Anyone been watching this one?
The setting is Victorian-era Britain, with a Steampunk desktop theme.
The discovery of Cavorite (gravity-control phlebotinum) lead to the creation of an Aerial Navy, which in turn has somehow lead to a popular uprising against the Crown that managed to fail/succeed in the worst possible way. The country is now divided in half, between Royalists and Populists, complete with a Cold War Berlin style wall splitting London in two.
Into this we place the obligatory team of schoolgirls, which includes the aforementioned Princess, a second girl who is her apparent perfect double, a not-really-school-age Femme Fatale, a steampunk cyborg, and a ninja. (Apparently Japan is taking sides, or at least their Ambassador is...)
And they're spies. Who get up to all sorts of James Bond style caper-adventures of the sort you'd expect in Cold War Berlin, British Style. While maintaining their cover at their base of operations, a Properly Posh Young Ladies' Academy.
And of course each of them has her own secrets and her own agenda, and gets some nice character moments to explore them. And hopefully these will have interesting repercussions down the line.
Normally one would expect a story like this to go one of two ways -- cutesy moe and fanservice, or grimdark and twisted in ways that would make Gendo Ikari proud. Fortunately so far, Princess Principal treads a confident middle path between them, acknowledging the dark side of realistic espionage work while maintaining the cheerful optimism audiences have come to expect of schoolgirl-hijinx series.
Enjoy the opening animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjqkATvH9M
The setting is Victorian-era Britain, with a Steampunk desktop theme.
The discovery of Cavorite (gravity-control phlebotinum) lead to the creation of an Aerial Navy, which in turn has somehow lead to a popular uprising against the Crown that managed to fail/succeed in the worst possible way. The country is now divided in half, between Royalists and Populists, complete with a Cold War Berlin style wall splitting London in two.
Into this we place the obligatory team of schoolgirls, which includes the aforementioned Princess, a second girl who is her apparent perfect double, a not-really-school-age Femme Fatale, a steampunk cyborg, and a ninja. (Apparently Japan is taking sides, or at least their Ambassador is...)
And they're spies. Who get up to all sorts of James Bond style caper-adventures of the sort you'd expect in Cold War Berlin, British Style. While maintaining their cover at their base of operations, a Properly Posh Young Ladies' Academy.
And of course each of them has her own secrets and her own agenda, and gets some nice character moments to explore them. And hopefully these will have interesting repercussions down the line.
Normally one would expect a story like this to go one of two ways -- cutesy moe and fanservice, or grimdark and twisted in ways that would make Gendo Ikari proud. Fortunately so far, Princess Principal treads a confident middle path between them, acknowledging the dark side of realistic espionage work while maintaining the cheerful optimism audiences have come to expect of schoolgirl-hijinx series.
Enjoy the opening animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjqkATvH9M