At the end of 2024, having missed the submission date for regular Anime Secret Santa, I decided to take part in AniList’s Secret Santa event (my AniList profile is here, by the way). The show I ended up getting in my pick was Majestic Prince – a show that had ended up on my watchlist anyway due to it showing up early in Super Robot Wars 30. So, after finishing my rewatch of season 3 of Thunderbolt Fantasy for the Anime Explorations Podcast, I moved on to this.

Thunderbolt Fantasy falls into a similar line of mecha dramedy series as Martian Successor Nadesico. It puts a group of young teenage pilots flying semi-Real-Robot mecha into a life-or-death conflict, but with the acknowledgment that these characters – being teenagers – are kinda dumb. They joke around, they have outside interests beyond piloting, they have their personal hangups – they have weird tastes in food because their taste buds are ultimately still developing. They’re impulsive and neurotic but also can be absolute goof-a-doofs.Stil

In the case of Majestic Prince, the alien threat is an alien threat, as opposed to being (spoilers for Nadesico) a lost human colony where the people are unhealthily obsessed with a ’70s super robot anime to enough to the degree that they’ve built their entire society around it. These aliens, the Wulgaru, are human-like, and in a way similar to the Zentradi from Macross have built their entire culture around battle and conquest – in this case hunting down races that could potentially have superior genes, intending to wipe out those races and harvest their genes to enrich themselves. The Wulgaru also have a tremendously toxic and selfish worldview – opposing the fundamental idea of mutual collaboration.

As you’d expect from a mid-2010s anime series, we’re at a point where CG animators have found their feet when doing CG mecha battles – the animation is fluid and the fight scenes are exciting. The character designs themselves are a little odd though. Anime characters in general – once you start getting into the late 90s and onwards have some weirdness with a lack of noses, and this series is no exception. However, the series frequently puts those characters in camera angles which calls attention to the lack of noses – making the front of their faces feel weirdly flat. I don’t know if this is just a character design issue or a directorial and storyboarding issue.

The characters themselves are very well written and do make the series feel like a successor to Nadesico. Their quirks are funny, and make the teens feel like teens, with the adult supporting cast also feeling the right blend of exasperated and nurturing. This is also helped by the kids not having romances with adults.

Where I think the show stumbles is like Nadesico, the story feels unfinished in some major respects. The Wulgaru are stopped, and the Wulgaru ace who serves as the archnemesis of our main protagonist – Izumu – is defeated. However, there’s a whole mess of named Wulgaru characters who are just still out there and have every interest in pursuing their war against Earth in the future, but they’re beaten for now, so they’re just going to call it good. I know there’s a sequel film to this, much as there is to Nadesico, but it also doesn’t appear to tie into the antagonists from this season who were left in the lurch by the conclusion of this story, instead focusing on a new antagonist related to some of the Wulgaru who were left behind at the show’s finale.

I did enjoy the show, and I do definitely recommend it, especially if you’re a fellow oldtaku who has been left wanting more Nadesico over the pats few decades. This should scratch that itch for you.

Majestic Prince is currently available for streaming on Hidive and has received a physical release that can be purchased through Crunchyroll, Amazon, or Books-A-Million. Buying anything through those links supports the site.

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