Content warnings: NSFW screenshots; imagined and implied sexual assault; forced stripping (not for sexual reasons, although the camera ogles like it is); nudity; depictions of misogyny and racism.
What’s it about? Ignoring sexist remarks from her fellow nobles about a “woman’s place,” the lady knight Serafina goes to war in hopes that conquering new territory will provide fertile farmland to feed her people. After a brutal seven-year campaign, Serafina finds herself bested in battle by one of her “barbarian” enemies. But instead of killing her, he takes her home and announces his intent to woo her as his bride?!
I keep a screenshot folder on my phone of silly AniFem chats and scroll through it sometimes when I’m having a bad day. In one of them, Peter describes an anime episode as “like an onion, except every layer is more razorblades.”
I thought about that a lot while I was prepping this review.
This episode begins with our “warrior princess” Serafina waking up collared and chained in a prison cell, trying to remember what happened to her. Then it comes flooding back: she was defeated by an eastern warrior who decided to take her captive because he’s decided to “make you mine.”
Serafina imagines torture, rape, and human sacrifice. Instead, a girl arrives at her cell and forcibly strips her… to bathe her and give her new clothes. The scene is played with a hefty dose of shame from Serafina, and the camera really enjoys drifting up her bare midriff to imply something lascivious before revealing that all the dripping water is from a sponge bath.
Once dressed, her captor, Veor, marches into her cell and announces he’s smitten with her skills on the battlefield and has taken her to be his bride. Oh, but don’t worry, he’s not going to force her to marry him! He’ll court her, of course! As his prisoner! From a jail cell! And based on all of Serafina’s blushing and stammering, we’re definitely supposed to find this cute and funny and not at all a horror show.
At this point I’ve got a real sour taste in my mouth and zero trust in the narrative. So imagine my surprise when we jump back in time seven years for an extended flashback of Serafina before she went off to war and, uh… it’s basically an extended critique of aristocratic greed, misogyny, and colonialism?
Granted, it’s done with the subtlety and nuance of a sack of cymbals crashing down the stairs, but Serafina’s kingdom is far from ideal. Commoners starve while nobles get rich off an endless war; Serafina herself is constantly ridiculed for being a female knight and told that she needs to get married and have kids; and the eastern “barbarians” are painted with a deeply racist brush, described as “inhuman” and thus acceptable to conquer and kill.
Serafina herself is a product of her culture, as she believes the demonizing rumors about the eastern peoples. However, she also chafes under everyone’s gendered expectations and firmly believes that her duty as a noble is to protect others, not exploit them.
All of this is pretty clearly building up to a reversal of sorts, where Serafina will likely (1) learn that the stories about the “barbarians” in the east are mostly racist lies and (2) find a home among her captors due to their culture’s appreciation for female warriors.
It’s not a new narrative, and it’s got its own razorblades to deal with in terms of “noble savage” stereotypes and centering a story about indigenous people around a member of the invading culture. But hey, it’s not actively hateful. In a vacuum, you could give this part of the episode a “you tried” sticker.
Except. Except.
Veor captures Serafina. He chains her up in a cell. He has his servant force-strip her and shove her into a dress (something we know she’s uncomfortable with after the flashback scene). He announces his desire to “take her” as his bride. Sure, he’s attracted to her masculine traits unlike the nobles back home, but he still doesn’t ask her what she wants. He’s still only interested in her as she relates to him as a wife and (presumably) future mother.
Serafina hasn’t escaped a sexist, objectifying culture for an egalitarian one. She’s just traded one form of dehumanization for another. I can certainly understand the appeal of a kickass lady, but “women warriors are good because men are attracted to them” is hardly a feminist flex.
But y’know, given the way Warrior Princess delights in Serafina’s sexualized embarrassment in the opening scenes—and ends on Veor’s giant glowing dick escaping a blanket and boinging around like a jack-in-the-box—I somehow doubt this show is prepared to interrogate all of that.
All of which is, frankly, too much thought to put into a lackluster fantasy series with mid-tier animation that probably nobody is going to remember in a month. That’s the problem with shows that are bad but in an interesting way: they make me want to peel back those layers of razorblades and figure out what went wrong and how it could’ve gone better.
Every once in a while a bawdy comedy comes along that slides a surprisingly insightful social commentary in between its boob jokes. Could Warrior Princess overcome its tacky opening and become that? Sure, maybe! We put a man on the moon! Anything is possible! But this premiere didn’t garner enough trust for me to come back and find out.
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