Fena is a shocking existence – a 2021 original featuring two of the things that much older memes loved best, pirates and ninjas! It’s a show that promises some swashbuckling and/or sneaky adventures, in that nostalgic fantasy band where the journey matters and the history is tenuous at best. It is a material that, from its pitch, is practically begging to be made cheesy fun, but without any sort of ceiling preventing it from rising above that.
Heck with long intros, let’s watch it!
We begin with Fena being separated from her family and precious childhood friend in a shipwreck. Ten years later, she evidently made it to some island, and is now all ready to be sold into prostitution for the very first time. That’s okay, though, as she has zany cartoon plans to escape
When that quite naturally doesn’t exactly work out as planned, rescue comes in the form of comic relief old guys who were evidently retainers of Fena’s late father. And when they can’t hack it, there’s also evidently a squad of ninjas on-site to get business done. The ninja squad includes that old childhood friend who Fena is strongly implied to have something of a crush on, Yukimaru. He saves her from some really nasty brigand rapist types when they catch her fleeing and then comes face to face with Fena for the first time in years as she begins to recognize him through his mask and… he clunks her on the head and knocks her out because she’s being annoyingly loud. This will be the first of many clunks, so get used to it. They won’t all be plot relevant.
Fena comes to en route by cruddy rowboat (with the comic relief old guys) to Goblin Island, the feudal Japanese styled lair of the ninjas which emerges suddenly from the mist. There she meets the ninja clan and learns their story, that they’re descendants of survivors of some kind of ninja shipwreck who were saved by one of Fena’s ancestors and have thus served her noble house ever since. They have an issue, though, in that Fena’s late dad left behind a mysterious crystal brick that supposedly only Fena has the key to understanding the meaning of. Fena knows nothing about this, meets some ninja comic relief, enjoys the local culture, and then decides to follow the only clue she has, that her father wanted her to go to a place called Eden. Thus, if they want answers, they’re going to have to pick up dad’s journey where it left off, heading out to the ambiguously Age of Sail world in… um… what appears to be a WWII-era submarine. Built and crewed by ninjas.
Now, I know what a few of you may be thinking. Didn’t this take place in… a world much like our own? With even real historical nations and locations being mentioned and set in something at least resembling the actual 1700s? Yes, dear reader, yes it did. And does. But there is a ninja pirate submarine. And true, there were no industrial-tech submarines in the 1700s, but if you think that’s the only breach of reality even in just the first two episodes, you’re dead wrong as, well, we also have ninjas performing at least some of the typical physics-defying feats often attributed to ninjas, rather than just being sneaky gits. So you know going in that this is more of a historical-adjacent fantasy than anything else. What’s wrong with a submarine? Nothing.
I’m letting myself wax long on this bit because Fena came out in 2021 as an original property, and regardless of the end result I do think the choices being made right from the start show some of what we miss out on when original properties and ones that don’t conform to tight “follow the leader” subgenres are scarce. It’s madness; something weird and different and seemingly out of place… a lot like the very first time older Western fans may remember watching anime and encountering the products of a culture foreign to their own, offering new worlds of strangeness for those willing to venture into them.
I’m not saying that the premise and facts of production somehow automatically make Fena a good show. In fact, they say pretty much nothing for the ultimate quality. But at least there’s a will present to go beyond the beaten path, even if just a little. And that at least should make for an interesting review if nothing else.
In any case, Fena and the Pirates make their way to a “free city” that’s pretty much Tortuga from the Pirates franchise. There, they’re attacked by a sleazeball from episode 1 (the one who “bought” Fena) and his team of colorful eccentric pirates. Said individuals are themselves working for (as is revealed to the audience) a blond and seemingly chivalrous pretty boy villain who is some kind of British authority and who knows things about Fena and who seems to pretty much fill the role of Norrington, at least per the first movie of that other series.
