her past. With a new group of friends, she sets out to create a new sense of purpose, but finds that her older memories start coming to the fore. Remembering that her father’s last words to her involved something called “Eden,” Fena feels pulled to discover what or where Eden is, all the while fending off those who also seek the word’s mysterious meaning.

  One of the fascinating aspects of a pirate story is the ability to have the tale be either an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling fantasy or lean more-heavily into sea myth and mysteries of the waters. Fena: Pirate Princess attempts to walk both the comedic and dramatic lines, taking the silliness inherent in its genre and mixing it with the story’s aura-laden mystique. It does however take a few episodes for the series to make the approach work; it tends to swap rather freely between the two methods early on, making the first couple of episodes and transitions a bit clunky. That’s not to say that it isn’t funny, but rather that it doesn’t land the punches as cleanly as it is going for.

  Part of the reason for this is that Fena, while definitely a likeable, fun character, is also the driving force behind the drama working. She’s depicted as being wildly out of her element, enjoying the new freedom she has now that she’s no longer in captivity, but is adrift both in terms of ability and her place in the world. While a main character being adrift certainly offers some comedic potential, her character also has to carry the burden of being that which the story focuses on with its pathos. In terms of the show’s overall structure with the adventures and discoveries of what Eden means, Fena seems more-suited for being a drama heroine rather than being a comedic one.

  Fena: Pirate Princess ultimately works more effectively when the series figures out which characters are better suited to comedy versus which ones aren’t. Once this balance is realized a few episodes in, with Fena and Yukimaru as the dramatic force while most of the other Goblin Knights are the comedic energy, it manages to make for fun interactions or digressions. The timeouts for merriment and frivolity come across as more wholesome, and the result of this is that it builds camaraderie among the Goblin Knights. The more time is spent with them, the more I could believe that they were an unflinchingly loyal group to one another and, by extension, to Fena. That way, when action scenes take place when they must fight off any other pirates or people that get in their way, it made for a good time even if the characters themselves were not entirely deep or memorable.

  And the action scenes themselves are handled well. Since the show takes place in a somewhat-realistic setting, it has to rely heavily on swords, guns, or other objects and things that are less fantasy-oriented. As such, most of the action sequences utilize the characters’ speed rather than brute strength. While they may not have animation quality at the level of sakuga or that of a more-explosive shonen, the effect is one of nice, slicker violence. Watching people get slashed was fun, and the Goblin Knights having a witty remark on standby added an extra dose of pleasure.

  And the series as a whole looks great, as though Production I.G. was trying to somehow blend a Disney-esque aesthetic with anime. The result makes for some genuinely-lovely sequences, culminating in one sequence during the tenth episode that made full use of the show’s beauty. The music itself is also another strength of the show; with plenty of appropriately lulling and dramatic numbers, most of the tracks capture that silly sea shanty aesthetic. Coupled with the action segments, Fena: Pirate Princess pulls off the fun of pirate stories solidly.

  But as I mentioned, the show struggles with balancing between the seriousness of the drama and the comedic fun. If the first few episodes were the show trying to get a firmer grip, the last third unfortunately undoes some of that. As the dramatic story begins weaving itself and takes its place at the front, there are several other mysteries and characters who are introduced that each have their own motivations about finding Eden or using Fena’s sealed memories for their own ends. Two different threads, one of the benevolent Goblin Knights and the other of a man who seems to have a connection to Fena’s past, begin to come together.

  It ultimately ended in a fashion that managed to resolve some of the lingering questions, but also unleashed a whole other box of them at the same time. There are certain aspects of the story that get either re-introduced or re-focused that left me scratching my head as to why they were there in the first place. This is, in part, due to Fena: Pirate Princess’s tonal shift; although there is a battle that takes place in the final hours, the show adopts a more metaphysical setting for its ending. While the change in style makes sense given the surrounding context involved, it feels like it contributed less to a proper ending and more like an attempt to try and get everything finished. The various mysteries introduced, each one peculiar in its own way, feel like they reached too much of an anticlimactic conclusion. They don’t quite coalesce because the dialogue, decisions, and resolutions don’t seem to coincide with what the drama was going for. In a manner of speaking, it’s almost as though the compass got thrown out at the final coordinates. I was left with a feeling of, “That’s what it all came down to?”

  Another reason why this matters is that, even though it may have had its bumps in the road getting started, the actual experience of watching the show was mostly nice. Even though it wasn’t anything that I would call “special,” it had energy and life. One impression I always had was that the people involved in the production cared greatly about putting out a good product. Everything in the series felt like attention was given to it, which just makes the several trips at the finish line all the more disheartening in the end. You can have all the passion for your product in the world, but it still has to deliver.

  ---

  Fena: Pirate Princess tries to walk the line between comedy and drama to mixed success, but in a way that feels surprisingly earnest and well-intentioned. It takes the inherent advantages of both the swashbuckling craziness of pirate stories with the mystery of the ocean and tries to make the most of both. With good animation and a good soundtrack, this original story did indeed hold my attention the further it went along. While it may struggle in the beginning, it ultimately settled into its rhythm and keeps mysteries incoming. But the ending is just too weak, leaving it limping in its final minutes as the resolution doesn't feel adequate. I may not have enjoyed it nearly as much as I would have hoped, but it was still an okay show.

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