Forum - View topicREVIEW: Princess Nine DVD Complete Series
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Nadare Xizos
 Posts: 115 Location: The Heero Hole |
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Hey, an oldie but a goodie. The soap opera elements did get annoying, but I loved the baseball bits.
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Mikeski
Posts: 608 Location: Minneapolis, MN |
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You can go compare some 13-14-year-old boys against some 17-18-year-old girls in track and field performance here... testosterone trumps age, even at those ages. So she may not have sounded feminist, but she sounded honest! In pure athleticism, the boys would still have a slight edge, but it would probably come down to baseball skills and coaching. |
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potatochobit
 Posts: 1373 Location: TEXAS |
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it is like orange road or maison ikkoku or marmalade boy. If you like 90s anime you should not miss princess 9, it is more of a drama not really a comedy. |
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Quark
 Posts: 710 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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Oh man, Princess Nine! My boyfriend forced me to watch this with him a few years ago, and I'm so glad he did. Just hearing the theme song gives me the feels. It's nice to see it get re-released and get such a favourable review.
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Yeah, the first half is way better than the second half. The love triangle and romance really brought the show down (I also disliked how utterly perfect and boring the guy was Izumi and Ryo were gunning for). The melodrama just became too much.
Izumi completely made the show for me. I love her fire and resolve. |
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TropicaliaSoup
 Posts: 18 |
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I'm in the middle of watching this show and enjoying it a lot, except that Hiroyuki guy really bugs me. I've been hoping Ryo would give some thought to that poor best friend dude, but yeah she's fixated on that annoying one. This show got me thinking about a more recent girls playing baseball show that was really good called Taishou Baseball Girls. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Princess Nine, I am sure it was an influence on the show.
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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Oh right, the show that reminds us that #YesAllWomen are weaker than young boys.
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Covnam
 Posts: 3678 |
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I have the original ADV singles, and haven't seen it for a long time, but this was a show I do remember enjoying. It has a great opening too that I still listen to.
With some new extras (Thanks NJ) and no overlays, I might just re-buy this down the line. |
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CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
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Isn't this the show where a 14 year old girl has a 95 mph pitch. Full grown men at the major league level can struggle to hit 90, with the few that can go to 95 or above probably being under 40. There is no direct comparison to boys at 14, but even the top little leaguers who are 11 and 12 can barely clip 80 and those are the cream of the crop. In short I don't find it likely that even the greatest women athlete at the sport of baseball would ever be able to hit 95 at any age, let alone a 14 year old girl (I will say unlikely since anything is possible). So realism is far from abundance in the work. That said I do like this show, and quite frankly you need things to be somewhat unrealistic. I mean I can't really name any sports show that I would consider anything more than based in reality but exaggerated, sure not all of them go to the crazy lengths of POT, but from slam dunk to baby steps to even shows like Ryo Ko Bo, they are far from realistic, and that is okay. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1245 |
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I have a nice memory of this show from the days when I used to hang out on the AnimeOnDVD.com forums.
Due to rampant piracy and the fact that legal streams didn't yet exist, fans could be divided roughly into two camps: the pirates who already knew everything about every release long before it came to US shores, and those who didn't pirate anything (like me) and knew nothing but what we heard or read about. Participating in discussions of even the newest of shows was like navigating a spoilery mine field. But not in the case of "Princess 9." "Princess 9" was a coup for ADV in that they found a good show that nobody had fansubbed and almost nobody had even heard of. (How many times has that happened since?) So as the six volumes slowly came out, everybody discussing them was on the same page for a change -- nobody knew what was coming next. In the "Princess 9" discussion thread there was analysis, there was criticism, and above all there was all kinds of fanboy speculation about how things would turn out -- and fanboy partisanship regarding various scenarios of how things "should" turn out. The wait between volumes really meant waiting, and when the next one finally came out, everyone would watch it and rush straight to the forum for the liveliest discussion on the board. It was one of the most enjoyable threads I remember from that site because it really was a communal first-time watch of a good show. (I was watching the discs with a group of RL friends as well, of course.) I'm not sure how P9 would hold up for me now. I've seen "Touch" and "Cross Game" since then, so how it would fare in light of those titans I don't know. I've still got the original release, though, (in a box presently located half a world away), so who knows...maybe someday I'll see it again. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14790 |
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It's girly, and it's about sports, in the 90's. |
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physicist
Posts: 3 |
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Princess Nine is less a sports anime than a story of unrequited love and consequential obsession. Princess Nine is one of my favorite anime series from the days when I was first discovering the genre and it still holds a special place in my heart.