Before getting into a fight (which sees Yukimaru injured protecting Fena, much to her dismay), Fena and friends also got a lead on the stone, sending them to a workshop in Dresden (presumably their submarine can go up the Elbe). The workshop confirms that they made the stone and even can pull the records of who ordered it and when, revealing that it was created at the behest of Joan of Arc… five years after she was supposed to have been executed. This is evidently related to why the British are after Fena.
A small aside, but Joan of Arc is actually a historical figure we have fairly good contemporary evidence of the appearance of: 5’2”, black-haired, swarthy, and pretty buff, but also feminine enough that some of her companions, at her trial, had to insist quite a bit that they never had impure thoughts despite her looks. However, later art often depicts her as willowy, pale, and blonde… because that was how art of “holy virgin” characters was commissioned, not because it reflected reality. Just… file this away for when you might get a smile out of it.
In any case, this leads our ninjas to Orleans, where they find a secret cave in the mountain containing the true tomb of Joan of Arc and an improbable Indiana Jones set piece to provide their next clue. Unfortunately, the pirates manage to catch up and follow them in, kidnapping Fena.
They bring Fena to the British fellow, Abel, who proceeds to treat her like a princess and toss his hired pirates to the curb, which doesn’t sit well with the lady captain of the bunch. The truth seems to be that Abel was close to Fena’s late mother, Helena, and that he hopes that journeying to Eden with Fena specifically will somehow let him meet Helena again.
He also tells Fena that the Ninjas are bad news which… might kind of be true? On their side we learn as only pretty boy Shitan knew that they had a different real mission – to return as soon as they had a map or coordinates to a supposed treasure hoard that would include the Kusanagi sword, one of Japan’s great treasures and their clan’s reason for being. What’s more, the ninja village head believes that Fena is a witch, capable of supernaturally stealing hearts, and even had standing orders to have pretty boy kill her if things went too off the rails. He’s reported back by carrier pigeon, so if they don’t go home the ninja champion will be hunting them down with murderous intent.
Yukimaru doesn’t care. He takes the lifeboat and goes after Fena. Soon enough, it seems this doesn’t sit well with all her other ninja friends, and by force of numbers they even kinda bully Shitan into going along with the rescue plan.
This turns out to be well enough, as the pirates decide to outright attack the British and get obliterated by a weapon that gives Fena some crazy PTSD clarity, remembering or transposing the British marines as the folks who attacked her dad’s voyage and killed everybody but her and Yukimaru. As she’s freaking out, Yukimaru appears to save her, and when Abel shoots a few holes in Yukimaru, the rest of the gang shows up to save him, getting away with Fena and the gravely injured Yukimaru.
They take Yukimaru to a port with a real doctor as he’s in dire straits, and team Fena spends his recovery and convalescence mostly sorting themselves out – Shitan coming to terms with Fena, and as for Fena and Yukimaru…
Let’s just say there are more ships than sail on the sea., even if this one doesn’t quite leave port. Eventually, they also figure out that a song Fena was taught as a child holds the clue to decipher the directions and find Eden, so the course is set for the endgame
While this is going on, for Abel’s side, we get an extended flashback that gives us frankly quite a lot of new information. Abel, it seems, is a sort of disinherited prince, who knew Helena way back when they were both kids, and became very close with her… until she was suddenly taken away by the (much older) man we know as Fena’s father. That’s not quite right, though, as the rumors around the palace are that she eloped while carrying the King’s child, meaning her death upon her recaputre. This explains why Abel refers to Fena as “Princess”, but the web gets more complicated when we have a last talk between Abel and Helena before the latter is burned at the stake. She basically indicates that everything she’s done is in accordance with some prophecy or other mystical malarkey (one line: “The father had to be a king or La Pucelle wouldn’t be born”. And facing her death, the classic “My role is over”). She also drops that she only ever loved Abel, and that she’ll be going on to Eden and if he can find a calling by finding her child then he might be able to reach it and reach her there.
