I didn’t get a Dragoon for Christmas (Scrapped Princess)

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Without any new anime coming out I hardly know what to post. I’m still waiting for the new season so I decided to raid some other sites and take up suggestions on some older shows that hadn’t yet found their way to my conquered list (I should really start this list).

The Conquests: Scrapped Princess and Baccano!
The Anime I’m covering in this post: Scrapped Princess

Warning: Spoilers Ahead! This series is old and if you still haven’t been spoiled after all this time and have some pretense for watching Scrapped Princess without being spoiled then don’t read what comes after this.

I attacked Scrapped Princess first and let me tell you I was in rare form. At about four in the morning I realized I was going to finish watching the entire thing in a 12 hour period and before you judge me let me just say… I guess I definitely deserve to be judged here so go ahead.

The world was your basic Post-Apocalyptic but so far in the future that everything is ok again story and since I didn’t watch it when it first aired back in 2003 I can’t tell you how original this story is (though I assume still not very original). What I can say is somehow (most of) the characters managed to weasel their way into my heart. However, not all of the conflicts managed to do the same.

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A Disaster Flick: Let me get this off my chest right now: I HATE PROPHECY! When it’s used incorrectly (which it almost always is) a prophecy almost always ruins a story. It becomes the main source of all social interaction and all of the sudden you have to have all the characters react to finding out that Pacifica is a nuclear bomb.  Prophecies are also always misinterpreted and that’s treated as the ending twist. “Oh she didn’t actually end the world by blowing us all up; she just removed a false god and let us out of the bird cage! Yippee, glad we didn’t crucify her.”  Ugh, I also thought it really undermined a lot of what they were trying to do with the series. For instance Christopher Bailaha initially thinks that if one person being sacrificed is good for everyone in the world that one person should be sacrificed. This is a completely logical sentiment as we have Mr. Spock as a reference. By the end of the show he revises his point of view and believes that a world willing to sacrifice an innocent before her crimes is a world he doesn’t want to live in. I really think that not making her a nuclear bomb just made him look like an idiot and his character development meaningless, but hey, that’s just me.

The Conflicted Princess: Pacifica was honestly the character I loathed the most in the entire series. By episode 10 I could no longer stand her. While other characters developed she, the main character, stayed in this constant state of juvenile flux. They showed us her self-centered side and then tried to show us that she was actually very considerate of others. The only problem for me was that all of her considerate moments absolutely failed. She feels bad about the innocent people dying acomplia and getting hurt because bad people are coming after her. Where do I even start? She’s so self important, she reminds me of a girl in my math class who stressed about every little thing connected to her: “But Dustin do you think he likes me? Like, I know that he calls me every day and that’s really weird, but, but I don’t know how to tell him to stop. I mean, like, I don’t want to devastate him, but he’s kind of ugly, what should I do?” I give some sound advice about just being honest. She proceeds to ask everyone else in class; they all give her the same advice. She proceeds to ask everyone in the school; they all give her the same advice. She then takes her own advice which is nobody else’s advice and draws it out for a few months while continuing to complain. DRAMA QUEEN! Ok, obviously Pacifica’s problems are a little bigger than that. People are afraid of her when they find out who she really is, but for the most part they get over it and start being her friend. Yet, in just about every episode she rehashes how sad it is that people are dying (because they don’t want a nuclear bomb to go off). She tells her brother and sister who have given up their entire life to protect her that it would be better if she was dead. They tell her it wouldn’t be better if she was dead. Two episodes later she again tells them that it would be better if she was dead. They again, a little more angrily, tell her that she would not be better off dead and she should do what she wants to do. The end of the freaking series roles around and she is still bringing it up until Shannon finally pulls out his sword and says “I’ll cut you down right here if you really think that” with the subtext being “Don’t bring it up again, my patience has run out”. Alright are you guys mad at me yet? I hope not, but here’s the explanation. The whole thing is really self absorbed, the reason she only tells this stuff to her brother and sister (and not to the people who would actually kill her) is because she doesn’t really want to die, and she’s just fishing for compliments and love from her two siblings. I can hardly fault her, but at the same time they gave up their lives to protect her, what more can she really ask for? Actions speak much louder than words. I can’t really fault her for the guilt she feels from watching the two of them protecting her, but when she thinks Cz is going to replace her she acts spoiled and hates it. It really showed a major weakness in the story writing that they didn’t have anything better to do with their dialogue besides constantly reaffirm that point. Pacifica was one of the three characters they needed to make three dimensional and I saw no character development whatsoever. In the final confrontation with “God” she answers the question by being a cheerful innocent girl. Facepalm. Sarcasm{ I liked how Celia put a lot of thought into what was best for humanity yet somehow Pacifica’s two second spout out is the correct way to go.}

