A less than chivalrous type takes over a kingdom at his majesties request and turns it into a place where women are the subject to the whims of every man under his command.
What They Say
Elfina lived a life of luxury as a member of the royal family. She was waited on hand and foot and had a team of servants. That was until her country was invaded! Now Elfina must comply with the sexual demands of her new masters and it doesn’t matter how humiliating or intimate the favors!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this show is fairly standard hentai material as we get the original Japanese language track and English language dub in stereo encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix for the series, which matches well against the English language track, is good for what it is which is mostly dialogue driven and very little in the way of real action effects. The music and effects track sounds good in general and problem free but the bulk of the dialogue is very much a center channel based show. The dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released to video in 2003, the transfer for the three part OVA series looks quite good overall. The show has some good animation to it and makes good use of the current style of digital animation to provide a show that doesn’t have any noticeable repetition scenes or anything really poor looking. Colors are nice and solid throughout with no noticeable blocking even during the dark sky sequences. There’s a bit of cross coloration mixed into the episodes but it wasn’t all that noticeable or distracting. The part that was noticeable throughout was some of the aliasing during the panning sequences which introduced a lot of line break-up in character designs. Overall, it’s a decent looking transfer without any serious problems but a few nitpicky things depending on your sensitivity level to them.
Packaging:
Going with a tried and true style image, the lead character is shown in her blonde glory with a white outfit but done up in a bondage style pose with vines that have purple flowers wrapping around her and covering her in just the right areas across an exposed bosom. The character design is decent and the heavy emphasis on the fantasy style nature of it will surely have some draw as will the blonde nature itself. The back cover lets you know that the all-important maid-factor will be fed here with some nice bondage artwork of one of those as well as a few clips from the show and more with the entire rose bondage theme. The shows summary is very minimal, not that there’s much plot and the technical information is all easily found and accurate. The included insert is a minimal pink piece with a bit of character artwork next to the chapter stops for each episode while the reverse side is just boxart for other titles.
Menu:
The menu uses a zoomed in version of the really nice piece of artwork from the back cover with the one woman partially undressed and covered in roses. It’s a ver detailed piece of artwork and the colors are just great with it. It’s set with a brief loop of the end song theme to the series and features no transitional animations. The menu navigation is easy to use and submenus load quickly. The disc correctly read our players language presets as well which was a good plus.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Servant Princess, a three episode OVA series that can’t seem to decide whether to call the lead character Elufina or Erufina, is one of the latest fantasy setting bondage and domination shows to make their way over. The series, which has a complete tale and what I guess you’d call something of an actual ending to it, doesn’t have much of a real plot to it but rather a string of situations tied together in an order that makes sense and then shifts gears to let the usual male fantasies run wild.
The setup for the plot is fairly amusing. On the day that Erufina is supposed to marry her prince, the handsome Kwan, a neighboring kingdom has been given the authority to take over Kwan’s kingdom and do as he sees fit due to things that Prince Kwan was up to. Led by Prince Viceard, generally known as Vice, they quickly take over the kingdom before anyone can offer any real resistance. Vice sets the stage for what he wants and ships all the men off to his own kingdom to be kept prisoner while Prince Kwan, who has fallen into a coma, is tossed into the dungeon of his own castle.
With free will to do whatever he wants, he creates his “kingdom of bitches” with all the women who remain. He quickly manages to get Erufina under his control and that sets the stage for everyone else to follow suit or else they’ll all be killed pretty quickly. Vice’s new laws are amusingly bizarre, such as the women not being able to go to the bathroom but rather simply stopping whenever they have the need and defecating right there. The women obviously have to obey the orders of any male as well so it’s not long before it’s just orgies all over the place. But that fades into the background very quickly as the show focuses on the core characters of Vice, Erufina, Kwan and Erufina’s maid Ann.
Gotta have the maid.
Vice uses Ann for his own desires as well as that of getting Erufina to open up to him in various ways, such as toys, girl on girl and then having Ann have sex with Kwan while he’s deep in his coma. Erufina ends up becoming enraptured by all of this as she’s subjected to so many things and as she continues to urinate in the streets, halls and wherever she stands. Erufina’s standing in the kingdom allows for much of this to go on since she gives in to this. With Vice manipulating everything, it goes into some slightly weird directions before the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in with her and others who come to the kingdom to see how Vice is doing.
The character designs for the show are basically ok but nothing terribly special. Erufina herself, called the white jewel of the kingdom, is well done but is like many others we’ve seen before that there’s little really to her. Those who come to visit in the third episode are a bit better, since it’s something new and fresh by that point, but overall there’s nothing really exciting or outstanding with these characters. The animation for the show is consistent and of a decent level, but again it’s nothing really outstanding. It avoids some of the nastier moments of the scatological world and focuses more on the urination aspect of it but it does it so often that you just start to roll your eyes, unless you’re into it that is.
In Summary:
Servant Princess fits into the fantasy realm fairly well but mostly just for decor and little else. The show is a heavy domination type with some mild bondage to it as well as a fair helping of the good old scatological material. The plot and material is pretty basic and without much life to it but there are some good sex scenes to it once you get past some of the nastier elements, but again that depends on your own tastes. Servant Princess isn’t one of the best but it isn’t one of the worst, it just has to deal with being mediocre.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: September 14th, 2004
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
