The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Nina the Starry Bride

Nina had a rough start to life, stealing to survive—and eventually being sold into slavery by her own brother. But to her surprise, her captor, Prince Azure, ordained that she would live the life of a princess...specifically, that of the recently deceased princess-priestess, Alisha. But despite her changing fortune, Nina won't give up her old life without a fight...and Azure might just be the one to finally match her wits. But how much can she trust Azure? And can she stop the feelings budding in her heart, knowing she must eventually marry another...?

Nina the Starry Bride is based on the manga series by Rikachi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

When it comes to female characters thrust into the world of nobles and kings trope, there is one thing I want out of them: the fire needed to take action. It's okay for a character to be timid and shy in a new environment but the ability to seize the moment and take risks is a must. Nina has this in spades, which is even more impressive considering her life to this point.

Nina is a girl who has lost both her parents and found family, and has even been outright betrayed by the latter. The world has beaten her down and still, she fights back. Her current problem is that she doesn't know where to direct that energy. She could likely escape—she is nimble, agile, and has experience running away from guards. But she has nowhere to run away too.

With no family or purpose, those are the things she is most looking for. If pretending to be a princess can get her what she wants deep down in her soul, she's willing to learn all she can—even without aptitude for it. This is why, when offered any reward, all she asks is to be praised for her efforts. Money and gold are nice but they won't fill the hole in her heart. A little bit of human connection—the feeling of being needed—on the other hand, might just do the trick.

All this makes Nina easy to root for. She may be ignorant but she isn't stupid and she has a fire in her that makes it seem like she has a chance to overcome the trials that she will no doubt encounter in the future.

Nina the Starry Bride's first episode gave me some Yatagarasu vibes, and anyone who has been following the ANN After Show podcast can tell you that any comparison to the venerated Bird Show is only a good thing, coming from me. Now, I don't want to get any fellow EggHeads (that's our official fandom name) any false hope, because nobody in Nina the Starry Bride turns into a giant, three-legged bird, and I don't think even one background character was kidnapped and devoured by an even giant-er flesh-eating monkey. It's a damned shame, I know, but hear me out! Despite these unforgivable shortcomings, Nina the Starry Bride is still pretty damned good! It's hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

From the beginning, the story's sandswept setting and Arabian Night frills present a different flavor from your usual shojo fantasy adventure, and the titular Nina proves to be a very likeable heroine who is easy to root for, especially given her dire circumstances. Her street-rat origins come with a lot more dead childhood friends, starvation, and being ostensibly sold to slavers by your friends who didn't die from the plague—and there is nary a cute monkey friend to be seen (flesh-eating or otherwise). That said, she does get to live out her “Aladdin”-esque fantasies when she ends up suddenly trading life as a slum orphan for life as Princess “Alisha”, except here, instead of a genie, her fabulous turn of fortunes is brought about by… well, it's another dead child, actually. Look, the 10th-ish Century was tough for everyone, folks.

The point is, what we have is a compelling leading lady who has been thrust into a world of royal intrigue, false identities, and possible courtly romance, and it's quite a lot of fun to get immersed in. Sure, the visuals aren't top tier or anything, but they sell the melodramatic atmosphere well enough, and these characters are strong enough to make up for any slight shortcomings in the production department.

My favorite scene of the whole premiere is likely the furiously indignant splash of fountain water that Nina/Alisha gives to her haughty and conniving new mother, the Queen, which goes a long way to endear her to the pretty Prince Azure and the audience both. This fall is feeling like a season where I could use some more romance in my anime, and I'm desperate enough for a second season of Yatagarasu that I'm willing to give chance to any show that even gives off a whiff of that Bird Show charm.

From an objective standpoint, I'm rating this a bit too highly. It has moments of stiff animation and a couple of awkward cuts, and the queen's delivery is hampered by the need to adhere to the mouth flaps, giving her an unnatural cadence to her speech. But I enjoyed everything else about this adaptation of the manga of the same name, from the decision to use “night” instead of “episode” to how the art has translated into full-color and movement. What can I say, at times I can be very easy to please.