He seems to have correctly interpreted the upside-down and backwards clues to Eden’s location through no mechanism given, so we can expect to run into him there.
Sure enough, when Fena reaches the appointed location, a massive island erupts from the depths of the sea, somehow totally dry to welcome her. The ninjas make for shore with the princess, Yukimaru and Fena being awkward on the way down. They encounter a massive cyclopean stone city with towers of no discernible human purpose, but down in the depths of imitation R’lyeh they discover a massive treasure hoard with riches from all of time and space. They even have the Ark of the Covenant, though seemingly as more of a background piece.
But we’ll leave that for the esteemed Dr. Jones. Fena gets the sense that this lair of infinite riches isn’t “the place” and leads Yukimaru deeper in, discovering a chamber with a fantastically obtuse impossible puzzle that she, of course, solves instantly – dancing across the tile floor by her whim in the magic pattern that will open up the next area.
This is, in my mind, one of the flaws with the show. Fena jumps from being fairly ordinary and relatable to being a little… too magic. One scene, we’ll have her and Yukimaru putting together the song. We’re not told how Fena learned it as a kid, but she doesn’t remember the lyrics, and Yukimaru does, meaning that they have to put their heads together to construct and decipher the whole thing. But other times she’ll just… have a feeling and of course it will work out, whether it’s picking the right tunnel like some kind of magic compass or dancing this extremely precise dance that doesn’t have an origin or lore to it the way they gave the earlier song one.
I’m going to contrast this with the Indiana Jones series, since the show went and dropped a little visual reference. In both cases we have globe trotting treasure hunters solving obtuse puzzles of mystical lore, but when Henry Jones Jr. knows something, they typically explain how he knows it. He works through it live despite being a character with an established deep academic base of knowing stuff. Even the strangest moments are at least presaged earlier in the films when it comes to solving a riddle or knowing what a magic artifact does.
That process, showing us the hero struggle to reach their conclusion, is really interesting. It lets us follow along, and it makes the forward progress feel earned. Fena at first had repressed memories of things her dad (fake) taught her during her childhood, or so we were supposed to believe, but ever more the show just relies on some genetic memory or spirit guidance. It shifts subtly, but surely, from a Jones-like puzzle-solving adventure theme to a “guided by prophecy” theme that’s not nearly as compelling because… yeah, of course there’s an unseen force that’s guiding these characters inevitably towards the ending with no real free will to veer off from it. That’s called the script.
In any case, Fena’s dancing causes stairs to rise up to a mystical portal that she and Yukimaru are able to go up and enter, finding a mysterious place strewn with the petrified wreckage of Noah’s Ark.
Meanwhile, Abel and his British forces (including his little right-hand man, who seems to know about all this mystical stuff beyond even what Abel does) have landed and are hot on our ninja heels. They reach the treasure hoard and engage the ninjas in battle, but Abel gets by them and unerringly follows Fena and Yukimaru, changing the weather in their weird place to a narratively appropriate ominous dark storm.
Abel fights Yukimaru, mostly because Abel is totally glitching out and seeing things, like mistaking Fena for her mother Helena and Yukimaru for… just about everyone who has ever gotten in his way. They both take seemingly mortal wounds, with Abel down an arm and Yukimaru run through. Fena steps in to shield Yukimaru, but before that standoff can really resolve, Helena’s spirit emerges from the blue-pink flames of Tzeentch to welcome Abel and take his soul to the world where they can be together forever. This is really drawn out, but to be fair a lot of weight was put on Abel’s obsession with Helena, so for the exit of the closest thing we had to a main antagonist, I’ll take it.
As she leaves her daughter with no more antagonist and a couple encouraging words, another figure, briefly taking the form of Fena’s father (figure. Not the king who we never saw) and then the form of the British kid who knew too much, appears and introduces itself as the Observer, the creator of Fena’s story.
I guess if you’re going to have the main character do things because the script demands it, you might as well put the author in your show.
