Follow TV Tropes

Following

Western Animation / Nella the Princess Knight

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nella_the_princess_knight.png
Her heart is bright, she's Nella the Princess Knight!

Nella the Princess Knight is a Nickelodeon cartoon that premiered on February 6, 2017 on the Nick Jr. block, created by Christine Ricci (No, not her).

The titular character is an 8-year old biracial princess named Nella, who also transforms into a knight when someone's in trouble. She rides a unicorn named Trinket as her steed, who loves fashion. Her other friends include Sir Garrett, a young knight who carries informative trading cards everywhere, and his horse, Clod, who is the comic relief for the group. Last, but not least, especially in his mind, is Sir Blaine. A talented, if boisterous, young knight, he tends towards being competitive and self-centered, as well as being ignorant of the negative effects being such can have. Sometimes acts as an antagonistic force, sometimes not, but either way, anyhow, Nella is usually able to get through to his better side, whatever the occasion, though usually not with a straightforward approach.

In January 2019, it was confirmed that the show’s second season will be its last due to encountering delays.

Unrelated to Princess Knight.


Tropes:

  • The Ace: Nella, in Princess Knight mode, is always shown pulling some cool moves with her magic transforming weapons. She's usually on top of her game in any sort of situation that calls for some Action. Notable when compared to her fellow knights, Garrett and Blaine, the former of who isn't quite so good on the physicality part and the latter who is shown to boast at being the best and is pretty good in practice feats-wise, even though, as Garrett mentions, Nella is really the best.
  • Art Evolution: The animation is much more fluid and shaded in Season 2.
  • Acquired Situational Narcissism: In "Joust About Time", as Garret and Clod keep advancing in the joust, they let it go to their heads until they blunder during the finals.
  • By the Power of Grayskull!: When Nella is about to transform into her knight form, she calls out "My heart is bright, time to be a princess knight!".
  • Catchphrase: "My heart is bright, time to be a princess knight!" Said as a prelude right before she transforms.
  • Christmas Episode: "The Knight Before Christmas".
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Clod tends to be this at times. To a lesser extent, Blaine can get kind of spacey when he is made to think over some of the more common sense things Nella has to remind him about.
  • Depending on the Writer: In just his first two appearances, Blaine goes from being a brat who actually learns deceitfulness from a lesson about kindness to a surprisingly fun and endearing, boisterous cool kid and the first knight after Nella to showcase his bravery and physicality.
  • Evolving Credits: The title sequence is updated slightly midway through the first season; notable changes being it’s a sunrise instead of midday during the zoom in on the castle and Nella’s new transformation scene, where she now wears a silver tiara with her armor.
  • Gentle Giant: Many of the bigger creatures that frequent the kingdom and its outskirts tend to be this, like Dotty the polka dotted Dragon for example, who only thinks the best of the knights who looked after her wayward egg (despite that one among them, Blaine, was the cause of the waywardness).
  • Great Big Book of Everything: Garrett's Knightly Trading Cards serve as this, containing useful information on practically every creature the main characters encounter. He even lampshades this in "Royal Beach Day".
    Garrett: Gosh, these are useful.
  • Halloween Episode: "The Halloween Hippogriff".
  • Happy Birthday to You!: The characters are heard singing the last line of the song at Norma's birthday party in "Norma's Very Big Day"
  • Keet: Clod. His usual expression is a great big grin.
  • Kindhearted Simpleton: Clod may not be the smartest horse around, but he is unfailingly friendly and kind to everyone he meets.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Aside from Nella having a wardrobe filled with fancy ballgowns, her more modest every-day dress, and her armor, no one else really changes clothes.
    • 24-Hour Armor: Garrett and Blaine are never shown without their armor on, even in "Up All Knight", which takes place at night and shows both out and about, the former having just waken up when we see him. In fact, outside his baby pictures, Garrett will wear clothes over his armor, as opposed to in place of it (though he does go without it in "More Than Meets The Eye" while taking part in Nella's ballet).