The story opens somewhere towards the end of the story, with a disheveled Nina kneeling before someone who is condemning her – for the second time, she tells us. It's important to note that when we see the first time, at the hands of Prince Azur, he's telling her that “Nina” will die so that she can become the deceased Priestess Princess Alisha, so this isn't necessarily foretelling a tragic ending to the story. But how we get from Nina becoming Alisha to her being punished for that is a major draw, especially since Azur is the one doing both the transforming and the punishing.

Alisha's death is important because she's about to be married off to the crown prince of another nation. So Azur is in a pinch – and he and his staff seem, at this point, to be the only people aware of the carriage accident that claimed Alisha's life. Finding Nina was a stroke of luck for him, although at this point, it's debatable whether it was the same for her. The orphaned Nina's life is remarkably similar to the opening of the Disney film Aladdin, which is almost certainly deliberate – the use of the word “night” for each episode title is a reference to The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, where the source material for Aladdin can be found, and the costuming is not only central Asian in nature, but also a nod to the fact that the original Aladdin takes place in China.

When I watched it, the English dub was the only option for Anglophones, as no subtitles in English (or most European languages) were available. It is solid, and I particularly like Azur's voice. Nina is mostly the right kind of spunky, although she gets a touch shrill at times, and only the king and queen sound stilted, which seems to be down to matching mouth flaps. The characters are all interesting at this point, and the world-building feels solid, with Azur able to pull off the switch because Alisha was kept in religious confinement, and not even her father has seen her since she was a small child. This is very nearly everything I hoped for in an adaptation, and I'm looking forward to watching the story unfold.

This is something of an unusual premiere – just a few days ago, it was announced that the dub of Nina the Starry Bride would premiere today on Crunchyroll, three days ahead of the Japanese release. I do not know who made that decision and when, but I seriously question their wisdom.

I cannot emphasize enough that I don't know the time frame the cast was working on, and I can only make assumptions. My best guess is that the dub was rushed and pushed out as fast as possible because it was considerably rougher than most modern simuldubs. Jill Harris was shrill as Nina, bordering on screechy at times, and her interpretation of Nina lacked much nuance or texture. Most of the performances were similar – slightly stiff, without complexity. In particular, the king's actor was Chris Rager, an industry veteran, who sounded confused? And ended every sentence? With a question mark? Like he was from the San Fernando Valley? (My native dialect, so I get to make fun of it.)

If anything, the dub threw a lot of Nina's early material's flaws into sharp focus. There's so much to love about it, I swear! Nina is the kind of heroine I beg to get more of in shōjo manga – spirited and stubborn, fighting for survival in an unfamiliar situation. The pseudo-Sumerian setting is a welcome change from the RPG-based/Regency-styled setting that all fantasy these days seem to default to; I'm still waiting for that historically-researched Red River adaptation, but this will do nicely in the meantime. But the writing is incredibly clunky at this point, with unsubtle monologues about class inequality and plenty of setting-specific displays. The heroine has unique eyes that draw the attention of others, you say? The prince whose job is to sand off her rough edges and make her presentable is initially harsh but softens up to her, you say? The current queen is a cruel bully who taunts her stepson and wants her own child to ascend the throne, you say? The determined heroine doesn't stand for such high-class bullying, you say?

You don't say!

These are all genre cliches, and while the side of me that grew up with the works of Tamora Pierce and other teen girl fantasy has a major soft spot for them, my critic side must recognize that they are still cliches. The story could have been bolstered by a production that put more work into adapting it visually and taking its time with the setting, but it blazed through the source material. And no, it's not shallow for my opinion to be swayed by a stronger visual production; after all, anime is as much a visual medium as it is verbal, and storyboarding can be just as important for storytelling as scriptwriting.

As much as I want to love the first episode of my most anticipated series of the fall, the premiere of Nina the Starry Bride is unlikely to blow anyone's socks off. Wait a few days and watch it subbed.