Osamu Tezuka’s original Princess Knight manga remains a seminal work, establishing several tropes that continue to influence shojo manga and anime over 70 years later. Now, a new film is updating the story for a new generation, choosing to go down a post-apocalyptic path full of demons, evil religious organizations that vilify immigrants and the poor, fantastical parallel worlds, and a final act so bonkers the movie briefly turns into Looney Tunes.
Yuki Igarashi’s The Ribbon Hero, done by studio OUTLINE, follows Sapphire, a princess whose kingdom, Silverland, was destroyed by an otherworldly calamity known as “Nergal.” Having lost her family and her people, Sapphire becomes a refugee in the nearby kingdom of Goldland, finding a community there. Just as Sapphire starts regaining hope, the Nergal appears once again, threatening to destroy everything and everyone she’s fought to gain.
It’s a simple story, one that unfortunately is stretched out way too thin and for way too long. In an attempt to reinvent the characters for a new audience, The Ribbon Hero ends up taking too long to explain its premise and what it’s doing with the source material, which ends up feeling convoluted. We only really learn about the main villain in the final half an hour, and their purpose is only really explained in the last 20 minutes of the film. Likewise, the dialogue is very exposition-heavy, and the story and characters are full of anime stereotypes and feel quite flat. Most of the character development happens off-screen. And then there’s the animation. The 3D CG used for the villainous Nergal leaves a lot to be desired, and is as generic a CG monster as they come.
That being said, there’s a lot to like about The Ribbon Hero. Just like Osamu Tezuka looked to a musical theater group for inspiration, so does The Ribbon Hero look at theater for ideas. The film is split into acts, and includes curtain rises and falls, with small intervals and a puppet cutout show interval. This helps give the film a unique look that makes up for some of the unoriginality of the story and characters. Even the flashbacks are done in black-and-white, emulating the art style of Tezuka’s original manga, a loving tribute to the source material.
Though the movie doesn’t spend too long engaging with the idea, the film does present some interesting subjects, including the mistreatment of immigrants and those forgotten by society. There’s also a subplot involving an end-times religious organization trying to sacrifice the refugees and immigrants, a rather poignant bit of story that makes The Ribbon Hero more than just empty action — even if the film doesn’t quite know where to take this thought.
However many issues The Ribbon Hero has, it’s hard to dwell on them too much once we get to the final act of the film. This is where creativity is unleashed in full and the movie becomes too charming and fun to be mad at. There is a huge fight in a sort of fantastic dreamland that suddenly turns cartoony in a way the rest of the film wasn’t. Add in some classical music and even a villain who looks like a rabbit and you get an anime film that transforms into Looney Tunes for its big climax, complete with rubber-hose animation. It’s hilarious, it’s fun, it’s the best thing the movie does, except for a brief moment where the film suddenly turns into live-action and breaks the fourth wall in a manner straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion, even showing a prop of the original Osamu Tezuka manga that inspired the film.
Does the film try to say anything with this? Is there some deeper theme about the nature of stories? Not really, but it is a fun visual and a strangely thrilling note to end on that makes The Ribbon Hero a frustrating experience with just enough creativity to be worth seeking out.
