"Majestic Prince, Part One" is the first volume of this animated science fiction series.  This series starts up with an alien invasion taking out Earth's space defenses in a horrible and brutal matter where the humans are losing, fast.  Meanwhile we see that the Earth defenses gain a new member to help win the humans the war.  We then cut to a group of five teenagers called "Team Rabbit".  The members that make up Team Rabbit are: Izuru Hitachi (The manga artist that tries way to hard to be a lone wolf hero), Toshikazu Asagi (The smart one that always suffers from having stomach pains from stress), Kei Kugimiya (The straight thinker of the group that takes everything seriously), Tamaki Irie (The big breasted one with an childish attitude that can't seem to get a boyfriend), and Ataru Suruga (The gun otaku that can't seem to get a girlfriend).  Team Rabbit go out on a training mission only to do a terrible job as they can not for the life of them work together as a team.  After their training we see that they are forced into the war even though they can't work as a team.  Team Rabbit somehow manage to get through the mission and are welcomed back to Earth as heroes and thus they go up a rank to where the big boys are fighting the war.  Will Team Rabbit iron out the kinks and work well as a team and save the human race?  I dunno about you but I think we're all doomed, DOOMED! (Click "Read More" to read the full review).


The story in this show takes the classic style of writing sci-fi anime seen in shows like "Mobile Suit Gundam (1979 - 1980)", "Patlabor: Early Days (1988 - 1989)", and "Tekkaman Blade (1992 - 1993)", but mixes in with how sci-fi anime are written in this modern day and age.  This writing style also helps make this story a very brilliant social commentary on how the times have change for the mecha genre.  One example of the social commentary is with how the main cast are in a serious war as back in the day you'll just see people (in the show and not in real life) watching this war unfold on TV and being shocked, in this day and age they just have the people being idiots on the Internet just trolling on the mech pilots and won't stop going on about how huge Tamaki Irie's breast are.  Another example is how advertising is everywhere and it gets to the point where all of the mechs are planted in them like how they are planted on everything in real life.  While I made that part out to be a huge part of the show but it is not but a small thing that happens in this show, I just liked that part is all and wanted to mention it.

The whole war in space part is a little generic but it does the job at drawing you into the show.  This is also one of those shows where you can't jump into any random episode as each story-arc makes this show into a completely different show and it even got to a point where it threw me off from just going from episode to episode as there were times where it got me thinking, "am I watching the same show here?".  This weird shift feeling doesn't happen far into the show too as it kicks in right from going to the first episode to the second episode as the first episode is a straight up sci-fi mech show and then it changes to a weird modern/retro hybrid story telling that's also a comedic slice of life show.  While this show does have a bunch of genres bundled together although they were all surprisingly good and worked well with the show but it was just the transitioning of each genre that threw me off.


One thing that was handled really well was that the strategy used in the battles were handled a bit more realistically than a lot of mecha shows I have seen.  The reason why it worked was because that it blended in with the sci-fi mecha theme well and only clashed in not even a few scenes but even then it was forgivable.  One thing I didn't like about this show was the pacing as a very fast paced show and there were times where it was going so fast that my brain couldn't fully keep up with the story.  Another weird thing about this show is that 25% of the dialogue is all technobabble (not an official number but it sure as hell felt like it) that will just fly over your head and while it was fun to hear at first, I did start to get bored and they should've trimmed it down a bit in order to help pace out the show better and make better time of the main story.

Action scenes in this show were very entertaining and it was very nice seeing mechs slicing each other up and using laser beams and ultra laser cannons all over the place.  While cool as there really wasn't that much action scenes in this show as it is mainly about the lives that pilot the mechs but what we do get was very satisfying to watch.  Characters in this show were good as they had likable and charming personalities and they were equally serious and funny.  My problem with the characters is that they seem to be missing an element that I can't quite put my finger on and missing element could've helped made the characters more memorable than what they were.


Artwork in this show looks very good as it had some decent character design, strong background design, and some nice coloring but I did have some problems trying to tell some of the characters apart as some of them looked to similar to other characters in this show.  The animation in this show looks good most of the time but there were some scenes that had some choppy animation and it looked like it was done so that they could keep the art looking good and consistent, so it won't bother you as you'll be too distracted by the art.  The Japanese dub for this one was passable as it wasn't bad but not great either as it is a bit forgettable (so remember it while you can).  This release does also come with an English dub if you don't feel like reading subtitles.  I liked the soundtrack to this one and it defiantly suited the sci-fi mecha theme well as it had that dramatic sound that'll put you in the mood for some mecha.

Overall this was a pretty solid watch despite this show having problems.  I'm going to recommend you guys and gals to check this one out as it'll make for a nice weekend viewing.  Good but missing something to make it classic.

Title: Majestic Prince, Part One