Our last episode, more or less out of nowhere, becomes a humanity on trial plot as the Observer in all its forms reveals that Fena’s purpose, for which the Observer guided her here, is to choose whether the world should be annihilated and remade, or whether it should carry on as it is. A role that her ancestors, such as Joan of Arc, have filled before. She’s shown lots of things to try to make her push the button (or so it seems; Observer claims to not really have a stake) and is informed that whatever she chooses she’ll have total amnesia, since her experiences leading unto this choice are too much for a human heart to handle or some crud like that. With seemingly unlimited power, Fena makes some kind of choice we’re not totally let in on but that is clearly in the continuance bracket.
She appears in glowing form to Yukimaru and tries to bid him a sad goodbye, but he clings on. They both appear on a tiny little island, Fena now having black hair for reason not announced, with Fena amnesiac but fairly open to Yukimaru… and the rest of the crew, who escaped Eden with the Kusanagi Sword they were meant to get and loads of other loot.
We then get a (deserved) long tail where we revisit everywhere and everyone to try to restore Fena’s memories. We even see that some of the pirates didn’t explode. You figure that out. It doesn’t really work, but bonds can be built up once more, so when Yukimaru finally gives Fena a loving confession (as she did to him before being factory reset), she gets the last thwack in given how long she’s been waiting to hear him say those words. All’s happy that ends happy.
And that’s Fena: Pirate Princess. It really goes off the rails in the last two episodes, but how is the overall quality?
Honestly, it is more charming than anything, the whole way through. The mystical railroad of the script is the biggest issue with the show, but it spends so much time working with all the various characters that you’re not likely to really mind until the last bit. I didn’t spend review time on them, but all the ninjas get at least enough screen time to feel like they really are part of this quirky crew, rather than being mauve shirt extras. Are a good number of them pretty one dimensional? Sure, but I’ve said before in reviews and will say again: flat characters have their place. That place is emphatically not in the lead, but Yukimaru, Fena, and Abel get… not god-tier work, but enough.
Fena promises a globe-trotting adventure with ninjas and pirates. It delivers a globe-trotting adventure with ninjas and pirates. One with good animation, solid writing less a few macro-scale blemishes, and maybe a bit too much ambition to throw in the kitchen sink.
The show is kind of a mess, I must admit, but it is at least a passionate mess that dreams big, and I’d much rather see that passion on the screen than a paint-by-numbers exercise calculated to do well enough to make its money back while employing all the originality of Chat GPT. Despite seeming like an internet artifact with its “ninjas versus pirates” theme and gleeful will to add just whatever came to mind at the moment, like advanced tech or Da Vinci Code style mumbo jumbo about Joan of Arc, Fena is something of a breath of fresh air.
I don’t think this show is really incredible or all that memorable. Its best scenes, from a standpoint of emotional drama, go to Abel, and there sometimes cross over into excessive melodrama. Its best action is… competent. The blowing up of the pirate ship by super death cannon was visually impressive and deployed at the right time with the right timing, and most of the hand-to-hand fighting and gunplay, while quick, is quite functional. The romance isn’t much to write home about but I at least felt like these characters had chemistry, and that despite Yukimaru being mostly a taciturn and laconic grump. Fena is a fairly enjoyable little motormouth when she’s not being puppeteered by the author and the ninjas and pirates are both colorful casts of singular notes that together play a decent tune. The ancillary British weren’t really memorable or appealing, but they (like Abel) are the group in this show that can never really smile or enjoy anything so they were bound to be short on personality.
In the end, I’m going to give this one a B+. Even if it’s not going to stick with me, and even though I know that anything that Fena does something else can probably do better, I think it’s pretty easy to recommend and that it would be hard to really demand more out of the full package. A better finish, maybe, that feels more germane to the globe-trotting treasure-hunting adventure, perhaps? But I’m not going to get too mad at the one we got. The journey is better than the destination, but it’s still worth the ride.