Princess Principal: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''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, [https://www.themanime.org/viewreview.php?id{{=}}2022 THEM Anime Reviews]}}

 

 

Victorian-era <s>Britain</s> Albion has discovered the [[Artificial Gravity|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.

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.

 

 

{{tropelist}}

* [[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 [https://t24hs.com/top-10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-berlin-wall/ the church in the Berlin Wall and the subway tunnels running under that wall].)

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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 [[Batman|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 Mayfair has one.

* [[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 [[Power Glows|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".<ref>And sometimes, including Case 13 and Case 22, it's a stretch to call Team Principal "good".</ref> 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.

* [[Identical Stranger]]: The only reason Project: Changeling was even considered is because Ange and Princess Charlotte look alike.

* [[Impersonation Gambit]]:

** A classic case of Situational Irony: {{spoiler|Unbeknownst to anyone but the girls involved, Project: Changeling – intended to replace the Princess with a lookalike – would instead replace a lookalike with the real princess}}.

** There is also a case of Tragic Irony during Case 18, when Dorothy complains that {{spoiler|her father is late for a meeting, while his body is being wheeled into the morgue}}.

* [[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.

** 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 Mayfair 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? {{spoiler|Of course, there's no small amount of [[Accidentally Accurate]] in the latter conclusion...}}

* [[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''.

* [[Translation Convention]]: The original Japanese dialog says the characters are speaking English.

* [[Victorian London]]: With added [[steampunk]] and a [[Berlin Wall|Berlin-style wall]]. London is Team Principal's home base, and the setting for half of the stories.