Fena: Pirate Princess Season 1 is now available to stream on Crunchyroll, Adult Swim's website, and VRV.
When a show has the words "Pirate Princess" in its title, there are certain promises and expectations of royalty and swashbuckling being made. Sure, the show can subvert expectations, but a show about Batman should at some point have Batman in it, right? Though the first co-production between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim offers plenty of pirate fun and high-seas adventures, viewers should know that a show about a pirate princess, this is not. Instead, this is the closest we've come to a Da Vinci Code anime, with reincarnations, secret organizations, and religious treasure hunts that culminate in an ending that brings to mind the final choice of Mass Effect 3.
Fena: Pirate Princess takes place in a fantastical alternate version of the 18th century, full of ninjas and pirates, where high-tech submarines and ironclads are frequent sights in the high seas and machine guns are as common as muskets and cutlasses. It is here that we meet Fena Houtman, a young orphan who decides to take fate into her own hands, escape a life of forced sex work, and join a band of ninjas to look for treasure -- and also possibly El Dorado and the Garden of Eden or something.
Production I.G's work on Fena really shows why they are one of the biggest anime studios working today. If nothing else, this truly is a marvel to look at. The character designs are memorable and distinct, and the action is dynamic and fluid, fully delivering on the swashbuckling sword and gunfights you'd want out of a pirate/ninja anime. Likewise, the show boasts some of the most beautiful environments in animation this year. Every new location is different than the one before and instantly recognizable, whether it's Germany, England, or Shangri-La, with grand vistas and detailed backgrounds that sell the epic adventure we're embarking with imagery alone.
But pretty vistas don't make a show. The reason we embark on the adventure is that Fena is a fantastic and charismatic character, with infectious energy and great chemistry with the rest of the cast, who are a delight to follow episode by episode. Likewise, the contrast between the violent fights and cartoony visual gags works rather well. The problem is that Fena has next to nothing to do on her own show. For a series that started out with the promise of a main character who is no one's damsel in distress, a heroine in a world where the only historical pirates are women, Fena never really does anything but get kidnapped, ask for help from the men in her life, and have the plot explained to her.
Though Fena: Pirate Princess makes it clear from the start that it is an alternate world, the show includes plenty of callbacks and references to real history to keep fans of the Golden Age of Piracy busy, especially once we are introduced to an all-female pirate crew. That being said, this is no Vinland Saga, so don't expect the show to be super concerned with staying true to history either.
The first few episodes do a great job in building an old-fashioned pirate treasure hunt, with surprising twists and turns that raise the stakes while staying in line with this heightened world. After all, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies started with an army of the dead and only got crazier from there. But as the season went on, it introduced more and more ludicrous ideas that make it resemble The Da Vinci Code more than a pirate adventure, leaving the swashbuckling fun behind in favor of one-upping the twists and turns of the previous episode. Though there are still some good character moments and the action never stops, the last two episodes introduce so many new ideas and themes out of nowhere that brings to mind the ending of Mass Effect 3 or even Game of Thrones, leaving plot threads open in favor of a grand statement it never justifies.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/3pIUZ2y
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