Majestic Prince Episode 21
What They Say:
Earth’s forces will begin heading out for the Wulgaru’s gate in a little over 12 hours. It’s almost time for the last battle and Izuru is ready to shine as a hero. At least, until he’s told he isn’t fit to pilot anymore!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having moved enough pieces in the direction needed where they can understand what their actual goal is now, the show moves through the process of making it a reality to attack the Gate. We’ve had a couple of episodes of exploration and dancing around it with an edge of danger that’s been interesting at times and dull as dishwater at others. AS it moved forward, we got a fair bit of semi-political wrangling in the most base and simplest of fan fiction ways that doesn’t deal with the complexity of the situation in any sort of realistic way, but made it accessible. With everything getting a little further in the progress towards an actual mission, the movement on that side picks up in its own way while the main character side continues to feel out of place and almost floundering at times as everyone just worries over Izuru now that he’s fully back but not quite up to speed yet.
Amusingly, while we get this kind of goofy family bonding stuff amongst the pilots, we also get the big dramatic moments among the military side where it has some pretty epic and sweeping music associated with it to make it all the more dramatic. Not that it works. Everything is just plodding towards the inevitable fight here and it’s drawn out as we get an array of different forces stepping in to play to deal with the large threat that’s now facing everyone. But was facing everyone for the longest time but was happening far, far away. The self interested nature of it all is amusing still in that until the war actually came home to Earth, nobody gave a damn in a general and large way, both with the regular population and those on the military/political side who were covering their own rears.
While we do get this slow push towards the action, we also have to focus on the clearing out of the Star Rose facility, which has a bit of a bump for the team as Anna goes missing and they spend some time going out to look for her, providing for another minor distraction towards the inevitable. Thankfully, because of the way events have progressed, it’s been more about Asagi in the buildup than Izuru, who has dominated a lot of the show, and he has a more reflective feeling in general. But even when it comes to him, it’s still pretty shallow and we just get a lot of mild team bonding moments because after all this time they’re all rallying around each other and him as the leader for the mission at hand, which finally, finally, gets started in the last seconds of this episode.
In Summary:
The drawn out nature of the last few episodes is something that some shows could do well and make engaging because there are quite a few areas that could be covered. Majestic Prince just feels like it’s playing at it rather than delving into things. It’s just not well done or interesting for the most part and it comes across as plodding and pointless for so much, especially for a show that by this stage has made it clear that it excels with action and choreography but fails with everything else. Spending a few episodes dealing with the everything else just makes it all the clearer how poorly it’s all done and how bad the overall foundations are for the series, setting and characters.
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.