Majestic Prince Episode 23
What They Say:
Earth year 2110. Having expanded into space and secured many asteroids abundant in natural resources, it seemed mankind’s prosperous future was assured. However, Earth is now being invaded by Urgal, a mysterious galactic empire from Jupiter. Just as mankind is facing certain destruction, the secret military agency MJP undertakes a gene manipulation project to create humans who can adapt to life in space. The result is Team Rabbits, a group of children who are given combat devices called “Ash” and sent to the front line as shields for the Global Defense Force (GDF).
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The previous episode spent most of its time on some minor character drama and a move towards the battle itself which lead us to having a lot of set pieces being changed up and moved around. It worked well to set the stage right as the scale of the fight going on is done decently with the need to take down the gate the primary focus, but having to deal with the enemy forces that came through it from the Wulgaru. The discovery of the gate and its role obviously makes it a huge target and with the renewed push by the Earth population to do something after they themselves finally felt threatened worked nicely to get things moving and motivated once again. But as we saw, there wasn’t a lot of character or true intensity to it as it went on. That does leave most of the magic to happen in the battle itself, whose soundtrack feels like it riffs off of Star Wars a bit too much in some ways.
The fight in the first half is quite well done though as it’s expansive as the ships flit about, the casualties start to rack up and the danger intensifies, particularly as a very famous Wulgaru general arrives on the scene and gets personally involved after being off the field of battle for quite some time. There’s a great sense of danger and energy about the fight as it goes on and the choreography is spot on. Not surprisingly, a lot of what things turn on here is Izuru wanting to get back in the game himself, which leads to a lengthy and eyeroll inducing roll call of those that he’s connected with and wants to do right by, and it all plays out as you’d expect against the larger backdrop of what’s going on in the actual battle itself until he can get there.
The fight dominates the episode in general, with some nice time spent having Izuru getting his behind there, and there’s a lot to like in this regard. As said previously, the series excels in the area of space combat and choreography so a large scale battle like this definitely works well. Of course, it also has to try and go even bigger as Teoria attempts to get involved to try and change the nature of the battle because of who she truly is, to try and change the minds of the Wulgaru in that what they’re doing is wrong. But it also just paints a larger target on her by some of the Wulgaru who just want to be done with all of this as they see her being with humanity as robbing the Wulgaru of her very critical genes.
In Summary:
Lots of action. Lots of fighting. Lots of ships flying around. All of which equals a fun to watch episode, albeit one empty of actual connection or empathy. I’m so far gone beyond caring about the story at this point but I definitely enjoy the action here and the kinds of stakes its raising with some of the twists and turns of who is what, not that it really matters. It just intensifies the situation and makes for more fun, more action and more pew pew pew. Which is pretty much all Majestic Prince is good for.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.