You can always trust organized religions in anime. They’re never hiding any dark secrets.
Watching Scrapped Princess gave me a strong impression that it was written for a younger audience, but it’s hard to put my finger on why exactly. It’s not that the story is overly simplistic or juvenile, and it doesn’t shy away from death or bloodshed. And yet… the writing is just a little too convenient. Like how the people who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting Pacifica will let her wander off by herself whenever the plot needs her to get kidnapped or meet someone alone. They’re all small things, but they add up.
I don’t really know why I associate this sort of thing with a young target audience. Maybe it’s easier to overlook those issues when you’re a less experienced reader/viewer and haven’t seen all of those tropes before.
On paper, Scrapped Princess is a decent fantasy anime with some sci-fi elements. You’ve got a story about a young girl on the run, persecuted by society, who has to grapple with her fate. The plot twist about how humanity is being controlled by ancient watchers is nothing new, but there’s nothing wrong with it either. The characters and writing aren’t stellar, but they’re decent enough. However, I think there’s some glaring flaws that bring the series down, especially in the second half.
I first started losing interest during the episodes introducing Sim/CZ, but I think that was less of a fundamental issue and more that the writing quality was not good enough to pull it off. On one hand, it’s about Pacifica no longer being the center of attention, getting jealous and taking it out on Sim, but then it also turns out that Sim is a Peacemaker and has been manipulating Shannon and Raquel. It tries to combine these two elements, but it doesn’t really work, it just results in a pretty annoying scene where they catch Pacifica trying to stab the girl (because Zefiris told her to) and they draw the wrong conclusions. The moment you reveal that there’s malevolent forces at play, the whole jealousy angle stops being relevant.
But once that’s over with, the show is pretty decent for a while. The pacing picks up, and it actually feels like it’s moving towards a conclusion. With 10 episodes remaining it was obviously not the real end yet, but I was interested in seeing what would happen.
…And that’s when the story slams the brakes with the Pacifica amnesia arc.
Looking back on the series, the biggest problem is that Pacifica gets very little character growth. Of course she was never going to turn into a warrior princess, but she starts out very carefree and immature, so you’d expect her attitude to change over the course of the series. Surely she’d be forced to mature with all those harsh experiences and the responsibility placed on her shoulders. Instead, by the end, she’s still practically the same person, just with a few sad memories.
This becomes especially obvious during the aforementioned amnesia arc, where Pacifica is separated from her companions. There’s a lot of issues here, from the clichéd nature of it, to the fact that people keep running into her by sheer coincidence, to her sister deciding to just leave her be even though the government is actively searching for her (which, of course, inevitably leads to her capture). But what’s worse is that it’s utterly pointless. If you’re going to do an amnesia plotline, it should put the character in a situation they normally wouldn’t be in, or make them see things from a different perspective. But Pacifica’s new simple life as ‘Pamela’ is practically the same as her old life, just with a different guy taking care of her. She’s not a sheltered princess, she was raised in a village. The fact that she’s forgotten about her true identity isn’t enough to make this thing interesting or worthwhile. All it does is give Pacifica a time-out from the plot and drag things out.
Even the moment when her memories return has very little impact. It just kind of happens. Except that, for some reason, this causes her to instead forget about Fulle, which makes no sense and serves no purpose.
I also want to take a moment to mention the part where Pacifica is thrown into prison, and then her mother is also brought in at exact same time, and for some reason there’s a window between the cells for them to talk through. And there’s this tearjerking death scene during which Pacifica never realizes who she’s talking to despite her mother pretty much spelling it out. It’s pretty bad.
Not only does Pacifica barely develop as a character, she has little impact on the story either. She’s a living MacGuffin, and the plot is just something that happens around her. The only significant development I can think of is when she decides to stop thinking that it’d be better if she was dead, and that she wants to live. It’s something, sure, but it happens far too late.
All the way up to the finale, Pacifica is effectively useless, stuck doing the laundry. She never finds a way to contribute, other than by existing. Hey, remember how the peacemakers were concerned about Pacifica’s ability to nullify their mind control, afraid she might learn to harness that power consciously? Yeah, that never happened.
At the very end, Pacifica meets Seria Mauser, the person who’s been suppressing humanity for the last 5000 years, and she gets to decide the fate of the world. Maybe she could have seen this coming and pondered the question throughout the final arc, considering the options and slowly finding her answer. Instead she’s basically like “Huh? What? Well, I think maybe people should get to choose their own fate?” and then the control system is lifted and everyone lives happily ever after. Even though the finale had a few emotionally satisfying moments, it was undercut by how plainly and quickly the plot got resolved.
Then again, Pacifica isn’t the only character who didn’t get much to do. CZ is left with lingering memories of her time with the Casulls and feels conflicted about her duty. Does she turn against the Peacemakers in the end? Nope, she fights to the death like the rest of them, dying with little fanfare. Leo and Winia catch up to Pacifica in the second half, and proceed to mostly just… be there. Chris spends a bunch of time investigating the Scrapped Princess prophecy, but it never leads to any new discoveries, nothing we didn’t already know about anyway. In the end, his sole contribution is briefly helping them out at the end, and he’s not even the one who allowed them to escape from the city. Zefiris is really the only one who has a real character arc.
It’s a shame, because Scrapped Princess could’ve easily been better. The framework was there, it just wasn’t fleshed out well enough and ended up being rather forgettable. The most memorable parts were its flaws.