Scrapped Princess: Review (Boxset)

By: EyeSpyeAlexI’m here to review what’s known as a classic millennial anime: Scrapped Princess. With all the design traits of an early millennial anime, does Scrapped Princess stand the test of time? Give this a read and decide for yourself.Pacifica Casull, known more commonly as the Scrapped Princess, is foretold to be the poison that will destroy the world on her. She is currently in hiding, traveling with her foster siblings - brother Shannon, and sister Racquel. The prophecy as foretold by a priest from the Church of Mauser, is alleged to come true on her sixteenth birthday. Pacifica and her siblings doubt the authenticity of this prophecy, and are searching for the truth regarding Pacifica’s powers and fate.On their travels, they meet many people who turn out to be friend and foe, and sometimes both.  Innkeeper Winia Chester and knight merit Leopold Scorpus are two characters that help Pacifica out in many parts of her journey. Their main foes are the faithful followers of Mauser, and while they carry the plot, they do not help Pacifica. Their end game is to prevent any destruction Pacifica can bring on her sixteenth birthday by killing her. There’s also characters that switch from the side of Mauser to the side of Pacifica, such as an assassin named Kidaf Gillot and leader of the special forces group the Obstinate Arrow, Christopher Armalite.There are also other worldly beings called Peacemakers trying to destroy Pacifica. They are beings of Lord Mauser, and spend their time trying to kill Pacifica, and trying to convince people to kill her. Pacifica is the “Providence Breaker”, which means she can disobey the Providence (orders) of Peacemakers. This is the reason Pacifica is considered the poison of the world; she can disobey God.Things really get turned up to eleven when you learn why humanity is subservient and why the universe feels like a mix of the middle ages with futuristic technology. Due to a war six thousand years ago, the realm       of Dustbin where Pacifica lives exists in stasis. They cannot develop any new technology, nor can they rejoin the rest of the Earth.These Peacemakers - Cz, Steyr, Galil, and Socum - exist in this world to ensure peace is kept. Lord Browning used an army of Dragoons to attempt to defeat him, and the aliens they originally were fighting. They all were destroyed, or so everyone thought. Pacifica’s group has Zefiris and Natalie - two of the last Dragoons - aiding them. Zefiris takes Shannon as her D. Knight so that the two may fuse together to defeat the Peacemakers. Natalie helps the cause by creating Dragoon emulations called Gigas, which are operated entirely by human pilots.The story enters its swan song when Prince Forsythe - Pacifica’s brother - kills her and himself after he sees the destruction the Peacemakers are causing. Pacifica is then transported to a different plane of existence where she meets Celia Mauser aka Lord Mauser. Celia tells Pacifica she tried to do what was best to save humanity and her siblings, but feels she got it wrong. Pacifica tells her that she believes it’s important for humanity to make their own decisions, even if it’s the wrong one. This sets Celia free, along with the world, and undoes Pacifica and Forsythe’s death. Our story ends with Pacifica living happily with her foster siblings and Zefiris on a farm, content with the life she has.While it has a great mythos and unique story, Scrapped Princess loses some points for relying on stereotypical anime tropes to tell the story. Strangers stay mysterious until they can effectively monologue their name and purpose in life. There are literal and figurative white knights, which fits the period but is annoying.AnimationThis is the remastered Blu-ray release of the 2003 anime, which means it has a lot of design traits of 2003: big eyes, super saturated colors, and pointy hair. The design does seem to have an anatomy problem. Shirts do not wrap around boobs. Boobs are not separate entities inside of a garment of clothing. All the females are animated in that way. The backgrounds are drawn as realistically as possible, with lots of shading and saturation of color. This realization puts a lot of things into perspective for me, and I can’t fault the anime for following the trends of the time.Music/Voice Acting Both the English and Japanese voice actors do a nice job, especially Kari Wahlgren who voices Pacifica Casull. She voices a teenager better than any voice actor I have ever heard. There are times during Scrapped Princess when I found Pacifica to be especially annoying and immature. About halfway through watching the show I realized it’s because she sounds just like I’d imagine an annoying teenager would in that situation. Props to Kari.          Opening song “Little Wing” and closing song “Daichi no la-li-la” are stuck in the time they were created in. The ending song is nice to listen to, but the opening song is all over the place. It starts with Irish flutes, then flows into a country guitar melody, almost like an anime version of Come on Eileen.CharactersScrapped Princess offers a wide range of characters that all feel very two-dimensional. The show force feeds the viewer reasons why each character acts the way they do, which isn’t always a good thing. It’s good to have an air of mystery about a character until a revelation, but this anime forces nearly every neutral character to follow that rule. Conversely, characters that have been stalwart in their beliefs end up flipping their opinion on relative issues.Pacifica, Shannon, and Racquel also feel like Mary Sue characters. They each have plot armor so thick that it brings one back from the dead. They also have special skillsets that no other character in the show possesses. We, of course learn that magical powers were systematically removed from the human gene pool. However, it feels more than coincidental that our two of our three main characters would possess them.Re-Watch ValueThis is an anime that deserves several watches. The mythos created in this world is intense, thought provoking, and requires at least a second watch-through to understand better. This is an anime that constantly kept me on my toes. I feel additional watch-throughs would help me keep track of the plot, or at least understand it more.PackagingThe packaging is superb. The cover is reversible, with a mini poster on the other side. Each disc has a character’s face etched onto it, which adds a playful element to the discs. To help differentiate between DVD and Blu-ray, the Blu-ray discs are orange in color.Bonus MaterialsThe Scrapped Princess boxset does a good job of ensuring both the regular and Blu-ray editions have nearly identical bonus features. Features include on both discs include a textless version of opening song “Little Wing”, and of closing song “Daichi no la-li-la”. There’s also trailers for the following anime: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion the Complete Series, Wolf Children Hosada Collection, Yona of the Dawn Parts 1 & 2, and Fairy Tail Part 22.Each Blu-ray disc holds a different special Blu-ray trailer. Blu-ray disc 1 holds a trailer for Wolf’s Rain the Complete series. Disc 2 holds a trailer for the Blu-ray release of Summer Wars Hosada Collection. Finally, disc 3 holds the trailer for the 20^th anniversary and Blu-ray edition of Escaflowne with all new English cast.  It also holds the Japanese Commercials and TV spots,  and the Japanese piracy warnings. It also includes Textless versions of the songs mentioned above along with the trailers mentioned.Mithical RatingOverall, Scrapped Princess has a great story that falls a little flat during execution. The universe itself has incredible detail, but leaves viewers wanting more in terms of character development. The animation is great, except for the upper torso region. The voice acting is so good I almost disliked how authentic it is.[yasr_multiset setid=9]