  • Loophole Abuse: In "A Striking Surprise", an unaired episode that can be seen on demand, Nella disguises Hairy the Impkin with a suit and mustache, so no one will notice he is an Impkin, since Impkins aren't allowed to bowl.
  • Magical Girl Warrior: Transforms from princess to Princess Knight using a magical activation song.
  • Miles Gloriosus: Blaine isn't quite as brave and skilled as he likes to think he is.
  • Minimalist Cast: Aside from a ton of background/minor characters and magical creatures, the only major characters are Nella, Garrett, Trinket, Clod, Willow, Blaine, Nella's parents, Nella's baby sister, and the knight brigade.
  • Narcissist:
    • Trinket is a minor example, often talking about how beautiful and fashionable she is.
    • Blaine is a straighter example, thinking he's the best knight around.
  • No Antagonist: Some episodes include creatures that cause trouble, but they are later reformed by Nella. So far, Sir Blaine has been the most antagonistic of anyone, and only really in his first appearance in "Up All Knight", and even he is gotten through by Nella (despite a surprisingly epic fake-over earlier in the episode where Blaine learned the wrong lesson from Nella's "Be Kind" song).
  • No Object Permanence: When Nella’s transformation changed midway through Season 1, she is shown to wear a silver tiara with her armor, but in the first few episodes featuring this change, she doesn’t wear it post-transformation.
  • Not Me This Time: In "Frozen Trinket", Trinket gets lost inside a mirror house and her friends, upon seeing a unicorn ride shaped like her, assume Badalf the Wicked Wizard froze her.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: It's revealed in "The Unicorn Rescue" that Trinket's real name sounds like a neigh. "Trinket" is a nickname Nella came up with.
  • Origins Episode: The episode “The Unicorn Rescue” has Nella and Trinket recalling the day a younger Nella first met Trinket and became a princess knight for the first time.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Befitting the show's medieval setting, Western-style dragons appear every other episode as either obstacles or pseudo-antagonists.
  • Police Are Useless: The Knight Brigade. Whenever they appear, they either fail to solve the problem, or inadvertantly make it worse.
  • Puppy-Dog Eyes: In "Sir Clod," Clod loses his invitation to the Royal Cafe Breakfast Buffet, so he tries to get in using simply politeness and these.
    Clod: Please?
    Knight: No.
    Clod: Pleeeease?
    Knight: No.
    Clod: But I can't make my eyes any bigger or cuter than this.
    Knight: I'm afraid there's nothing we can do.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something: The whole point of the show is that Nella, being a knight, has to constantly fix the messes that the creatures cause and the villagers get themselves into.
    • Modest Royalty: The whole family, including King Dad and Queen Mom (as they are known in the credits), fall into both tropes. Their castle, while pretty extravagant-looking on the inside, is a rather modest size on the out. Both the King and Queen act just as much as normal parents would as they do as royal ones, like how the Queen is more than willing to do the house work and cook and the King partakes in such not-quite royal activities like bowling.
  • Sir Verb-a-Lot:
    • Nella and her friends attend a school named Learn-a-Lot.
    • In "Nella vs. the Wicked Wizard", Nella and Trinket cross a mount named Move-a-Lot.
  • Surfer Dude: The Snorkelmanders from "Royal Beach Day" speak in this manner of voice.
  • Title Drop:
    • Several times throughout "Sir Clod".
    • In "The Knight Before Christmas" after Nella transforms:
      Trinket: Talk about the knight before Christmas!
  • Token Minority: Nella's dad is Black while her mom is Latina, and Nella herself is biracial.
  • Transformation Sequence: Nella does this Once per Episode when she becomes a knight.
  • Two Shorts: Each 22-ish minute episode has two individual episodes of about 11 minutes each that have their own complete story in them.
  • Unicorn: Trinket is a unicorn with a multicolored horn, pink mane, and pink tail.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Garrett often exclaims "Gauntlets!", or more rarely, "Dragonfire!"
  • Versus Title: Nella vs. the Wicked Wizard.
  • Worth It: Upon receiving a Christmas gift in "The Knight Before Christmas", Sir Blaine comments that it wasn't easy to be nice but it was worth it.

Top