Princess Principal

"Luckily, Princess Principal kicks ass: it has flair, strong worldbuilding, and an awesome cast, and while it doesn’t end on quite as strong a note as I would’ve liked, it’s obvious they were leaving room open for sequels. Now that I know that a movie series is incoming, I basically have nothing to complain about."

- Nicoletta Christina Browne, THEM Anime Reviews

Princess Principal is a Twelve-Episode Anime, originally aired in 2017. It is followed by a six-part film series, Princess Principal: Crown Handler, that was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic; as of early 2022, only the first two movies had been screened in Japan. The television and movie series have both been licensed by Sentai Filmworks, who have released the series and the first film on Blu-ray. The series is also available on Amazon Video.

Victorian-era Britain Albion has discovered the anti-gravity substance Cavorite and used it to build an Air Fleet and become even stronger than in Real Life... but a revolution a decade ago has split the country, with the London Wall marking part of the border between East and West. There's still a war going on - not fought by soldiers, but by spies and subterfuge.

So, yes, this story is set in a steampunk version of the Cold War.

The Commonwealth of Albion has devised a plan – Project: Changeling – to replace the Kingdom of Albion's Princess Charlotte (fourth in line for the throne) with a double, Ange le Carré. What they didn't count on was the princess deciding to join forces with Ange in order to become Queen and reunite the nation; a decision that she fully expects to end with her going to the guillotine. The two, along with Ange's partner Dorothy and Princess's school friend Beatrice, become an espionage team for the Commonwealth, based out of the prestigious Queen's Mayfaire girls' school that Princess attends and taking mission orders from "Control". A young Japanese swordswoman, Chise, joins them early in the story, and is given the cover identity of a foreign exchange student. "Team Principal" has the advantage of Ange possessing the "C-ball", the smallest known Cavorite device.

To add to the suspense, every member of Team Principal (with the possible exception of Beatrice) has a secret that she's keeping from Control... and, in the cases of Ange and Princess, that they're keeping from the rest of the team.

The story can't decide whether it wants to be in the "trenchcoat and stale beer" or "tuxedo and martini" subtypes of espionage stories. Perhaps it's best to place it in the middle of the spectrum, at "casual outfits and red wine". Or maybe "schoolgirl uniforms and tea".


