2007.03.29 
Petite Princess Yucie
(Following was originally a journal entry)
About Princess Maker/Petite Princess Yucie
Princess Maker is pretty much like monster rancher except you're raising a daughter instead. Though you don't get to choose a daughter to raise, the daughter is the default one. Like if PPY were a video game Yucie would be the daughter to raise. PM is often always misplaced in the hentai section though there is no sexxorz (to my disappointment =p) The only game that'd kind of fit in that category is PM2 since the US release (which was never actually released because the company went bankrupt before they released it. But hey, we can all play it illegally in this day and age) has a nude model for the daughter. ...As disturbing as it is.
As for PPY it looks like loli shit, but to much pussy lolimen's disappointment, the five main girls of this series are under a curse where they can't age beyond 10 and they're actually 17.
Relation to Princess Maker:
There's lots of references here and there. Bullet format time!
- Every princess maker game (except 5) the player is a single father who raises a daughter. (Usually the father is a retired war veteran by default, but I think they gave you an option what kind of dad you could be in the later games) Gunbard is a retired war veteran and a single father that raises Yucie. Not only that even though other characters in this show have moms, they're only talked about and you only see the main character's dads instead. Except for the Prince because his father is dead.
- Harvest Festival! But no one joins a competition.
- Olive's servant Cube is in this anime! This time he's Yucie's servant. (And it seems after PM4 he became Suikoden's Jeane of the PM series) Not only that there's some lookalikes. A clone of the daughter in the first game shows up in the last two episodes, in the third episode is a Olive clone, and Yucie looks a lot like the daughter in the 3rd game.
Also many characters from the game are in here, just with different personalities.
- Jobs. Throughout the majority of the series the kids do part-time jobs which is also one of the main things you do in the video game to build up your daughter's stats.
Main Characters:
Yucie: The main character with a big ass forehead.
Glenda: Yucie's polar opposite. Glenda is the princess from hell. Narcissistic, gaudy, & outspoken. She only shows her soft side to the Kobolds.
Cocoloo: The less attractive best friend that you always forget is there. Even Cocoloo pokes fun of it herself.
Elmina: Seemingly a stuck up prick at first but later on its revealed she's only the way she is because of how her dad raised her. And did I mention that her dad is God? Yes, her dad is freakin' God. Awesome.
Beth: Introduced quite late in the series it's kind of hard to get used to her. I thought she was so boring I skipped episode 23 at first. She seems to be the stereotypical "OMG I THOUGHT SHE WAS A BOY!" loner type character but even she has her reasons for being the way she is.
Arc/Alu: The prince of the series. You know this guy has so many qualities that I'd hate about him if this were any other series. Like having a lot of physical similarities with Cloud (to me, others go with him being a Sora clone. He also looks like a Megaman reject!) Somehow him being stereotypical works in this show. He's the missing prince, but its no mystery he is. He tells Yucie right off the bat and she doesn't believe him. He pokes fun of his love interest Yucie (Oh, yes very cliche!) because he likes her. HIS MOTHA IS A MILF!
Other Characters:
Gunbard: Him and Satan, they're both a tie for being the greatest fathers in this show. Gunbard is a very loving man. Fucking manly yet he does the majority of the bitch work without complaining even though he has Cube as servant. KNOWS HOW TO COOK, always buys Yucie nice new dresses, and goddamit, this is one loving father. Him and Satan deserve a best father award. Dammit why don't we just call father's day Gunbard/Satan day.
Satan: A great father, though something that Gunbard has that he doesn't is that Satan is kind of a pushover dad. His daughter Glenda will more likely listen to her mom instead of him. But bloody hell Satan is one loving son of a bitch. Like after Yucie fucked up her ballet performance - he was the second one to applaud her after Gunbard. EAT THAT GOD.
God: Asshole ruins the line of good fathers. God is pretty much like an Asian dad. Expects wayyyyyy too much out of his child. He's not like Satan or Gunbard at all. So much that his daughter is seemingly emotionless and tries hard to be a perfectionist. An insult for Elmina is never far away from this man's lips. He's also ANYTHING but affectionate with his daughter unlike the previous two dads. Screw you god, screw you!
Cocoloo's Dad: He's just like his daughter, I really didn't notice him. And he's invisible so you can't see him, you can only see the book he's carrying.
Fairy King: He didn't really have any scenes either but he seems like a nice dad.
Ercell: Since Arc's father is dead only Arc's mother Ercell is shown. He and Ercell didn't really have many scenes together. As far as her motherhood skills go - well I honestly don't remember how great/bad they were.
Chau, Balazan, Belbel, Gaga, and Cube: They're servants of the five princess candidates - Chau/Cocoloo, Balazan/Elmina, Belbel/Beth, Gaga/Glenda and Cube/Yucie.
I'm guessing Frederick was Arc's messenger or something. Obviously he's not really worth mentioning since he didn't even show up in the ending pictures.
