This is only for the dub of the OVA. The manga or sub may be spectacular, but that's not this review.
Initially zerky picked up Murder Princess because of the strange title, cool imagery and interesting premise. A "murder" princess wielding a katana in a blood-soaked gown who is a body-switched bounty hunter? Awesome!
Despite the fact that this was a six-episode OVA, the quality of the fight scenes and animation were poor and led to Fridge Logic at times. It's somewhat common in anime*
Spice And Wolf has bad horse animation too, but it's not an action series and it's not an OVA, which excuses it somewhat
, but the way the horses were animated was cringeworthy. "Great swordsmanship" apparently involves a lot of leaping and diagonal cuts. Falis was inexplicably helpless without a sword; she dodges and jumps around like a giant flea when she's holding a katana, but this ability mysteriously vanishes when her hands are empty. When disarmed she would stand still and take whatever beating was given to her.
The voice acting was sub-par. Falis' VA was great, but Alita's seemed to be speaking in an annoying falsetto half the time. It could be a relic of the original Japanese VA doing it, but that sort of thing doesn't fly very well in English. The two android kids were even worse and at times it sounded a little bit like a male VA trying to imitate female children by being as shrill and irritating as possible.
As for the plot... well... it was crap, but you don't really go into a series called "Murder Princess" expecting to have a life-changing experience. The main issue was all the plot threads left hanging; it wasn't done in a mysterious and interesting way like in Serial Experiments Lain or Neon Genesis Evangelion, but in a way that sort of seemed like maybe the writers forgot about them, or ran out of time/were hoping for a sequel.
The plot and action of Murder Princess were poor enough that the OVA would have functioned better if much of it was removed, and the budget concentrated on maybe one or two high-quality action scenes rather than a dozen mediocre ones. Surprisingly, the strongest part of this anime was the Romantic Two Girl Friendship between Falis and Alita, which was not what zerky came to see, but has an audience.
Not as good as it seemed it would be.
This is only for the dub of the OVA. The manga or sub may be spectacular, but that's not this review.
Initially zerky picked up Murder Princess because of the strange title, cool imagery and interesting premise. A "murder" princess wielding a katana in a blood-soaked gown who is a body-switched bounty hunter? Awesome!
Despite the fact that this was a six-episode OVA, the quality of the fight scenes and animation were poor and led to Fridge Logic at times. It's somewhat common in anime* , but the way the horses were animated was cringeworthy. "Great swordsmanship" apparently involves a lot of leaping and diagonal cuts. Falis was inexplicably helpless without a sword; she dodges and jumps around like a giant flea when she's holding a katana, but this ability mysteriously vanishes when her hands are empty. When disarmed she would stand still and take whatever beating was given to her.
The voice acting was sub-par. Falis' VA was great, but Alita's seemed to be speaking in an annoying falsetto half the time. It could be a relic of the original Japanese VA doing it, but that sort of thing doesn't fly very well in English. The two android kids were even worse and at times it sounded a little bit like a male VA trying to imitate female children by being as shrill and irritating as possible.
As for the plot... well... it was crap, but you don't really go into a series called "Murder Princess" expecting to have a life-changing experience. The main issue was all the plot threads left hanging; it wasn't done in a mysterious and interesting way like in Serial Experiments Lain or Neon Genesis Evangelion, but in a way that sort of seemed like maybe the writers forgot about them, or ran out of time/were hoping for a sequel.
The plot and action of Murder Princess were poor enough that the OVA would have functioned better if much of it was removed, and the budget concentrated on maybe one or two high-quality action scenes rather than a dozen mediocre ones. Surprisingly, the strongest part of this anime was the Romantic Two Girl Friendship between Falis and Alita, which was not what zerky came to see, but has an audience.