We once again visit Generic JRPG Land, the world that always seems to exist, particularly for parodical or comedic subversion, where a human hero must do battle with the Demon King to save the world or some nonsense like that. Except this time we’re not following the hero this time. Instead, we’re going to spend out time with the kidnapped princess who would normally exist just to motivate said hero.
She’s tired, bored… and about as
clever, industrious, and self-centered as Wile E. Coyote.
Because that’s the best way that Sleepy
Princess in the Demon Castle was pitched to me, and I feel, having
seen it, that it is the best comparison: the show shares oddly much
in common with a road runner cartoon in terms of its brand of comedy,
in that we center on a character who aims to complete a fairly simple
goal via complicated mechanisms.
In her case, she just wants a good
night’s sleep, troubled by the fact that her pillow and sheets are of
a poor quality. So, since Syalis has nothing but time on her hands,
why not make better herself?
Unlike those cartoons, though, we’re
fully on the side of the trouble-maker, meaning that Princess Syalis
is allowed to get away with and intensify her mayhem, rather than
getting seriously set back. At first, even breaching her cell is an
issue that needs to be overcome (The solution: Teddy Demons – cute
teddy bears with little bat wing-a-dings – enjoy being brushed
enough to give her the keys in exchange), but soon enough she
acquires her weapon of choice (A pair of giant scissors, received
from the Scissors Sorcerer in exchange for her crown to use as a
fastener) and begins to expand her operation.
Syalis plucks a quilled demon for
sewing needles, collects teddy fluff as stuffing, and slices and
dices ghost shrouds (animate spooky sheets) for her basic cloth.
Even after she has her pillow and sheets, though, Syalis isn’t going
to stop running amok. If anything, her mischief only increases as
she gets a taste for it, and every little thing seems inclined to
disturb her sleep or otherwise inspire her to believe that she can
sleep better with some tool or get rest in a new and creative way
(like finding a boring book to read before bed and ending up with a
sentient grimoire of overwhelmingly powerful magic).
This is all much to the chagrin of
Syalis’s captors, including the Demon King Twilight (a fairly
harmless chuuni game master sort, most of the time), the Demon Cleric
(who has the unfortunate task of resurrecting Syalis when her
misadventures lead to her untimely death… and the much bigger issue
of resurrecting all the demons she cuts down in her quest for
materials), and a host of other incidental characters who are all
intermittently inconvenienced and charmed by Syalis’ antics.
That is, pretty much, the whole show:
Syalis gets an idea in her head about how to sleep better, and then
goes about making that idea a reality despite any inconvenience it
might cause. Any “plot” is fairly sparse (though not totally
absent) as the show is more focused on comedy, which is more skewed
towards slapstick than anything else.
That said, the show has an extremely
good knowledge of how to make that kind of character engaging. In
general, it’s not the hits themselves that makes slapstick funny,
it’s the reason (or lack thereof) that slapstick occurs that makes it
funny. Cause and effect, while not necessarily anything that would
follow logically in the human world, is extremely important to the
humor. In that sense, the fact that Syalis’s quest is one that seems
like it shouldn’t be able to cover a dozen episodes (either being
over very quickly or impossible) is what makes it a premise that’s
able to be extended farther and farther, because there’s some humor
already on the meta level with the degree to which the situation is
stretched to accommodate Syalis’s overriding mania.
Speaking of which, another point that
the show gets right… all of these characters are insane. Most of
the time characters like Twilight, Demon Cleric, and other
high-ranked demons act as the straight man in the comedy, but even
they can have their moments where they have to get called out by
someone else. No single character has the burden of being 100%
serious 100% of the time.
Syalis, though pretty much never gets
the “straight man” role. She is equal parts monomaniacal
dedication, selfish myopia, staggering incomprehension, and of course
just sleep. When she’s not terrorizing demons intentionally, she’s
either doing it because she does not have an understanding that her
actions have an impact on other people, or because she’s causing
massive misunderstandings thanks to her own inability to empathize
and comprehend what others may be thinking. She’s not malicious, not
precisely, but she is absolutely preoccupied with her own warped view
of reality and doesn’t ever break out of that bubble.
Maybe it’s because they’re demons, and
thus also a bit odd, but Syalis’s antics end up endearing her to most
of the residents of the Demon Castle. Over the course of the show,
their stake changes from attempting to prevent Syalis acting out to,
in a mix of grim acceptance and surprising interest, wanting to help
her with whatever her latest project is, if only to mitigate the
damage she’ll do if she goes about it her own way. In turn, Syalis
largely stops thinking of herself as a captive, and comes to regard
the Demon Castle as her home (she even calls it as much).
Along the way, and largely in the
background, we have the “serious” plot where the hero, Dawner,
goes on a perilous multi-dungeon quest to rescue the princess
(unaware that she’s probably more threatening than any of the demons,
and also despises him), hampered by his amazingly poor since of
direction. Twilight intends to make his dungeons hard, but fair,
preparing for the ultimate grand conflict (hence why I called him a
‘game master’ – he’s interested in balance more than killing the
Hero). A couple of the show’s rare quiet moments suggest that the
entire conflict between humans and demons is the real problem,
especially given how Syalis ends up seeing the demons of the castle
as ‘good people’, but they’re very brief and not really focused on.
There really isn’t, therefore, much of
a point to going through the show episode by episode: there is more
story here than in a Roadrunner cartoon, but not by a whole lot. For
the most part I’d just be listing how each new reoccurring demon
character is introduced and what their gimmick is. Aside from
Twilight, The Demon Cleric (long-suffering), and Great Red Siberian
(Very loyal to Twilight and generally a stick in the mud), some of
the most ‘important’ are Harpy (Who believes herself to be Syalis’s
friend, and Syalis sees as a feather comforter), Hades (the oblivious
rival of Twilight, who tries to kidnap Syalis from him and gets taken
for the clothes off his back before she makes her way back to
Twilight’s demon castle), Hypnos (the demon of Sleep, who Syalis
absolutely should not have been introduced to), and Cubey the
Succubus (Bussy if you use the manga localization; who Syalis uses as
a body double when Cubey wants to learn from Syalis how to be
popular).
They do try to give us a little
something of a climax to the show as, in the last episode, Syalis
returns home to the human castle… to get her favorite woolen
underwear, with a few of the demons as escort. Naturally Syalis
decides to take a nap at the worst moment, getting Cubey, thanks to
some quick work on the demons’ side, mistaken for Syalis by her
(naturally or artificially) ditzy mother, meaning that Syalis and the
demons have to extract her. For once in her life Syalis sees it as
important for her to take responsibility for her actions, which ends
up with her dressing up in the absolute worst costume version of
Twilight (which still fools almost everyone) and “kidnapping”
“herself” again from a very public place, allowing everyone to
escape back to the Demon Castle and the antics to, presumably,
continue.
This was one where I was familiar with
the manga before I knew there was an anime adaptation coming. I went
into that version wondering how they could sustain such a seemingly
narrow premise, and was pleasantly surprised. For the anime, I went
in wondering how they could translate something so relatively
plotless to 30 minute episodes. Once again, I was pleasantly
surprised, and having movement to this kind of comedy really does add
an extra layer to the humor.
Because of that, I rate Sleepy Princess
in the Demon Castle at a B+. It’s not going to be for everyone,
strictly speaking, and it doesn’t set its ambitions very high. But
what it does, it does well, having a little extra layer of competence
on top. If you’re interested in antics-based comedy, I really would
recommend it.