English Dub Season Review: Nina the Starry Bride Season One

Overview:

An orphaned girl is suddenly found by the second prince of the Fortuna Kingdom, who makes her a royal princess, replacing the real royal princess who had died in a carriage accident. Nina is scared by her new circumstances but takes joy in the fact that finally, someone needs her.

Our Take:

This was an anime I didn’t think I would like as much as I did. I love romance and I won’t shy away from a good shojo but this show wasn’t on my list at all. If you’ve ever seen The Prince and the Pauper this is more or less the same concept. Only in this instance the “prince” died, and the “pauper” takes their place for good. This puts Nina in a unique circumstance, I think a lot of us would sign up for going from poor to rich but that comes with it’s own challenges. For example, she’s now going to have to marry someone she doesn’t know and deal with the first prince, Azure.

Obviously, Azure and Nina are the original love interests but when Nina decides to go to the rival nation of Galgada to marry their prince, we enter love triangle territory. At first I was annoyed by this, I’m not the biggest love triangle fan but when it’s done right it can be enjoyable. What makes or breaks a love triangle is if you can see yourself rooting for anyone involved in it. At first I hated Prince Sett but he began to grow on me.

One of the reasons I started to enjoy him was Austin Tindle did a great job voicing the character. I can’t think of a character he’s voiced that I haven’t loved. I would argue the three main voice actors all did great. Jill Harris who voices Nina brings the sassiness of Nina out perfectly and I think this only Ben Stegmair’s second leading role as Azure but I thought he did fantastic as well. The only problem with his performance is that Azure is out of the story for quite a bit in the latter half of the season.

Which leads me to my only problem with this show, and that’s the ending. It’s not as bad as others but I hate cliffhanger endings and unlike some other shows we don’t have a guaranteed second season yet. I suppose one silver lining is if you love this story and want to continue it the manga is licensed in English. That’s the main thing I hate about anime and this is just another offender in that long list. But if you’re a romance or shojo fan you won’t regret watching this show because it was a lot of fun.