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R1 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Tuesday, 14 August 2007 17:00 |
 Petite Princess Yucie finally gets down to business. Took it long enough. After five discs worth of messing around, it's finally time to choose the Plantinum Princess - and the candidates are about to find that the power to wish for anything comes with a price that none of them are going to be willing to pay...
23 - To the Fairy World... Light Up those Five Souls!
Having sent the final crystal flower back to the Human World, the girls head for the Fairy World to help Beth find a way to restore the place to normal. When they get there, they find that Diabolos' power has spread further from the World Tree, and as a result the world is growing ever more desolate. But how will a group of young girls defeat an entity that has the power to destroy worlds? One word: teamwork. But their plan to restore the World Tree's power only succeeds in releasing Diabolos from captivity...
24 - Graduation... Thoughts Kept Within
Having proven themselves in the Fairy World, the girls are finlly due to graduate from the Princess Academy. A happy day for the girls - but after being injured by Diabolos back in the Fairy World, Arc seems to have become infected by Diabolos' power and brought some of it back to the Human World. Ercell, meanwhile, has one further test to prepare the Plantinum Princess candidates for: they'll be required to go before Maga Selent to receive the Final Scene, which will then choose which one of the candidates will have earned the right to wear the Eternal Tiara. Yucie sees her dream of becoming an adult - and a worthy other half for Arc - coming closer, but when she learns of Arc's condition it's like her dreams are torn away from her again, especially as Arc received his injury while saving her. Of course, there's one way she can think of to save him: her wish from the Tiara if she becomes Platinum Princess...
25 - Final Scene! Princess Selection
The girls arrive before Maga Selent, and begin their preparations for the Final Stage - but before the test begins, Cocoloo, Beth, Elmina and Glenda all withdraw, leaving Yucie as the only candidate. They'd been aware of her desire to save Arc, and decided to give her a free run. Just as Yucie's completing the Final Stage, though, Ercell appears before her with a warning: if she accepts the Eternal Tiara and becomes the Platinum Princess, the other four girls will vanish. That leaves Yucie with a difficult choice: save Arc, or save her friends...
26 - To the Me who will Eventually be an Adult
Yucie arrives back in the Human World, in full Platinum Princess regalia, and immediately heads for Arc's room, where she makes her wish: to save his life. With the wish made, the Tiara shatters, and the magical threat to the world is over. Despite her missing memories, though, Yucie soon begins to realise that something's not right - she's lost something precious, she knows it, she just doesn't know what. Gunbard decides something must be done to put things right - and he's got help...
Thirteen episodes would have done it. Four to introduce the girls, five to retrieve the crystal flowers, and these four to complete the series. Petite Princess Yucie has had an almost criminal amount of filler thrown into it that nearly destroyed my will to watch, but finally we get a worthwhile finale - and just for once, GAINAX have managed not to screw it up, although there's still a little whiff of Reset Button™ about it.
This disc really comes in two parts: the defeat of Diabolos, which cements Beth's place in the gang and provides a handy way for Arc to pick up his life-threatening injury; and the selection of the Platinum Princess, with all the heartache that goes along with it. The Diabolos story has plenty of action and is a visual treat to watch, as the girls go into combat mode (hmm, no-one mentioned that ability before) to defeat evil, making good use of the power that being a Platinum Princess candidate provides. Great fun to watch, and the last of the action / light-hearted stuff, as the final arc moves into more heart-wrenching territory.
At the start of episode 24 the girls are beamed away to see Maga Selent, unaware that for four of them it'll be the last they see of the Human World - or their own worlds, for that matter. The basic idea is this: by gathering the parts of the Eternal Tiara, Gunbard has unwittingly created a magical imbalance that, if left unchecked, will result in the destruction of the Human World (as that's where the Tiara currently lives). Maga Selent knows this to be true, as she was around the last time the Tiara was assembled, and witnessed the resulting destruction of her own world, the Magical World. She's determined to make sure that such destruction doesn't happen again, and so she's been manipulating the selection of the new Platinum Princess to help prevent it. When the new Platinum Princess makes her wish, the magical power of the Tiara will be dispelled - and the souls of the other four girls will be used, in some form of noble sacrifice, to keep the parts apart. The Magical World's Platinum Princess knew that price would have to be paid, and in trying to save the lives of her friends allowed her entire world to be destroyed - Maga Selent hopes to avoid that problem by not telling Yucie what the price for her power will be, but Ercell's intervention puts paid to that idea and leaves Yucie between a rock and a hard place.
The way it all plays out means there's plenty of tugging at the heartstrings going on, along with a few moments that could well turn out to be tearjerkers if you're that way inclined. The girls' friendship has been built up very well over the course of the series (one good aspect to all those filler episodes), so come the time when difficult decisions have to be made, the reactions are believable. The final episode ties up the storyline nicely, although it does become a Reset Button™ story - part of me would have preferred the ending to have been handled slightly differently, even if that meant that some characters were left "missing" at the end of the series, but there you go. Very few series are ever perfect though (especially if GAINAX are involved), and overall I'm happy with how it plays out.
The series as a whole was too long, but this final disc is paced almost perfectly and provides an ending that does justice to the settings and characters. You could quite happily skip half the series without missing anything important, but when if finally gets into gear on this disc, it at least turns out to have been worth the wait. Don't know that I'd buy the individual discs, given the series' flaws, but the complete collection is certainly worth a look.
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