General Spoiler Warning I see this show as being initially centered on Keiko Himuro. Her love for Hidehiko Hayakawa was pure and unconditional. She offered to surrender her secure privileged life in order to stay by Hidehiko's side, and she meant it. Hidehiko refused out of his own love for her and, I would venture, rightly so. His disgrace would likely have lead to a poisoned relationship and additional hardship therefrom. Hiroki Takasugi was largely an unnecessary character. As a love interest, he was mostly irritating (like a cheap wool sweater). In his absence, a fire would still burn between Izumi and Ryo. They were the pawns of Keiko's obsession to keep alive and honor to love she held for Hidehiko. The rest of show is about Izumi and Ryo finding there own identity beyond Keiko. Best regards, Robert |
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gordok
Posts: 22 Location: San Diego, CA |
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My take on Hiroki Takasugi role in the story is a little different, while agreeing that he is essentially a "white prince" or "white knight" character.
Just as Ryo is a step above the "average" high-school baseball player (because of her pitching skills), I see Hiroki being yet another step above her . . . Not because he is a guy, but because of what he does when he plays and prepares for winning baseball games. Specifically: He has honed extraordinary skills to begin with, rising to challenges where he can find them. (e.g., perhaps becoming the "only" person who can hit Ryo's pitches). He will skip important games the rest of his team is playing, in order to scout and learn the strategies other baseball teams (i.e., the future competition) are going to be. He takes the time to teach others (including the potential competition) how to improve their game--simultaneously learning those others strengths and weaknesses. [And he manages to do all this with good intention.] In the conclusion (which I must address carefully to avoid open spoilers), he plays Ryo psychologically and emotionally. He probably means what he says, but Ryo spoiler[ falls for it hook line and sinker and therefore attempts to strike him out.] Hence (in a scene I would have like to have seen, perhaps intended for the originally planned sequel), I see Hiroki pointing out to Ryo: spoiler["You know, you should have won that game, even with your exhaustion. You knew I was the only person who could hit your pitch, so you should have thrown me only balls instead of strikes. I would have gone to first base, you would have had time to a rest, then you could have struck out the next guy on my team. Instead, you let my love confession get to you. You lost sight of the game."] (IMHO) Good physical skills get you into the game, but as a manager/team leader competing against others with the same skills and dreams, you have to go beyond what those others can do. Hence, Hiroki demonstrates what more is needed to get to Koshien. Ryo and the girls teamspoiler[ still have a ways to go in their development.]. |
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DerekTheRed
 Posts: 3544 Location: ::Points to hand:: |
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Eh, that situation pops up in baseball anime a bit. spoiler[Touch and Cross Game have it. But usually the pitcher knows that first base is open and purposely pitch to the strongest batter because a victory through evasion of conflict is no victory at all.] It would be interesting for the protagonist team to take the easy victory for a change. I get the vibe that Ace of Diamond has the potential to play it that way, but I haven't seen it. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4094 |
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I kind of have the feeling that if Hiroki Takasugi was in a normal shoujo romance series, no one would have looked twice at him.
I mean no one in the viewing audience would have thought he was a cardboard cutout {like so many...} or out of place; The girls would have been on him like syrup on pancakes - and they were here as well. Maybe my standards for eye candy were off? Wait a minute, is there some sort of double standard going on here I don't know about? Wait, wait, wait: Was I supposed to take Princess Nine serious as a sports anime? I've seen arguments about how silly Girls Und Panzer's "national tournament" was, but this team and its attempt to be taken serious - not as a team but as competition against regular teams playing for several years, fully experienced coaches and such... Even taking the issue of men versus women out of the equation, we all have to admit that this is damn stupid. From top to bottom, this does not work. |
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