With Walkure Romanze
airing now, I decided to take a look back at Princess Lover, an anime which (like
Walkure Romanze) was based on a Ricotta visual novel.
It's no secret that I
am a fan of... fanservice. That's partly why I created this blog. The thing
with fanservice (specifically character driven, ecchi fanservice) is that it can be done
exceedingly well or be too obvious.
 |
| Princess Lover visual novel artwork. |
Let's not get
pretentious here. These kinds of anime use characters who usually
fall into a certain archetype to
appeal to a certain type of fan. There's usually little depth or plot to get in the way
of a pantyshot or a bounce of breast. But that's fine! Fans
get what they want and the additional merchandising of the show makes it very
profitable for the producers. Everyone wins.
 |
| The anime can't match this level of detail. |
The thing is, while it
seems easy to use such a formula, it doesn't always work. Take Makken
Ki and Infinte Stratos for
example, the fanservice felt too forced and the characters were largely
forgettable. On the flip side,
Ikkitousen, Queen's Blade and Freezing far exceeded my expectations.
Like all media, it's a very
personal thing but this is even more true with these so called Type B
anime which create either
love/hate opinions. That's not to say they're beyond critical review,
it's just that it is more
challenging.
With that out of the
way, I Love Pricess Lover. I'm a Princess Lover, lover. Our male protagonist,
Arima Teppei is thrown into high society when his parents die and he is
adopted by his rich grandfather. He gets a personal maid, is enrolled into
a posh school and is expected to take over his grandfathers company. The anime features four female love interests: Charlotte Hazelrink,
Sylvia van Hossen, Seika Houjouin and his maid, Yu
Fujikura.
Charlotte is an actual
Princess. She is good natured, cheerful and a little naive. Silvia is from nobility
and friends with Charlotte. She is arranged as Teppei's fiancée. She's a bit shy and
reserved and uncomfortable around Teppei at first. She's also an
excellent sword fighter, kind of
like Saber but with big tits.
Seika Houjouin comes
from a family whose company are rivals to Arima. She doesn't like the
idea
of Teppei enrolling in
her school and is initially very cold towards him. She's also a
fashion designer
and model and very
concious of her place in society.
The story isn't
particularly grand, the usual ecchi, slice-of-life, school subplots are there as expected
but it manages to be genuinely fun to watch. It's unpretentious and well produced with
good art and excellent, lively voice acting. It doesn't get too
serious like Ikkitousen or Freezing, which makes everything come
together in a more natural and
believable manner.
It's worth noting that
the broadcast version is heavily censored with the usual steam and
beams of light obscuring things and in addition to
that, in some scenes the characters wear more clothes than in the DVD
releases. If you're looking for a
fun, sweet and sexy anime, give this a go.
Princess Lover Hentai OVA Review
An erotic OVA of
Princess Lover was also produced. The artwork and voicing is
obviously different but it is still a high
quality production.
It mainly features Silvia with a tiny section
about Arima's maid, Yu. Most
of it is just sex between Arima and Silvia (like that's a bad thing!)
but it's told from Silvia's
point of view and is like an account of the physical and emotional
connection between herself and
Teppei.
The sex scenes aren't disconnected and purely carnal, there
is a sense of emotion and depth to the characters, particularly
Silvia. This makes for extremely pleasurable viewing. I'd love for
this to be uncensored and expanded to feature some of the other
characters but as it is, it is still one of the best hentai OVAs to
be released in the past few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment