Overlooked & Underrated: Hime-sama Goyoujin

The anime I’m posting about today is another comedy show. I realize comedy is very subjective – something that I find hilarious might be completely lost on another person, and vice-versa. However, going by its low rating on Anime-Planet, I’m one of few people from an already small number that both watched and liked Hime-sama Goyoujin.

Plot summary: ‘Plot’ probably isn’t the right word to use, as this is a random comedy series. The ‘premise’ is that the main character, Himeko, ends up with a magical crown through a series of ridiculous events, and when she places it on her head she becomes the queen of the whole country. Instantly. Her house suddenly becomes a palace, her father goes from being a policeman to the captain of the royal guard, while her mother works as head maid. People start to treat her with respect, obeying her every command. It’s as if the whole world has restructured itself around her!

Now obviously this would be many people’s dream situation, but Himeko (being quite possibly the most brain dead character I’ve ever seen in anime – and this series alone is full of brain dead characters!) takes an episode and a half to even realize that anything around her has changed! When she does realize, she quickly decides she doesn’t like her new position… but finds herself unable to remove the crown from her head!

Not everyone welcomes the new queen, however. An evil organisation of cat-suit wearing weirdos (lead by NORIO WAKAMOTO, who shoots EYE BEAMS) seem desperate to acquire the crown for themselves, sending various underlings to try and steal it. Among them are two foreign thieves, Leslie and Karen, who are largely to blame for the crown falling into Himeko’s hands to begin with. Needless to say they’re also thick as five planks, and while their Japanese is pretty good on the whole, the strange accents and occasional misunderstandings add to the humor. Oh, and did I mention Himeko is scared of foreigners?

There’s also a blonde-haired girl who follows her around speaking gibberish, trying to grab the crown at every given opportunity; an assassin sent by the evil organisation to kill Himeko, but who instead falls in love with her; the daughter of the school’s chairman, a generic rich-girl character who suddenly finds herself far less influential due to the arrival of the new queen; a monkey who eats bananas, and throws the skins on the floor (you can guess what happens next, right? It’s that kind of show); a girl who only speaks through her cat hand puppet; a young boy who claims to be the prince of a neighboring country and Himeko’s fiance, but nobody believes him; and an alien cat who believes that Himeko is actually the queen of his planet and plans to return her there (I’m guessing the creators really liked cats?). Yeah, it’s a large cast for 12 episodes, so don’t expect much depth, but that’s not important. This is a comedy series, and they were all funny!

What makes it worth watching? As was the case with Don Dracula, there’s not much point to watching this series unless you want something lighthearted and funny, which Hime-sama Goyoujin is in my opinion. Again, comedy is subjective, but you should be able to figure out fast whether the style of humour is to your liking or not. I suppose cat lovers might appreciate it more than others.

I wouldn’t recommend watching it solely for the music. 😛 The OP was a generic (if slightly catchy) song; in the accompanying animation the various cast members danced. The ED song was also generic, but the sequence featured some nice still images of the main characters.

Since the jumpy OP was the first I got to see of the show’s animation, and since it was produced by Nomad (a studio I don’t usually associate with high animation quality), I was initially worried it would look dreadful. But I needn’t have, as the animation in the episodes themselves was good throughout. The character designs were pleasant enough, the soft colours used were nice… the backgrounds were unremarkable, but that’s being overly critical.

Possible reasons for it’s obscurity: It’s unlicensed (with the exception of Animax Asia), and was quite slow to get subbed, produced in 2006 but only fully translated in 2010, so few western anime fans would have watched it as it aired.

Overall thoughts: While Hime-sama Goyoujin is far from being my all-time favorite series, it’s not as bad as A-P makes it out to be. It ranks #3,552 on the site, a good 1,000 places below similar but better known series such as Galaxy Angel and Di Gi Charat. If you liked either of those shows, or random comedy in general, I’d highly recommend it. 🙂

Anime-Planet average rating: 2/5

My personal rating: 3.5/5