English Dub Review: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle “The Princess’ Unwavering Choice”

 

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Syalis gets a little too out of control one night and spills her drink on her covers. She goes on a search for a way to do the laundry and winds up foiling the demons plans to aid the hero who’s been trying to reach her.

Later on, she decides she’s in need of a new pair of underpants that’s warmer, and tries to create the garment while not mentioning what it is she’s making. Finally, she tries to help the Demon King get some sleep and ends up torturing him in the process.

Our Take:

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle lapses back into the usual humdrum this week. Last week’s episode showed hints of willingness to break out of the box, but The Princess’ Unwavering Choice shows just how unwavering the show is about sticking with its schtick.

The opening segment is literally a rehash of what the series has done before. The Demon King and his cronies talk about their evil machinations and how impossible it would be for anyone to mess it up in this one specific way… and of course, Princess Syalis just happens to be doing that exact thing and undos all their hard work.

It’s an awfully boring plot made even worse because if Syalis hadn’t wrecked it, we might’ve seen more of the hero coming to rescue her, which at this point is definitely one of the sole interesting points left in the series.

From there, the episode moves on to something a bit more unique. Syalis flashes back to a time when she was so proud of her woolen undies (with a bear on them and everything!) that she went around showing them to everyone in the castle. She’s been traumatized from the scolding she received, and so when she sets out to make a new pair, she decides not to speak the words out loud. Instead, she does things like drawing pictures of them and miming actions to try and let the demons around know what she’s up to. They, of course, interpret her actions to be far scarier than they are, which is funny the first time and then loses its power.

The final sequence of this week’s episode might be the most the Princess has interacted with the Demon King so far. When he can’t fall asleep, Syalis tries to send him to dreamland herself, but all her remedies for insomnia feel more like torture to him. It’s still a re-purposing of one of the handful of jokes the show has, but it is nice for the two of them to be featured in the same segment like this. What’s more Syalis actually makes some progress in her mental captivity and contemplates letting him die of sleeplessness so she can escape. Maybe next time the king is trying to go to sleep, he should just turn on this show?