Summer 2018 First Impressions – 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams

In the dream world, dreams give people the power to live, but the world is threatened by dream-eating beings known as “Yumekui.” In order to save the world, princes from all kingdoms must join their power. The butler Navi and Prince Avi of the knight kingdom Arstoria travel the world in order to save it. – ANN

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: TBA

Source: Smartphone Game

Episode 1 Summary: The Dream Royalty bestowed the ability to dream upon the people in order to brighten their lives, but the Dream Eaters soon came to steal it away. If a Dream Eater were to consume all of someone’s dreams, then that person would be cursed with eternal slumber. In order to fight the advance of these terrifying enemies, a group of princes banded together to defend their kingdoms. One by one, the princes were sealed inside of beautiful rings, only to be awakened by the right person. When the right person appears, however, she doesn’t believe a word of it. Having lived her entire life in our world, she’s not inclined to believe the words of a “butler” (who looks like a stuffed animal) telling her that she’s the Princess of Traümere, a member of the Dream Royalty who has the ability to unseal these princes. But soon enough she does just that, awakening Prince Avi to accompany her. In a nearby town they identify a flamboyant young man peddling ill-gotten wares, including another such royal ring. After a battle with some Dream Eaters, though, it appears that Kiel, as he’s known, might have some royal history as well.

Impressions: I’m sure you’ve heard of Pokemon, right? Gotta catch ’em all? Well now, rather than collecting hordes of cute animals and siccing them on your foes, you can amass a reverse-harem of hot princes to help you escape from your hum-drum office lady life! In all seriousness, there are many anime based on video games, and in some cases the source material doesn’t provide much in the way of a story to adapt. You’d think that these games wouldn’t make the best candidates to be transformed into compelling TV entertainment, but they still often spawn manga and anime adaptations that attempt to draw forth a creative story from a few sparse details. Some are even fairly successful at doing so; I think at times a lack of detail or direction will allow someone with a creative mind to run wild and create something even better than the original property. Or some lucky person might stumble upon the next Kemono Friends and manage to charm a cynical anime fandom with a goofy plot and earnest, cute characters. If there’s one thing I know about the anime medium, it’s that it’s always been a type of entertainment where creative minds can generate something wonderful out of almost nothing, with a budget of $3 and a “YOLO” attitude.

However, for every show of limited (or even unlimited) resources that goes on to make large sums of money, there are several more TV anime that inhabit a very broad middle ground of quality and purpose. Most anime, after all, isn’t some auteur’s passion project; instead it’s likely an advertisement for something. Most of the time its a commercial for its own physical disc release; if you buy the expensive Blu-rays, you might get to see all the nudity and violence that didn’t appear in the broadcast version. Oftentimes it’s produced to help market its own source material, usually a manga, light novel, or a game. These series don’t have to be wonderful masterpieces as long as they’re able to fulfill their purpose of bolstering a franchise’s clout with a fickle otaku fanbase.

100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams is one of these workmanlike, functional anime adaptations that shows its hand right out of the gate. It’s what I would call competent in most respects; the character designs are reasonably attractive, the first episode lays out a concrete set of goals for the heroine, and it introduces two characters who I expect will be rivals for her affections. The plot setup is very much like that of a collectible game, with its objectives based around identifying and releasing more and more heroic princes. Heck, there are even elements of the episode that read almost exactly as tutorial levels of a new game; the heroine even needs the little helper animal to teach her the special chant to unlock her own power and the power of the attractive men she’s rescuing. It’s the type of thing that would likely have some meaning to someone who’d played the game on which this anime is based, but doesn’t really hold much significance for those who aren’t otherwise interested.

I’m very solidly in the latter group, but I did identify both some good and some not-as-good things about this episode that are worth mentioning. Something I really liked about it was that the heroine is an adult woman, which I feel is pretty rare for male eye-candy series like this. It’s much more common for teenage girls to be the ones swept away to other lands; it’s uncommon for a series to acknowledge that this can be a fantasy for adult women as well. We only get short glimpses into her old life as an office worker and I get the impression that the importance of that is likely to drop off almost completely as the series moves forward, but it was something I could relate to as a viewer. As mentioned, the character designs are attractive enough that they certainly don’t detract from the experience. I am worried that, judging from the key art and what we saw of the few characters who appeared in this episode that there’s not really any true diversity in the designs of the various hot guys who’ll eventually populate the cast, but at least you can tell them apart.

On the other hand, there’s something bothering me about the fact that the protagonist doesn’t even have a real name by the end of the first episode. This is likely a relic from the game itself – if you’re they player, you’re the one who gets to pick the name – but I feel that an adaptation has to make some concessions to improve the flow of the story and to enhance the suspension of the viewer’s disbelief, and that should be one of them. It feels wrong to only refer to her as “the heroine” or “The Princess of Traümere” when she’s supposed to be a focal point of the story. I always hate to make this particular criticism of anime, especially after watching Shirobako multiple times and getting schooled in the amount of work that goes into even the most mediocre anime series, but the quality of the animation is just not that great. It bothers me that a show like How Not to Summon a Demon Lord can have such nice animation and character designs and be so bankrupt of dignity for all characters involved, and yet an innocuous series like this which is also fairly reliant on the attractiveness of its characters as a selling point can’t get the type of planning and attention it should have to look its best. There are a lot of off-model character moments and some wonky perspective shots that aren’t flattering at all. And if it’s looking like this during the first episode, then how will it fare after a few more weeks of a brutal anime production schedule?

As an overall package, this episode reads exactly like a game adaptation but not a terrible one; I can think of worse things to watch than a young woman rescuing a group of attractive men. The problem is that it’s one of many in its category, and unless you’re someone who’s into minutiae or who has actually played the game this is based on, it’s unlikely you’ll find many reasons to stick around for long.

Pros: The character designs are attractive. The heroine is and adult with a job (or, well, at least she had a job).

Cons: The animation quality isn’t great. It’s difficult to distinguish this episode from all the other ones attempting similar types of adaptations. The heroine doesn’t even have a real name.

Grade: C