 On today's episode, we're going to be talking about Fena, Pirate Princess, and my overall impressions on this show. Hey everybody, welcome back to Awaking Geekdom, Geo here, and yeah, Fena, Pirate Princess, one of the latest shows from production IG, directed by Kasuto Nakazawa, and interestingly enough, it is a co-production between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. So this anime aired back in August, all the way to October of 2021, and it essentially tells the story of Fena Houtman, a young orphan girl who lives in a fantastic alternate history version of the 18th century. Fena has been raised on an island where there is no hope of escaping the dark destiny forced upon her by her captors to be used and discarded by the soldiers of the British Empire. But Fena is more than just another powerless orphan. When her mysterious past comes knocking, Fena will break the chains of her oppressors. Her goal, escape her captors, forge a new identity, and search for a place where she can truly belong, and find out the true mystery behind the key word Eden. It's a story of the adventure of a lifetime, she and her crew of misfits and unlikely allies will have in pursuit of her goals. I do love historical fiction, and I do like that aspect of this show a lot. Now, it's only a 12 episode series, and from a production standpoint, this is easily one of the best looking shows of 2021. If I were to make a list on just the artistry alone, this is one of the top 10, maybe even top 5 of the year, honestly. Everything about this show just oozes personality. It's so beautiful, there's so much eye candy, the wonderful character designs, the expression on the eyes and mouths and just the facial expressions alone on the characters is top tier in my honest opinion. Beautiful renderings of oceans and backgrounds and amazing scenery from different countries because this is essentially a globetrotting adventure. So yeah, honestly, just Production ID just knocked it out of the bar. I was so excited when I heard it was a show done by them, I was really pumped up for that, and it definitely met my expectations or exceeded them actually. I really enjoyed the character designs for the goblin knights and Fena and all these wonderful kooky characters. Fena has just this striking appearance, she's an 18 year old girl, she's pale scanned with white blonde hair, and you don't see that too often in shows. And the fact that it's supposed to be in this alternate take on the 18th century makes it a little bit more richer, I guess. So like I mentioned, the main character Fena, she is extremely outgoing and just a bundle of energy. She's a wonderful character and main protagonist that you really want to root for. She is so expressive and just curious about everything and her relationship with the other characters is a real joy to watch. One of my favorite things about this series is seeing the Samurai 7, this elite goblin knight force and how they interact with Fena and the other characters. If it wasn't for that, I don't think I would have been as invested in Pirate Princess as I was. There's something about it. I think it comes down to production IG and what they were able to do because the way these characters behaved, their facial structure and their mannerisms is unlike other shows where, you know, you gotta cut corners and not everything's going to be as smooth. It's not going to have this movie quality to it, but you get that here. And it's really nice. It's awesome and beautiful to behold in my honest opinion. Like I mentioned, the Samurai 7 are a group of elite Samurai yet they kind of behave like ninjas and it's kind of weird, but you just gotta go with it. They are trying to help, they're trying to rescue the character of Fena Houtman and when they find out about her connection thanks to her dad and the word Eden, there's this mystery that forms about what exactly that is, that key word like I mentioned earlier from the plot synopsis and essentially they team up the character Fena with the Samurai 7. Now when she was set adrift 10 years prior to the story, it was by a younger character Yukimaru who promised to find her and now he is the one, the leader I guess of the Samurai 7, he's sort of this introverted Samurai who isn't really good at expressing his feelings and that's played to comedic effects at times and honestly the relationship between Yukimaru and Fena takes a while to grow but it's really wholesome and pretty to see happen. So that I guess in a nutshell is the story. There are some adversaries including the Rumble Rose which is led a group of pirates I should say, led by Grace O'Malley and I probably butchered that along with other characters and again the character designs are really good in this and you see the pirates and they're all so different, the hairs and the body types and just the artistry behind it is really awesome and I really enjoyed seeing the contrast between all the characters. The Samurai characters are very, they're in a specific style and you have the pirates which are much looser in their depiction and I really got a kick out of that. You also have the Royal Navy with the I guess you could say the main antagonistic force in Abel Bluefield. This mysterious lord was after Fena for his own reasons. You later find out that she kind of bears a resemblance to somebody that Abel knows and you don't really know or don't really get his story until much later in the plot and it was nice and tragic and interesting but it didn't really hold the weight as I thought it would. I don't know, I mean this show is 12 episodes but this is definitely one of those series that really needed another batch of 12 episodes to truly flesh out the world and the characters and all the exposition dumps that happen and all the terminology and because you get some of that but it's just so abrupt and sudden that you don't really have a moment to, you do understand it but there's no weight to it. It comes out of nowhere and you're just taking a back and you're just thinking okay well yeah okay sure that happened. I think with more episodes this could have been a much richer experience, a better plotted series in my opinion. I love that it's an original series, it's not based on a light novel, it's not based on a manga. I really do enjoy that and like I said artistically this is a plus material but the plot could use some work. I mean the character motivations are there but there's no looming threat, there's no sense of danger. When Fena, when something happens to her it is immediately resolved and the danger sort of dissolves and it's not until much later when something else happens and that gets resolved as well. So there's no continuing threat. I never felt during my watch of the show that these characters are in a constant anxiety inducing danger, something's gonna happen. I was just pretty choked because they're on a globetrotting quest to figure out about the word Eden and how it could relate to mythical, mystical, esoteric things that I'm not going to reveal. So that was really fun but I don't know, not much of a bad guy or not much of a antagonistic force in this show. There is some towards the end but I think it's so abrupt and sudden that I just felt indifferent towards it. The main reveal of what actually happens towards the end of the show is really interesting but compared to the pacing and the story beats of how they structured the 12 episodes, it just comes out of nowhere and I particularly did not care too much because of the end result. Not gonna spoil it, don't worry but the end result is what I kind of expected and it really didn't surprise me all too much. Still some interesting concepts, I just think it needed more time to develop the characters and the world building and all that stuff, I don't know. But yeah those are some of my thoughts, kind of spoiler free for you guys. It's still worth watching, I do recommend it just on an artistic merit alone. Just maybe set your expectations a little low because the plot's, it's alright. But what about you guys? Have you seen Fena Pirate Princess? Let me know in the comment section down below and if you haven't, what are some of your favorite pirates in manga and anime? Very interested in finding out. Guys as always thank you so much for liking, commenting, subscribing and being a part of a week in Geekdom. It truly does mean a whole lot. Thank you so much, I've got to go. Stay safe everyone, God bless, I will catch all of you on our next episode.