 * Absentee Actor: Despite Princess Principal being a Twelve-Episode Anime, Princess does not make an appearance in Case 22 except in a photograph, and Chise doesn't appear at all.
 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The tunnels under and within the Wall are immense. Then again, the Wall is tall and thick enough that entire buildings are incorporated into it. (This is a possible Shout-Out to the church in the Berlin Wall and the subway tunnels running under that wall.)
 * Air Vent Passageway: Dorothy makes use of one in Case 2. Unlike the traditional shiny steel with a rectangular cross-section, this is basically a giant brass pipe.
 * Alphabetical Theme Naming: The original Team Principal is made up of Ange, Beatrice, Charlotte, and Dorothy. When everybody starts calling Charlotte "Princess", Chise joins the team.
 * Alternate Techline: Takes place in an alternate late 19th-/early 20th-century Great Britain (internal evidence suggests circa 1900) where steam still predominates and cavorite-powered antigravity makes massive flying battleships possible, and automotive technology is twenty or thirty years further along than it was at the equivalent point in our timeline.
 * Alternate Timeline: One where a dramatic civil war (the causes of which have yet to be even hinted at) split Great Britain Albion into two hostile nations separated by a great wall, somewhere circa 1890, and where antigravity exists and automobiles out of our 1920s are a common sight in 1900.
 * Anachronic Order: The stories were aired (and provided in the North American Blu-ray release) out-of-order, specifically to include all of the characters in the first aired episode and presumably in order to keep some secrets for as long as possible. Each episode is identified with a "Case" number that indicates where it falls in chronological order (which we are using to identify the episodes here).
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Cavorite, the anti-gravity compound.
 * Bait and Switch Credits: At no point does Ange ever transform into a black humanoid lizard; her stories of being from the "Black Lizard Planet" are accepted as lies or understood to be metaphors for being a spy.
 * Band of Brothers: The members of Team Principal will do anything to protect each other.
 * After Chise challenges a boy to a duel (with reason) and the team tells her that it's a bad idea for a spy to draw attention to oneself, Princess visits her for a private discussion. Chise expects to be lectured; instead, Princess offers to serve as her second.
 * The team disobeys orders in order to rescue Princess at one point.
 * Because I'm Jonesy: During one of the picture dramas, Beatrice impersonated Ange while calling Princess so that Beatrice could find out whether Princess thought Beatrice was a liability to the team – not knowing Ange was standing beside Princess at the time. Princess played along.
 * Bloodless Carnage: Thoroughly averted.  The series does not shy away from blood.
 * Boom! Headshot!: The Princess accidentally blows the head off a marble bust with a shot from a gun disguised as a pen in Case 2.
 * Card Games: The soldiers deployed on the train in Case 7 seem to be playing Whist as Ange and Chise walk past them. They're very disciplined, because none of them make a sound when the girls start taking cards out of some soldiers' hands and inserting them into others'.
 * Cheeky Mouth: Inexplicably seen here, despite the general high quality of the animation throughout. And it's not consistent -- sometimes profile shots will have moving chins with coordinated mouths that clearly wrap around the front of the speaker's face, while other shots in the very same scene will demonstrate this trope.
 * Counterfeit Cash: Part of the plot of Case 2. The Kingdom has stolen the plates for Commonwealth currency and plans to print vast quantities in the colonies, with the goal of undermining the Commonwealth economy.
 * Conspicuous CG: Although it maintains a look of traditional cel animation quite well, there are moments, such as most vehicles and the traveling shot in Case 1 when the Princess's party returns to the ball, where the illusion fails.
 * Cool Car: Dorothy's car, which looks much like one might expect a 1910s/20s-vintage hot rod/race car might, with all manner of piping and extra bits (including what might be a primitive supercharger) sitting on (or in) its hood. It's huge, almost the size of a truck, can hold pretty much the entire team at once, and appears to be spectacularly souped-up.
 * The Princess has her own car, which is kept parked next to Dorothy's under the school. Although somewhat smaller and more "feminine" looking, it seems to be no less powerful.
 * Cool Garage: The apparently secret garage under the school where Dorothy and the Princess keep their cars, and where Dorothy or Beatrice maintains them. It's not the Batcave (visually, it's much closer to the Black Beauty's garage in The Green Hornet TV series), but it's highly unlikely that any other student at Mayfaire has one.
 * Country Mouse: The character Ange effects for the ball where she meets Princess in Case 1 is so Country Mouse that it should have been a red flag that something was wrong. Only the fact that she only speaks to the Princess in-character -- and that the Princess knew something was up and was playing along -- kept her from being thrown out as a gate crasher far out of her social stratum.
 * Culture Clash: Some is seen between the Albionese and the Japanese who have come to revise a treaty; it's clear that Team Principal (and just about everyone else) is ill-informed about Japan and has little to no idea how to respond to many of their cultural gestures.  And some clearly view them as barbarians in the grand British tradition, such as the people whispering on the dock, and even the Colonel who is part of Control.
 * Grappling Hook Pistol: One of Ange's pieces of spy gear, first seen (chronologically) in Case 7.
 * Green Rocks: Cavorite, quite literally.  It appears to be a natural mineral found (only?) in Albion; in its natural form it is a pale green crystal, and when used actively emits a green glow that surrounds everything it effects.
 * Grey and Gray Morality: Outside of Team Principal, it's hard to call one side the "good guys" and the other the "bad guys". The Commonwealth and the Kingdom both have sympathetic and villainous people among them and by turns the girls may find themselves threatened by ostensible allies and aided by technical enemies. This is no doubt to emphasize the Cold War parallels in the story, as well as to underline how both sides are Not So Different from each other – a definite advantage when Princess Charlotte's plan is to eventually reunite them.
 * Subtly lampshaded in-universe when the team chooses the name "Team White Pigeon"; Dorothy likes the name because it isn't grey.
 * Historical Domain Character: Charlotte's beloved grandmother is very clearly Queen Victoria.  This allows us to set the date of the events in the show to no later than 1900 (Victoria died in January 1901), and probably a year or more earlier given her apparent health.
 * In Crown Handler: Part 1 her health is explicitly said to be declining, suggesting the film series takes place in 1900.
