Princess Nine

This one proved quite the mixed bag throughout its run for me. Princess Nine is a sports drama about a baseball team of girls trying to overcome adversity and prejudice to be acknowledged as equals to the boys when they try to get involved in the national tournament to take part in competition at Koshien Stadium. Much of the series focuses around the team coming together and dealing with a number of obstacles that halt their efforts at competing in the Koshien tournament such as the school principal, tensions between some of the teammates and scandal. The series does give focus to the personalities andbackgrounds of each of the girls, many of whom fulfill a specific character type yet are likeable for the most part. The first half is actually rather solid in its developments with the girls teaming up, training and learning to be a cohesive team despite their differing personalities and dealing with those trying to thwart their formation. While having a likeable cast though, Princess Nine does have some pretty significant issues. The series apparently dug into shoujo anime cliches in setting up its plot, the biggest hurting the series being its melodrama and romantic predicaments for its second half. Princess Nine has a big habit of greatly exaggerating on a number of the dilemmas faced by the characters throughout the title's run, which tend to get rather overbearing at points. The romantic developments on the love triangle that are focused on in the second half prove to be the biggest setback to the use of melodrama in this series as it has no major relevance to the main plot on the girl's baseball team and is rather bland due to the exaggerated dramatics that the series pulls with the whole thing, which even lead them to affect the girls at points during their baseball games and take away from that aspect to the plot. Also, the Koshien tournament's depiction in the anime is rather underwhelming with only one or two episodes devoted per game on ir and much of the romantic melodrama dominating the storyline by that point. In terms of presentation, Princess Nine sports standard quality visuals with reasonable detail and subdued color tones on character designs and scenery. The animation has its rough moments with character designs usually getting off-model and reused animated frames coming from a number of baseball scenes. The soundtrack consists of dramatic and upbeat tracks that do their part at trying to enhance the melodrama of the series, but are rather forgettable and don't match up to the epic scale they attempt to portray. While the girls among the team are a likeable bunch and get some solid developments, Princess Nine's melodrama and romantic developments get way too much emphasis as the series presses on, eventually getting to a point where they are more prominent than the struggles of the girls being recognized as well as the boys' teams. While having its solid moments, I don't think I'm hopping back to this series anytime soon.

Princess Nine is a great anime. Overall, it focuses more on romance than sports, so if you were looking for a really sportsy anime, this might not be your thing. But, it has Sailor Moon-like romance that makes up for that loss. I picked up this anime because I was browsing on Crunchyroll, in the mood for a sports anime. I was instantly hooked. I totally recommend. Its got to be in my top 20 favorite anime. I kept watching at the start of this anime because of the opening and the art style. But the story gets better and better.

Some people consider this anime to be just another sports anime. In actuality, Princess 9 is very likely the worst sports anime to ever have been made. I had my reservations when looking at the cover, but figuring it was probably just made in the late 80's, I picked it up. My estimation was roughly a decade off. The great character designs attempt to hide this fact, but unfortunately my sympathy vanished when the story began to circle the drain. The series begins promisingly enough, the first 8 or so episodes are decent, and in fact the last few are too. The fact thati don't remember the middle of the series is indicative of its poor quality. I personally am not a fan of anime that cut every possible corner and have repetitive filler episodes, though most people seem to like them. If you are one of them I recommend you buy this series right away, surely there is no shortage of people trying to get rid of their copy. If you insist on watching the anime, I would suggest that you watch the first disc and the last disc, then seal it away so it can wait in anticipation for its next victim.

One of the best villains is in this anime... After finishing the 26 episodes you realize this is a whole different anime then you first believe. What makes this so great, it's the secret story within the anime. At first glance it looks like an all female baseball team overcoming sexism and playing against male baseball teams but Hiroki proves it truly is a man's world. From episode one and forward it present itself to be that of a feminist driven anime fighting for women's right and they can compete with the boys. After finishing the series those cringy scenes were actually satire.From over the top president of the school feminist to speeches about there being not difference between a girl and a boy when it comes to baseball it was all satire. The whole show present the females to be overly emotional. The female baseball team was only started because the president of the school saw the daughter of her first loved play baseball. After being married to another man she still can't get over him. Hiroki is the saving grace of this anime. He had knowledge their was going to be a female baseball team from the beginning and start to work quickly on Ryou(MC) saying he is her boyfriend. He later has his childhood friend Izumi with a promising tennis career join the female baseball team too. What a great villain Hiroki is, he manipulated these girls to win. Toying and stringing along these girls from episode one and that love confession to get Ryou to throw those predictable pitches, masterful. This is not a show about a girl baseball team it's about one man's ambition. An almost 10/10 anime because of Hiroki. I have to admit I was scared when Ryou said Hiroki was the enemy I was like SHE KNOWS but she was being cute and talking about in baseball term. Truly a unique way to go about it and there was a little foreshadowing in episode 13 where the girl manipulated the opposite sex.