Princess Principal Episode 6 Review

Father/daughter bonding time

(This review contains spoilers!)

          I’ve noticed recently that Princess Principal puts a pretty heavy emphasis on how the girls relate to their fathers. We’ve already seen extensively how Beatrice and Chise deal with them, and this week it was time to introduce Dorothy’s father.

          This episode is hinged entirely on Dorothy, with Beatrice acting in a supporting role and Ange, Chise and Princess in brief cameos to either provide comic relief or slightly further the overarching plot, which, as far as I’m concerned, is all they really needed to do. This was Dorothy’s story, and while it didn’t compare to some of the better episodes we’ve seen, it was still a very heartfelt and surprisingly dark episode.

          This episode had much more of a “spy noir” feel to it, with few big action setpieces, muted colours as opposed to the usual steampunk-inspired art style and more time spent exploring Dorothy’s father as a character. Overall it felt less like the usual steampunk setting and more like a Victorian Sherlock Holmes episode. While this isn’t really something I’d like to see more of, for this one time it worked significantly well for the story they were telling.

          Dorothy’s relationship with her drunk abusive father gave them a fun rapport, albeit one I wish we’d gotten more of. Neither of them really grow as characters throughout the episode aside from a very brief moment towards the end. Dorothy begins and ends the episode with arguably the same feelings towards him, and while it looks like Dad is about to change his ways towards the end, he never really makes it clear towards Dorothy that he’s going to try to be a better person, leaving their relationship stagnant. While I really enjoyed the way the dad’s character was build and subsequently sent off in the episode, I feel that there was a bit of wasted potential in not demonstrating to Dorothy he’d improved.

          Despite that, the ending to this episode is just plain mind-blowing. Them dropping the ball with the spelled-out reveal of Chise’s father last week was more than made up for by how this episode ends, and I dare not spoil it. It’s not a big plot revelation or a game changing twist or anything like that. It’s just a fantastic character moment that hits you hard right in the chest and is the perfect way to cap off a suitably dark episode.

          This episode sticks out from the rest of Princess Principal due to the sharp change in tone and lack of main characters like Ange, and while it doesn’t quite match up to the best episodes we’ve seen from this series thus far, the darker nature of this episode led to a lot of great character moments, including possibly one of the most satisfying endings to an episode this show’s seen yet.

FINAL SCORE

8/10

Great