Shannon and Raquel Casull: Now for the most part I liked these characters a lot. They both had an easy going personality (until Pacifica disappeared for awhile) and their tolerance of Pacifica’s childish tantrums was perhaps the most enjoyable part of the early series. I wish they had developed Raquel more though. In the end I ended up sympathizing with her the most though she didn’t show much dissatisfaction with the world. Shannon had the Dragoon thing going on, but her powers were constant. She obviously didn’t care for Pacifica any less; it just wasn’t stressed as much until that final moment when she sees zithromax without prescription Pacifica dying. I honestly didn’t care about Pacifica dying (mostly because it was predictable that she wasn’t really going to die), but seeing the horror and sorrow on Raquel’s face for the first time in the entire series really moved me. Pacifica’s real brother = I didn’t care at all.

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The Dragoon and the Peace Keepers: Strongest part of the entire series in my mind. purchase cheap pharm I loved the metaphysical question about the morality of protecting someone by sheltering them (or protecting them from themselves). Most of the peace keepers weren’t evil and Cz brought up some incredibly valid points about the current world not really being that bad. There weren’t many wars and it was a lot better than the alternative: mass extinction brought about by the aliens. I also really liked that the series gave us an answer, the humans overthrow the peacekeepers and return to earth, but they don’t really tell us whether this decision was right or wrong. It’s kind of like in Gurren Lagann when Simon beats Lord Genome, but the anti-spirals are still out there just waiting to wipe out humanity. Actually Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann has a very similar plot… Still if you’re going to be a writer take note from ambiguous endings. You can have your hero find an answer, but leave the rightness or wrongness of the choice up in the air. You’ll get a lot more people like me coming around to tell you it’s deep :). Oh I almost forgot to talk about Zephiris. Alright, I’m a sucker for this type of character, the computer finding her humanity. I can’t think of anything bad to say because I was filled with self righteous anger at Shannon when he continued to treat Zephi like crap even though she was only trying to help him. What a jerk GO ZEPHI! She should have been in the show a lot more; it would have made everything better.

The White Night: I laughed hard when Leopold first showed up. I love stock characters sometimes.

A Guardian: This was kind of cool I’m not going to lie. I loved the WTF moment Shannon had when he started wondering if he was just genetically programmed to protect Pacifica. Talk about an identity crisis. He never really got over it either seeing how he treated Zephi like garbage up until the last couple of episodes. I also liked how this really wasn’t a problem for Raquel. At some point you just have to be comfortable with who you are, not how you were created.

The Treatment of Religion: I thought for awhile that The Evil Religion aspect of the show was going to stay really One Dimensional, but it ended up surprising me. The wandering priest/heretic hunter was a strong addition to the story. I liked that they showed the good the church did as well as the bad, as religion for an individual can still have positive effects even if the main intent is to guide humanity. This was really just the priest though so maybe it wasn’t absolutely fantastic.

What about Fulle: What was the point? They introduce a character I like and spend some time building some intrigue and developing him to kill him two episodes later. What was the point? I guess they just wanted to get him out of the way so Leopold was the only love interest, but killing isn’t the only option here and tragic as it may be they should have killed off Leopold, Shannon, or Raquel if they wanted to reinforce that people around Pacifica tend to die. They shouldn’t just introduce a character to kill him. Not cool at all!

In Summary: It wasn’t a bad series at all. I know I voiced some heinous complaints, but it actually was pretty decent compared to a lot of stuff out there. Sure the animation is a little dated, but it was a pretty fun romp through a semi-interesting world. It was much better than my first impression of Ladies vs. Butlers (A LOT better). So if you have the time, the boredom, and the desire you should give it a watch and add your own frustrations or pleasures from this series.

Did I mention Zephi is cute!

(Next Blog Post is going to be about Baccano[I think])