OMG KITTENZ AND PUPPIEZ
This show is adorable. Like kittens and puppiez. Let me list some moments:
- Now I just liked Gunbard because he was one manly mother fucker that knew how to cook. Goddamit, I didn't know he and the queen had a past with each other! Ugh! It was like a greek tragedy! Mother fucker went through hell and back (literally) to collect all the pieces to make the Eternal Tiara so he could become a noble and marry Ercell. While Ercell was waiting her father was dying and his last wish was for her to get married. So she gave up the vow and married someone else. Gunbard finished his quest and when he came back he realized he was too late. Well, not only that, later on Ercell's son Arc and Gunbard's daughter Yucie fall for each other. Aww. Its like what FF8's love story could've been if it wasn't so bad.
- I found the episode where Elmina's background is finally explained touching. Her dad is a controlling son of a bitch that won't allow her to make a mistake. In short, God is like an Asian dad. Later on while they're doing random jobs they have to work at a stuck up rich guy's house for a day. The master Rockwell happens to be just like Elmina's dad. Rockwell was also controlling to his daughter so she ran away ten years ago. She finally decided to write a letter to her dad Rockwell himself but he burned it because he refused to admit that he was wrong with the way he raised her. With the mermaid's tear Elmina restored the letter and read it to Rockwell.
It reads that his daughter decided to finally erase her father out of her life since they'll never be on the same path. At the end Elmina adds in some words of her own about how she regrets how she never got to see her dad's smiling face. Since she's pretty much bawling her eyes out Rockwell knows that she's obviously lying and that she added that part in herself. So in the end Rockwell and Elmina maintain some kind of relationship, he's like another daughter to her while Rockwell is ironically like the father she never had despite his god-like ways being the reason why his own daughter ran away.
- Glenda falls in love. Aww. The demon princess's first crush. Basically she likes boy, friends find out boy is taking care of another woman, but then HOLY SHIT. The biggest plot twist ever is at the end. Its so fucked up I won't even say. HOW DARE THEY DO THIS TO ME!
Episodes 25 & 26
The series actually went a bit darker nearing the end. Basically the girls give up trying to become a platinum princess because Arc's life is on the line. They all know Yucie plans to save Arc and that's much more important than what any of them want to wish for. (Best line: Glenda - "I can rule the world without the tiara, if not my mom will.") Then a woman in a cloak tells them that after the chosen one becomes the platinum princess the remaining four who weren't chosen can't return to their world. Instead they get lost within time and disappear. If the chosen one decides she doesn't want to become platinum princess her world is destroyed. Yucie of course wants to save her friends but they all decide that Yucie's memory should be erased so she can return back to her world and save Arc.
Yucie gets her memories of her friends erased (hmm...kind of reminds me of Persona 2!) and returns back to the normal world. She saves Arc but then realizes something is missing. She then goes out to look for her friends. Oh fucknugget I can't believe I was tearing up at this part. Arc tells Cube and the others the truth about becoming a platinum princess and all of the dads decide to help Arc and Yucie get their daughters back. Oh, and before that Queen Ercell and Gunbard have a little scene. Basically Gunbard tells Ercell that his life pretty much lost meaning after she betrayed him. But while he went on a killing spree mode he found Yucie and found a reason to live again. (AWWWW) Ercell obviously deeply regrets what she did but Gunbard most likely just learned to live on and forget about it. Though it was because of Gunbard's desire to become a noble that caused all of this to happen. Gunbard was the guy that made the tiara just so he could get married to Ercell. In the end it ended up being pointless - but later on all the above happened because the tiara was made.
Long story short Yucie and Arc get her friends back, the woman in the cloak was actually the last platinum princess who didn't want to return to her world without her friends (and ended up spending 1000 fucken years alone! Oh and I should mention she's a clone of the first princess maker daughter ;)), there's a dream sequence of Yucie marrying Arc but she doesn't become an adult or marry Arc in the end. Though she and her friends do finally grow. Though something I'm confused by (and everyone else) is that the girls go back to school after everything is over. Which leaves people wondering if everything that happened was a dream or only the marriage sequence was a dream. Uh, I'm going with the latter.
Fucking Gainax. Though of course its nothing like Evangelion's "Fuck you" endings. OMG. More fangirling over Gunbard. I liked how after he found out Queen Ercell got married to someone else he left the sword she gave him in front of the castle, took one last good look at the castle, turned around and never looked back. Well of course its much better visually than me writing about it.
Oh and as said in a previous entry I watched 20 episodes in two days. By far beats the record of anything else I watched. Surely I probably could've watched RoV in one day but I didn't get to watch the series in one blow since at the time the whole series wasn't readily available by live evil. I did watch 1-13 in one night.
Overall: Not groundbreaking, of course because thats not what it was trying to be. Some episodes are a drag to watch through while I could watch others on repeat. Its written in somewhat the same tone Fruits Basket is. Just minus the melodrama and PPY is actually funny. At some moments its so random that it compares to Cromartie High. And well, PPY has become one of my favorites. It looks like stupid kiddy shit but there's enough for both kids and adults to enjoy.
Much like Grandia before they decided to appeal to angst ridden teenagers for all the later installments. Yes, the art of Grandia is noticeably probably the worst of the series, but I favor it the most. At least Justin looks and acts like a kid. Ryudo? Looks retarded but tries to act tough as if he looked like Ryuji Yamazaki.
