Princess Knight has an animation style reminiscent of the early Disney cartoons. Think "Steamboat Willie" style slapstick comedy where a horse might throw its rider and then bonk him on the head for good measure (with the obligatory xylophone sound effect to really send it home). It’s not quite as smooth, however, in comparison. It can range from jumpy to outright skipping entire segments of animation. And often the quality will jump around from scene to scene. The proportions of characters is sometimes inconsistent as well. In one scene, a character might be chubby and short, while in the next scene, they’re long-legged. The thing is, everything can be paused into a still frame quite nicely. It’s just that the in between frames are not always filled in, which makes for some pretty jerky, jumpy action when everything’s in motion.
Princess Knight also has that classic Speed Racer 1960’s - 70s style dialogue and voice acting. Characters go from fitful laughter to nervous spurts of speech in an instant, and stick to one flat style of emoting everything. It’s that style of voiceover that tries to fill every moment of moving mouths with sound, no matter how awkward it might sound in English. It happens, thankfully not as often, today in some low budget dubs. My theory is that translation is difficult enough as it is, so when you additionally try to make the translated dialogue fit the original language’s mouth movements, you’ll run into some problems with being over or under by a few seconds of movement. Creative script changes and directing can solve many of these problems, but of course that takes a lot more production time and money. The 60's and 70's were not a big time for production value, especially in Japanese animation that was rushed overseas to the States without much care.
There are also lots of filler episodes. Whenever Choppy gets in a sailboat, or just wants to spend the day playing, you know nothing of substance is going to happen until about 10 minutes into the episode. If you could condense this series down to its main plot elements without all the extraneous slapstick and, well, without 90% of the Choppy content, it would be much more entertaining and compelling. Oh, and his voice is about the most irritating sound on the planet. Let’s be real Choppy, no one likes you.
In addition to the filler and fluff, there are some pretty strange, if not outright gaping plot holes in the series. I suspect it’s another consequence of poor translation, but one example is when Prince Frank gives a gift to Sapphire. He’s supposed to believe that she’s a prince, yet he gives her a mirror to check his makeup. It makes no sense, and the flat voice acting gives no clues as to whether it was a sly joke or not.
Princess Knight also shows its age in some interesting ways. One of the most important moments in the series is when we learn the story of how the Princess became the Prince. Before she was born, a mischievous angel named Choppy gave her a blue heart, in addition to her red heart. The guy in charge of distributing hearts (I’m not sure if he’s actually meant to be God or not) gets furious with the angel, telling him, "(The parents) won’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl!" He casts Choppy out of heaven and tells him to take the blue heart back, so that she’ll be a girl, as intended. Choppy gets further clarification that the Prince needs to be taught to be gentle and peaceful, like a proper girl. This is serious stuff. You can’t just have people with masculine and feminine attributes, it’s just not allowed.
Where do you start with that one? On one hand, you get the feeling that Princess Knight is going to be about breaking down gender stereotypes and societal roles. After all, this is a show about a girl who is raised as a knight, and proves herself to be a great knight and a boy’s equal. But, at times, the show seems to fight the concept, tooth and nail, because it explicitly says that the only reason that Sapphire is so great is because she’s essentially half-boy. Sapphire even gets called a "little sissy girl" when she doesn’t act like her normal, brave self. Of course, that’s not even getting started on the insinuations this story has for real world people who identify as an opposite gender or don’t identify as strictly heterosexual. Of course, Princess Knight is not meant to be a serious commentary on any of this, but it’s still hard to set this aside while you watch.
All of that heavy thought aside, Princess Knight isn’t all that bad. And it does do a few things in quite a progressive way, even for its time. Sometimes it manages to take a breather from the constant battle to protect Sapphire’s secret gender. There’s a bit of romance thrown in as Sapphire falls in love with another prince. Of course, that must be kept a secret. There’s lots of swordplay and adventure, even battles with giant monsters and forest creatures. Of course, there’s filler, and then more filler. And finally, when the show gets around to story again, a few interesting things do happen in these first 26 episodes. After all that struggle to keep Sapphire’s identity a secret, the King finally changes the law that says only a male heir can inherit the throne. The law is promptly snatched away and burned, and Sapphire ends up inheriting the throne as a boy anyway. All seems well enough, but the Duke ends up ruining that as well, and capturing Sapphire and her mother, leading to the cliffhanger ending for this DVD set.
Princess Knight is one of those shows that you might hear about from a friend who watched it way back when. From your friend’s description, it sounds like it could be really interesting. But when you get down to watching it, it’s a huge chore to get through. It’s the perfect example of a series that’s ripe for a reboot. For now, Princess Knight is a nice piece of anime history to own, and a good series to pick apart and analyze. For entertainment value, however, it’s got a long way to go.
