Majestic Prince Episode 19
What They Say:
With almost no military might left, Earth’s only hope is to find and destroy the Wulgaru’s dimensional gate. Team Doberman is sent on a perilous mission into enemy territory. Can they find the gate and make it back to relay the info?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
There’s a certain amusement with the opening prologue here as we see how the war and its arrival on Earth as we saw previously has now woken the people up there to the real threat that humanity is being faced. Not that they really grasp it as a whole, but the threat is now all the more real than it was before and not just something “off in a distant land” that they could think about in the abstract. Even with the losses that have been faced so far and the kind of PR campaign that was run with the MJP kids, it’s all been more of an even than a real threat, so seeing them get all intense and demanding about being protected has its level of amusement since they’re not even truly aware of what’s going on.
The episode spends a fair bit of time on some mild character material, especially in showing off one of the guys girls back home in order to humanize and connect us more to him, but there’s also the focus on the larger events at hand which are more interesting. Because of how recent events played out, the human forces are now at their weakest overall when looking at the big picture, but they at least have the teams and their mecha that can pull off some miracles. Which is what’s needed at this point as the plan that’s come up with to try and buy time and gain some advantage is to have Team Doberman head off past Saturn – which is further than mankind has gone before – and destroy the dimensional gate machine that’s there. The machine that they have to get there with is interesting as well, which, one of them amusingly points out, looks like a large metallic erection.
The journey to Saturn is what takes up a good chunk of the second half but it’s actually kind of nice to see the members of Team Doberman work their way there and deal with the stress of the mission as they move past Jupiter and the like and things become harder to deal with. The mission is a hugely critical one and while it’s given a glossy approach overall, you do get the sense of larger things at play that’s almost like magic which is just a blast to watch. While action is on the very minimal side here overall, we do get some good space based scenes with some tension when it comes to Randy going off the rails and how the rest of the team has step up and do the right thing for the mission and for their teammate. That brings in the meager action itself, but it has the right tone about it, even if you couldn’t pick any of these characters out of a lineup.
In Summary:
The events that are moving forward here are certainly interesting enough and I do like the approach as a whole since they’re being proactive at this point to try and push back against the enemy by going after the gate. It’s a smart move and one that I’ll recognize was not easy to accomplish previously, since it’s difficult now as well. Focusing on Team Doberman isn’t a problem either since they’re largely interchangeable with Team Rabbits as none of them stick with any personality or design worth mentioning. The second half works the best as we see the team move across the solar system and struggle with the problems and the mission, resulting in some good looking material even if it doesn’t have much soul.
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.