47_.png
[Hide] (5.4MB, 2852x1598) >>31 (OP)
Murder Princess, one of the mid thousands anime produced out of the anime studio formerly known as Bee Train found its way to my eyes though a cleverly placed plug in the back of a favorite Broccoli Books manga. Its formula could mostly be summed up as an edgy then, blood splatter, chest piercing, slice & dice seinen yuri. And so appears deceptively common until it lays claim to a unique element in the way it deploys its rendition of the Freaky Friday gimmick as the princess falls off a cliff with a bounty hunter.
A little backstory for that is probably forthcoming. Princess Alita is next in line for the throne plus some complications. When a coup is initiated to overthrow her kingdom. With her father injured and dying she is sent through the never would have guessed it hidden passage in the throne room to make her escape. Following her egress through the forest surrounding the castle she runs headlong into bounty hunter Faris and they take the dive.
On the way down they are engulfed in light, marking an exchange of bodies. Thereby producing conditions in which the princess’s wish that her kingdom be saved can be fulfilled. With the given promise of Alita’s life “her everything” in exchange for saving the land from the coup, Faris (now possessing the princess), her skeletal and Frankenstein’s Monster-esque compatriots descend upon the capitol. The newly embodied Princess defeats the rebel’s dolls fueled by lost technology* ,Teoria, from when humanity had fused science and art, controlled spaces and time and throws the usurper from her throne. Their victory being followed by the unfortunate meeting with what in Alita’s absence has become of royal advisor Jodo’s granddaughter. She who had taken place as Alita’s imposter is now a corpse to be wailed over. & Altia (now Faris) assumes her identity, serving as the princess’s closest servant* for the rest of the OVA.
Of interest here, beyond the body switching gimmick, or more specifically, within it; is the nature of the obscured romance between Alita (Faris) and Mirano (Alita). Their relation, never stated or acted on explicitly, becomes more than evident throughout the run of the series. These circumstances, a literal exchange of selves, set the stage and tone for their relationship and in many ways the experience of love itself.
A frightful meeting leads through the height of a fall to the awakening of their new state. Faris first, distraught, is quickly recognised by her associates. Alita, not quite Mirano, remains unconscious when the forest monster who consumed her escort party arrives in pursuant on elimination of the tresspasses the remaining member. (Alita) newly embodied Faris engages it, and with a little coaxing is able to get the just-entering-consciousness inhabitant of her previous vessel to toss her her guardless Katana with which she swiftly slays it. An awakened into battle former princess describes the experience “its like I'm watching myself fighting inside a dream. At the time I thought …. I was fighting with such deep intense emotion.”
The subsequent events begin in the Cyndia Area 672, the 4th month of Jade. A dating made relevant in establishing a setting of medieval fantasy aesthetic. One which is, perhaps, surprisingly adept at displaying this subject, love. Being enchanted by a peculiar untimeliness associated with the transitions of the period from which it draws, a period of a very particular loss, and so poised for its re-birth. The death of dominance by the irrational, artistic, aesthetic mode of cultural development, the death of the mythic sensibility and its subsequent subsumption by the technologic, the scientific. The moment when the theo is forever separated from the logical. & so it is that fantasy tales most often harken back to this last time when the attitudes being summoned forth were predominantly culturally believable. & it is for this reason that in his essay “the Sorcerer's Apprentice” Bataille laments the loss of this sense, ushering forth love as the only place it has been able to remain alive in current times.
“The meaning of love is determined in legends that illustrate the destiny of lovers in everyone's mind.”⁰