pretty stupid kids’ show, mainly targeting a female audience with the estimated age of 10-14, gets its “anime adaptation” in a now pretty promising setting, leaving loads of potential to set up an intriguing political thriller including the spy-mechanisms unutilized. It fails to pack any sort of punch in this very serious setting, but unlike a kids' show like Totally Spies, its presentation does indicate that Princess Principal does not leave the slightest clue during the entire runtime, that it is even aware of how stupid it actually is, making me consider to put bitchin' Totally Spies as the superior work comparing these two with one another. So, what exactly did go wrong in the story which plays out in the split superpower of Albion, located in Europe and divided into the Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Albion, setting its border right in the city of London?Minor spoilers, mostly about the first half ahead.As the setup itself practically screams ‘promising’ right into your face regarding the potential a country-conflict like this could have regarding a literal “war of spies”, it makes it even more disappointing, that it would’ve been shut down by loads of conveniences one after another. It only appears decent on paper, rather than in the actual conversion of it. While we get a big info drop right at the start, explaining how Albion grew to be the powerhouse of Europe now riddled by lots of riots and an actual split of countries in terms of interest and territory in kind of a cool way, it more or less takes a huge backseat to the character conflicts our main team faces during their missions in an episodic fashion. This in itself can be great if executed correctly, but oh boy it sure doesn’t know how to do so, but we’ll get to that aspect later in this review. The core complain I have regarding the matter here is, that it basically betrays the idea we get from episode 1, which might’ve been riddled with inconsistencies in terms of writing writing all over the place (Ange literally silencing a patient by hand and drugging them dressed as a nurse, while the other patients not even trying to say anything about it in an open room, only leading to a hilarious reaction face by the woman lying in bed in vis-à-vis position) and the core conflict being cookie-cutter at best, it still gave me a somewhat thrilling ride to enjoy. My enjoyment for this probably only issued from some flashy choices in the presentation during the action scenes and a neat colour-palette though, which left the show any way in later episodes.Nagging about the conveniences the team of spies faces in their individual missions, making the facade of this work crumble in almost every episodic conflict the characters face, wouldn't do me any good if I did not offer some more examples, which can be narrowed down to some general ideas on writing-mistakes made during the production. The first general complaint I have is, that the characters in the show are depicted as being in another league of intelligence when they finesse their opposing counterparts as e.g. several guards, but that’s mostly because those are almost always depicted as generally retarded from my point of view. Falling more than 5 times to the likes of a woman with exposed bosom, is just a sign that the writers were too lazy to think of anything else, leading to me not appreciating on how the team does things, but rather to me not being able to wrap my head about how easy their job is in hindsight. That doesn’t only apply to mere guards, core participants in the normally overshadowed political conflict act that way and seem to have no intelligence of their own. I’m aware that this is something a lot of works covering espionage fail to deliver well, but there’s such a thing as “going too far” with it for me. On the other side of things, there definitely are characters that know way more about what the spies are planning as they should and get the information the audience is getting too, from whatever source that is, as the show doesn’t bother to explain that. A good example for this is the devotee of the Kingdom of Albion, disguised as a soldier of the Commonwealth, experimenting with neurotoxins and eventually going full-rampage-mode against the company which does the laundry to hide his secret, as his uniform got picked up accidentally against his own will. Where he even should know that they’re doing chemical tests to find him here is beyond my knowledge, as there was nothing or even a hint that this paranoid fellow did know so.The second big complaint I harbour towards the work is, that the gadgets of the team and insane fighting capability of our samurai loli just outmatch those of their opponents by a landmile, making thoughts like “wow, they’re not gonna make it for once” practically impossible. There’s one such as having a lipstick with an implemented laser in it or a Swiss Army Shoe (better watch The Naked Gun instead) to give the spies a little advantage, but in Princess Principle we have a “C-Ball”, that gives you power to literally control gravity to your will and a lot of other conveniences, depending on whether direction the plot wants to progress. Additionally, the series has no chill regarding its presentation, which leads it to make a fool out of itself most of the time. Victimization is omnipresent and trying too hard to make you feel engaged (Dorothy’s backstory, Ange’s meeting with the girl on the streets), leading to it trying to hammer the message of ‘the world is so cruel!!’ laughably hard into your head and failing at virtually every single attempt. Also, following up a supposedly meaningful commentary about political conflicts, basically referencing the Latin quote of “homo homini lupus”, with a casual talk about what name would fit a girly team of spies well during tea-time might not be the best of ideas in terms of presentation:“This world isn’t black and white, only black and grey. And the princess is grey. Keep a constant watch on her”. *eerie music in the background*Followed up by more precedent matters as “let’s name ourselves team carrot” – “I don’t like carrots”. Welp, this might really by the espionage-version of K-ON, they even dress the same way during their missions and concerts.I already highlighted the problems surrounding these main character conflicts during its episodical storytelling, but these conflicts aren’t much to write home about either, ranging from pretty decent (Ange’s and Princess’ relation) to utterly terrible and cliché (almost anything else), which gets me even more salty about the fact, that they sacrificed the pretty promising set-up for it. These are mostly ruined by the constant victimization and the black-and-white style they’re presented by, sometimes redeeming itself through its somewhat creative ending, as we did with Dorothy’s conflict of her past. But even though these might’ve been executed pretty well through some evident skill direction-wise, they were by no means unpredictable or either very good from my point of view, as the series tried to hit you with a “plot twist” right into your face, even though all of it could’ve been gathered from the behaviour of the characters during said key moments leading up to the ending. The show mostly doesn’t know how to show emotions without the characters defining themselves as distinctive rage, happiness or sadness at the moment. Also, another thing I can't really wrap my head around is, why the show even bothered to implement the big mental strain Princess faces with the triple amount of work she has to do (serious spy work, school, and royal duties), when missions as the ones she's participating in time-wise shouldn't even be possible in the first place (especially the Laundry one), nobody in the family would smell the rat if the Princess of a powerful nation would willingly work full-time in a laundry shop, am I right? If the show didn't depict that as a noteworthy problem, I wouldn't have to hit at that fact, but sadly it did.Additionally, what we gathered from her pasts doesn’t reflect on their behaviour when not confronted by it or how they formed them during the test of time, the creators rather just trying to serve the fans of a certain archetype of a girl more than anything else, making the experience of these backstories even more forgettable. We have the apathetic girl, the devoted girl, the more mature and way more experienced girl (in both, a supposedly sexual and work-related way) and last but not least, the Loli samurai of Japan, combining both of their supposedly greatest achievements all in one character, as it is surely been seen through the eyes of an unclouded otaku. I harbour an extreme disdain toward it, especially considering on which time-period the setting is reminiscent on, where Japan might've not even been the mysterious Elysium as the show makes it out to be, not even compared to most of Europe. This was close to some "Gate-level" shit in terms of how Japan gets depicted in international affairs.Devoted and extremely skilled in the swordplay of a seemingly unbreakable Katana, defying the honor (“this is THEIR honor”) of Europeans as inferior to those of the Japanese in an incredibly cringe-worthy “cultural conflict” type of episode and superior to her devotion to work than any of her co-workers, Samurai "Chise" Loli-chan surely is something to be proud of compared to these European scoundrels! It even becomes more evident in how the Japanese depict themselves with their gracious attitude in this borderline new-interpretation of an altered history in Europe, when they all go down to the knees (approximately 50 men) as Albion offers some mean of transportation to the city, basically the standard of every state visit at hand…ever. Gracious attitude can only go that far without it coming off as an unintentional comedy there.Regarding production-values, there is not that much to be said. It’s pretty decent all along, sometimes the animation quality is a bit shaky, especially during the “epic” Samurai fight in a moving train, where the production-team thought, they could basically re-create the hype surrounding Fate Zero’s fight by using an eerily similar soundtrack but failed pathetically to do so. This made the “card games on trains” or even “on motorcycles” scene in YGO seem like totally believable and even a masterpiece in terms of audiovisual presentation. Adding to the visual aspects, I have to admit, that some of the city and landscape shots harbour a pretty cool steampunk-esque vibe to them, too bad that's way too little to save virtually being messed up in the other sections. Character designs are alright from a visual standpoint, but never manage to feel unique in any way, as we come to see designs as these, which can be classified in one overarching archetype, all the time in modern anime.The OP is your standard Engrish song playing behind a pretty well-directed visually-directing intro and also the ED doesn’t break any records, in fact, it is unimpressively generic and so is the OST of Princess Principal in general. Failing to encapsulate any hype during action-scenes, apart from episode 1, and also failing to hit the flair of what a 30’s espionage-thriller would need for an original soundtrack; it hits the mark a few times and is not terrible in the productional-sense, but that's all I can really give it praise for, since most of the time when the soundtrack keeps playing in the background, it strikes me as well as elevator music.Conclusion:I certainly did not mention many positive aspects about Princess Principal, but maybe due to the reason: There are almost none! It may be considered as one of the best anime in a terribly underwhelming season like this, but that in itself doesn’t mean, that it manages to break the shell of its genericism, oozing from every corner of it. While it was not utterly terrible as some competent directing was going on from time to time, and the conflict of Ange and Princess being pretty meaningful in connection with the main plot, that doesn’t mean it lifts it to great heights at all, as these never managed to surpass the adjective “decent” for me in its runtime. A very unrewarding experience as a whole.Story (3.5/10)Art (6/10), Animation (5.5/10)Sound (6/10)Characters (4/10)Enjoyment (4/10)Overall (4/10)