Elf Princess Rane is a 1995 comedy anime OVA produced by KSS and Dangun Pictures known for its extreme silliness and its extremely short length.
As befitting of an extremely wacky comedy, Elf Princess Rane's plot is kind of a mess. Go, an amateur treasure hunter, is searching for the legendary Salamander. During his quest, he meets up with an Elf named Rane who is seeking the Four Treasures of Heart. Add in Go's childhood friend Mari who befriends her own fairy in Leen, an evil corporation who seeks to turn Go's hometown into an amusement park, and you have a lot of plot elements that end up being buried under a tidal wave of jokes, random stuff, and overall zaniness.
This series lasted for two episodes, whereupon the animators ran out of budget. In the last 20 seconds of the second episode, one of the characters gets a full-screen face shot to beg for monetary donations to continue the series. Whether this scene is sincere or just another joke, or course, is for you to decide.
This anime provides examples of the following:
- Anime Hair: Takuma. It's sky blue, has two tendrils down the front (the one on his right is thick and goes down to his feet, ending in a curl, while the one on his left is straight, thin, and goes to around his belt), and is styled into an epic curled horn on his left. Said horn is so massive that he regularly has to prop it up with his hands.
- Denser and Wackier: Subscribes to the constant gag-a-second delivery reminiscent of anime like Dragon Half or Excel♡Saga.
- Electrified Bathtub: Mr. Yumenokata gets shocked from using an electric shaver while in a bath during the second episode.
- Gag Series: Elf Princess Rane quickly abandons any pretense of being anything other than a rapid-fire gag machine.
- Heavy Sleeper: Leen sleeps for three days straight and being tossed around in a waist-pouch isn't enough to wake Rane.
- Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The protagonist has about twenty older sisters, the product of repeated sets of quads and quints, who all look exactly alike. (Five of them have formed a rock band.)
- No Ending: It does have an ending, even if the "ending" is only a notice that the studio ran out of money. Whether this counts as a No Ending or simply ending the show with another joke depends on how seriously you want to take a scene from an anime that is aggressively unserious. It's also likely a spoof on how it was quite common for OVAs to end after two episodes, regardless of how "complete" they were at that point.
- Non Sequitur: Much of the show's humor is based around events that are unexpected and/or completely nonsensical.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Elf Princess Rane has a plot (kinda), but the story's pretty close to last on its list of priorities.
- Our Elves Are Different: "Elves" are about 6 inches high and come from an alternate world where their language is not...quite...ours. Most of what they say is Japanese-sounding gibberish, so the official subtitlers had fun. One of the most notorious of these is when the titular character is grabbed out of the air and shrieks, "Cigar store!!"
- Public Bathhouse Scene: The second episode is about a newly built unique public bath house which turns into a giant phoenix making all the bathtubs see-through balls that hang on its wings giving the bathers a view.
- Sneeze Cut: In episode 2.
- Speaking Simlish: Rane speaks in complete gibberish. In the English adaptation, her dialogue is subtitled with random words that, again, make no sense.
- Likewise, Takuma also falls into rambling, gibberish nonsense, which is subtitled in English as random phrases written backwards (e.g. "Loohcs ni yats!")
