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R1 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Friday, 20 July 2007 17:00 |
 I'm still waiting patiently for Petite Princess Yucie to stop messing around and develop a story. It hasn't happened yet, and this volume drops only the vaguest of hints that it might happen sometime. In the meantime, it's back to the comedy and the part-time jobs...
15 - Petite Princesses Reborn! New Tasks
With the girls now formally recognised as Platinum Princess candidates, it's time for their proper training to begin. Called the Platinum Curriculum, the girls are expecting it to be something different from all the part-time jobs they've been doing up until now - but when their first 'lesson' turns out to be at a kindergarten, they realise that's maybe not the case. By coincidence, the kindergarten teacher is a childhood friend of Yucie's - but while Yucie hasn't grown in years, Lena definitely has, and it soon becomes clear that rather than just being there to help out, Yucie and co have something to learn from Lena...
16 - Harvest Festival: Yucie's Decision
It's time for the harvest festival, and Yucie and friends are marking the day by attending in cosplay. Top cuteness marks for Yucie's neko outfit. Elmina hasn't turned up, though - she's too busy helping out in the library, where an old lady asks her where she can find the legendary hero Gunbard - Yucie's father. Elmina takes the old woman to see Yucie, but Glenda smells a rat and realises the "old woman" is really someone else using a magical disguise. It turns out to be Arc, and he's discovered a connection between the Eternal Tiara and Yucie's father...
17 - How Annoying! The Fairy World is Full of Lies
Arc - or should I say Prince Arrow - is back in the castle, where thanks to a conversation with his mother we get to learn what he'd been searching for while on the run: his real father. According to Queen Ercell, his father had been the old King - naturally enough - but Arc has good reason to believe he's not being told the truth. Meanwhile, Yucie and the others are sent on another mission to recover a Crystal Flower. This time, they're being sent to the Fairy World. As soon as they arrive there, they realise something's wrong: the World Tree which is the source of life in the Fairy World seems to think it's Autumn - very strange in a world with no seasons, and a sign of real trouble. Problem is, they can't seem to find anyone who'll tell them the truth about what's going on - and mentioning Beth only makes matters worse. The girl herself soon turns up to see what they're up to...
18 - Blazing Soul of Stewards! Save Balizan
The appearance of rainbow butterflies marks the beginning of hayfever season for the town, with the falling scales from the butterflies being enough to leave pretty much everyone suffering from sneezing and scratchy eyes. For Balizan, Elmina's robotic steward, it seems to have had a much worse effect, as the scales have worked their way inside him and are clogging up his system. The solution: someone's got to be shrunk to the right size to crawling around inside Balizan and clear him out. With the girls already suffering from exposure to the scales, it's up to the other stewards - Cube, Chawoo and Gaga - to do the dirty work. With Balizan's inside being far from your typical machine, it's not going to be an easy job, either...
Arc's the key to the ongoing story, it seems, as his investigations are digging up the odd little bit of useful information that implicates Yucie's father as having something to do with the Tiara - although he denies it himself. But think about it: Arc has doubts about who his father really was, he's investigating the Tiara, and he's finding links with Gunbard. There's a missing link there (what does the Tiara have to do with his father?), but you could clutch at a few straws regarding Gunbard's parental status there. Curiouser and curiouser, as they say. Okay, I am clutching, but only because the series is taking so damn long to tell us itself.
The rest of the disc is the usual mix of fun and friendship. The girls take a backseat in episode 18 as the boys get to show off for one, Beth makes another appearance but once again opts not to get too involved in the affairs of the potential Plantinum Princesses (despite clearly wanting the post herself), and there are a few opportunities for some fun costumes along the way. It's cute, funny, and enjoyable - but still feels like it's not going anywhere, and I'm beginning to get frustrated at that.
Only two volumes to go now, though, so if anything interesting is going to happen (and I'm told it does), it should begin to become obvious fairly soon. In all honesty, this could really have been a much more tightly-written 13-episode series and it would have worked just as well, if not better - 25 is clearly stretching it. Sadly, it's a bit late to correct that now...
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