Puchi Pri*Yucie - Episode 5

Petite Princess Yucie!

“Puchi Pri*Yucie” - September 30, 2002

Almina.

Yucie.

Glenda.

Closing thoughts on Petite Princess Yucie

This turned out to be an incredibly solid show after a slow start. Kudos to everyone who voted for this to be the next anime I'd watch!

The story is about five girls who compete for a wish-granting magical tiara. The early series is pretty typical kid show fare, with episodic antics where the girls do different part time jobs and learn a lesson and gather magical feel good energy by the end of the episode. But with fun characters who have interesting enough dynamics it wasn't really an issue.

I liked all of the main girls (the bombastic demon princess Glenda was my fave) and they had great designs, and it's also nice how they didn't just go for the most obvious tropes for their respective fantasy races. Like the fairy princess wears a simple crop top and shorts, uses ore and spends a lot of time being cold and rude towards the other girls. Overall I liked how there was some edge in the group dynamics so everyone wasn't just 100% friendly with everyone all the time. It was also nice how they had unique relationships among each other and not just with the main character.

Did not care for Yucie's romance with the prince with Yagami Taichi hair and Snufkincore outfit, his "playful" teasing just made him look like a jerk in my eyes. However there was a minor princess & knight flashback romance in one episode and I eat those up.

The episodic "let's gather magical energy and grow as people in order to become worthy of the tiara" stuff was fine enough, but when the show finally properly found its plot towards the end it turned really good. The true nature of the tiara and what the competition around it actually means in the first place made for a compelling mystery, and they got some really good drama out of the fact that only one of the five girls can be the winner. And in the end of course the power of friendship wins (sorry if that's a spoiler but it should be really obvious if you're old enough to be on this website).

I didn't agree with the message of every episode and the "the girls are actually 17 but look like 10" thing never stopped being kind of weird (but at least it was used as a serious plot element), but in general I can certainly recommend this show if you like the magical girl genre for the optimistic "girls use magic and grow stronger together" aspect. Shame there's not a lot of content on it on tumblr! I suppose I must be the change I want to see then.

Puchi Pri*Yucie - Episode 1

Puchi Pri*Yucie - Episode 4

Cocoloo.

Beth.

Puchi Pri*Yucie - Episode 3

First impressions on Petite Princess Yucie

This one won the "which of these anime I should watch next" so here we are. It's not really magical girls as we define it here on Mahou Furbies, but there is a girl and magic in it so that'll do. And based on two episodes it's surprisingly good!

The story takes place in a "swords & dragons" style fantasy world. Yucie is a 17-year-old girl who inexplicably looks like a child. She enrolls in a princess school in order to become the Platinum Princess, who gets a magic tiara that can grant any wish, which she hopes would age her up. The other pictured girls I assume are also princess candidates and thus her rivals (or at least the dark skinned one is, not everyone has been introduced yet).

Overall very much interested in seeing where this goes, and not the least due to being a children's show that doesn't look like it's as strangled by its formula as many other shows I've seen (I really hope I'm not wrong about this). But most importantly Yucie is a super appealing protagonist, she's a lot more assertive and headstrong than many of the other kid show heroines I'm used to who often lean towards generic niceness. The rival princess was also delightfully selfish and rude in her debut episode, hopefully she'll remain like that for a while at least.

One aspect I'm not so sure about is the age thing, like what's the point of making your main character a teen trapped in a child's body if she's going to behave like a bratty child anyway? And how am I supposed to read her relationships with her classmates, do I just ignore the age difference and see them as equals? I assume it's going to be an important plot element but it'll be interesting to see how it'll be handled since I assume the target audience is closer to the child age.

Overall I like the character design, or the art style is very 00's but other than that everyone looks great.

I have some room for a non-Precure mahou anime and I thought we could try a method like this for picking the show this time. I'll watch the one with the most votes, or consider if someone makes a good case in the comments. (please no long or multi-season recommendations)

You can check what anime I've seen on my MAL.