Review: Nella the Princess Knight “The Day the Music Stopped”

The rest is silence.

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

When Badalf the wicked wizard takes away the musical instruments of Nella, her father’s band along with Olivia’s Electric Harp, the two royal girls must learn to put aside their differences to get them back.

Our Take

So apparently, this is a universe where Royalty is somewhat multi-talented? Nella and her “King-Dad” play in a band with her at the drums but go into some “Battle of the bands” kinda scenario against her sometimes rival Olivia who plays an electric harp (and upon research, it turns out those actually exist). I also wasn’t expecting Boggle-Snort to immediately appear as a recurring character either, but I guess he seems to be on good terms with Nella after the last episode. I’m curious how Badalf even captured such a large Ogre his size all because he had an “annoying snores”?

Where the episode and by extension the show keeps hitting its mark is in the animation & colorful art style, especially in scenes where the action remains coherent and envokes energetic thrills. Also, one of the better-animated scenes was where Badalf uses a “Magic Vortex” on Nella & Olivia, but the vortex, along with a “floor puzzle” scenes between Nella and Olivia is where the episode’s writing shined the most for me.

As a villain, Badalf seems grossly incompetent. He’s goofy & eccentric, but not terrifying enough to be a legit threat. At least it had some tame jokes that gave me a chuckle in places that had Badalf’s tiny goat named Terry does random things throughout the episode.

If I had any minor complaints, Its the fact that the song Nella’s band played (especially near the end) was too short to be catchy or enjoyable unless you subject yourself to repeat viewings, but song’s ending tied the episode’s lesson nicely about the concept of teamwork and compromise for the sake of a common goal.

Overall, It was a good episode that managed to bring fourth recurring characters and give each one an actual purpose that helped move the plot along, while maintaining it’s harmless kid-friendly charm.