 * Identical Stranger: The only reason Project: Changeling was even considered is because Ange and Princess Charlotte look alike.
 * Impersonation Gambit:
 * Project: Changeling in its original form.
 * Ange tries to pull one to get most of the team into a restricted area. Since one of the guards she's trying to bluff has heard that Princess is already inside the restricted area, this quickly turns into an Indy Ploy.
 * Infant Immortality: Averted, as is probably to be expected in a Grey and Gray Morality setting. For example, in Case 7 Jubei Tōdō had no compunctions about striking to decapitate Beatrice; only her mechanical voicebox saved her.
 * Irony:
 * A classic case of Situational Irony:.
 * There is also a case of Tragic Irony during Case 18, when Dorothy complains that.
 * Jump Off a Bridge: Chise enters the story in Case 7 by leaping off an aqueduct onto the top of the train carrying Team Principal, the Japanese ambassador and his staff.
 * Les Yay: Although there is nothing overt seen in the series (other than perhaps their plan to run away together to Casablanca), as is appropriate for the setting, the closing credits of both the series and Crown Handler: Part 1 hint at something more than simply friendship between Charlotte and Ange.  They are also a popular Shipping couple, although of course that has nothing to do with Canon developments.
 * The Man Behind the Man: Invoked: When the Princess first proposes an alliance to Commonwealth intelligence, 7 speculates that she may have someone behind her manipulating events.
 * Meaningful Echo: Case 1, in which - despite Ange saying it was the first time they'd met - Ange and Princess repeat a conversation they had had a decade ago (shown in Case 20), with each saying the other's original lines.
 * Not Quite Flight: If she's not carrying anything (or anyone), Ange's C-ball lets her make stupendous leaps, at the end of if which she simply drifts in for a landing.  Judging from one scene in Crown Handler: Part 1, these leaps can span miles.
 * Not So Different: The Commonwealth and the Kingdom. To the point that we hear almost nothing about their political differences.
 * Operation: Blank: "Project: Changeling".
 * Potty Emergency: Dorothy fakes one in Case 2 in order to get aboard an airship that the team needs to search.
 * Power Glows: Cavorite generates a green glow around whatever it affects.  Interestingly, this isn't a Sickly Green Glow -- there's no indication that it's evil, harmful or otherwise problematic.
 * Roof Hopping: One of the things that Ange's C-ball allows her to do, as shown most clearly in Case 7.
 * Secret Path:
 * The hole in the palace wall where Ange could get in to see Charlotte was the "get somewhere that is difficult to reach" type, although it was destroyed on the day of the revolution.
 * The tunnel between Queen's Mayfaire and Team Principal's Cool Garage is the "go somewhere without being noticed" type.
 * Sequel Hook: Zelda's escape at the end of the final arc suggests she – and the Commonwealth faction she works for – will come back to cause more trouble in the film series.
 * Series Continuity Error: Case 1 mentions that everybody knows what Princess Charlotte looks like. Case 16 has Princess go undercover in a London laundry mill.
 * Refuge in Audacity: This seems to be the idea behind the Princess going "undercover" without any kind of disguise. It's so monumentally unlikely that a member of the Royal Family would do something like that, that she can and be dismissed as simply bearing a strong resemblance to Princess Charlotte. After all, what's more believable? That the Princess has inexplicably taken a job at the same sweatshop you work in, or that the girl they've just hired happens to look like her?
 * Shoe Phone: In Case 2, the Princess manages to accidentally release the safety and fire a one-shot gun disguised as an ordinary pen.
 * Single Phlebotinum Limit: The only technological anomaly in this setting is cavorite, the anti-gravity compound, which appears to be a naturally-occurring mineral found only in Albion, and then almost entirely within the Kingdom.  (Although the Commonwealth has access to small amounts.)
 * Something Only They Would Say: Played with in Case 2: Ange is able to provide Beatrice with information that lets her convincingly impersonate a "trapped officer" to one of the crew of the warship they're on.
 * Spirited Young Lady: Most of the central cast, as befits a group of aristocratic teen girls (one of whom is a literal princess) from a quasi-Victorian alternate England who are a team of spies.
 * Spy School: In a Flashback we see some of Ange and Dorothy's training by the Commonwealth, along with dozens of other girls being groomed as spies, in a school that appears to be based on the Real Life Special Operations Executive "Camp X".
 * Stealth Insult: The Kingdom of Albion to Japan in Case 7, when they send a powerless royal with no political connections to meet the ambassador who has arrived to renegotiate a treaty. Princess says nothing about her lack of power, so only Ange and Dorothy notice.
 * Suicide Attack: An accomplice of Jubei Tōdō, disguised as a British soldier, sets off a bomb strapped to his leg to disconnect the Japanese ambassador's train car from the cars carrying the soldiers meant to protect him in Case 3.
 * Totem Pole Trench: Done by Ange and Beatrice in order to bluff two guards into abandoning their post in Case 9.
 * Traintop Battle: How Chise first meets the team in Case 7, by fighting Dorothy and Ange atop the train carrying the Princess and the Japanese ambassador.
 * Translation Convention: The original Japanese dialog says the characters are speaking English.
 * Victorian London: With added steampunk and a Berlin-style wall. London is Team Principal's home base, and the setting for half of the stories.
 * The Wall Around the World: The London Wall. Exactly what it encompasses is unclear (although the sepia-toned flashback in Case 13 shows it encompasses more than just London), but it clearly divides the known from the unknown and the safe from the dangerous, as far as most of the characters are concerned.
 * Wall of Weapons: In Case 2, Dorothy reveals one hidden behind a section of wall in the "clubroom".
 * Wham! Episode: Case 20, which took some clues from earlier episodes about a relationship between two characters and removed all the Les Yay, sending the plot in a completely different direction.
 * You Are Already Checked In: In what might be the only case of both people involved being heroes, this foils an Impersonation Gambit during the final arc of the original TV series.
 * You Killed My Father: The reason Chise gives Ange for her obsession with Jubei Tōdō.
 * Zeppelins from Another World: The massive anti-gravity-lifted flying battleships fielded by the Kingdom of Albion, while not in any way actual Zeppelins, serve the same purpose in symbolizing the difference between the story's setting and the "real" timeline.
 * Zeppelins from Another World: The massive anti-gravity-lifted flying battleships fielded by the Kingdom of Albion, while not in any way actual Zeppelins, serve the same purpose in symbolizing the difference between the story's setting and the "real" timeline.