English Dub Review: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle “The Princess and Hostage Training Week” and “The Princess in Endopolis”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The Princess and Hostage Training Week finds the demons with quests of their own! Princess Syalis has never acted much like a proper hostage, but now the demons are getting fed up with her behavior. They start by trying to ignore her, but when that doesn’t work out, they end up assigning her a bunch of homework and finally teaching her to be scared of them.

In The Princess in Endopolis, the princess travels to the human realm with some of the demons in disguise in order to obtain a special vibrating pillow. They wind up having to stand in line all day and then the princess falls asleep on the way home, but it was still worth it, right?

Our Take:

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle dropped not just one, but two new episodes this week, and somewhat surprisingly, both of them are pretty darn good at breaking out of the box the series has established.

The ninth episode of the season, The Princess and Hostage Training Week, flips the script on its head by giving the demons their own quests in parallel with the princess’s. There’s plenty of humdrum hijinks as the demons try to ignore her exploits before assigning her a bunch of work to do and then doing it for her.

The best part comes near the end, however, when Syalis decides to honor their request for her to act more like a normal hostage and winds up revealing that she knows a lot more about the direness of her situation then might appear. Hearing her say things that sound perfect in a demon prison (but are completely not what would be normal in the show’s universe) is pretty fun.

The best episode in a while comes next, though. The Princess in Endopolis finds our main gang finally leaving the demon country behind when Syalis escapes. It’s not what one might expect at first though, because she isn’t making a break for home — rather she just wants a fancy new pillow. Getting to see the demons and Syalis getting into their disguises was the highlight of the episode for me for sure.

There was tons of fun at the festival too, though, and getting outside of the castle for once was great. Learning a little more of the history was appreciated too, even if it’s all pretty standard stuff about how demons and humans were once friends but are no longer.

Funimation may have missed out on premiering a new episode of Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle last week, but these two episodes are good enough that I’m not complaining. With only two episodes to go before the season’s over, it feels like the show is heading out on a high note!