Princess Resurrection

The series opens with viewer stand-in Hiro looking at a strange, dilapidated mansion. He’s been summoned by a letter by his sister, who says that she’s working as maid there. After looking around a bit, he meets Hime. Hime is almost crushed by a steel beam, but Hiro pushes her out of the way and dies. Fortunately, Hime brings him back to life. That’s all this episode is — basic setup.
The second episode explains that Hiro, as a half-immortal, needs to be “recharged” by Hime regularly, or he’ll die again. Then there’s a fight with an invisible man. A recurring theme of this show is massive property damage. The mansion is more or less destroyed in lots of episodes.
Liza shows up in the next two episodes — she’s a half-werewolf who’s the sister of a werewolf that Hime killed earlier. A tribe of fishmen attack, and Liza forgives Hime and becomes part of the group after kicking ass.
Next, we meet Reiri. The preview for the one of the episodes calls her a seductress, and she plays that role pretty well, since the very first thing she does in the series is zip-up Hiro’s fly. Hiro becomes a vampire, and not only that, but as Hime says, “Even after becoming a vampire he’s still a weakling” — he’s the only one in the entire series to be repelled by garlic and crosses. Reiri’s defeated, of course, and spends the rest of the series attempting to get Hime’s blood through a more seductive “it’ll be fun!” approach.
Sherwood, Hime’s sister, shows up and proposes an alliance. The mansion is then invaded by a triffid that Sherwood leaves behind. This episode, if the subtitles are to believed, has the STRANGEST line in fiction — a teacher’s lecture at Hiro’s school goes “So, building upon Einstein’s theory of relativity, there is no way to prove a relationship between time and dreams.” I have no idea what to make of this because it’s such a strange and subtle nonsequitur. Hime gets revenge by unleashing another Triffid against Sherwood. Sherwood and Hime become allies after all, and the mansion is rebuilt again.
Episode 7 has Hiro running out of life and stuck in the hospital with a mad doctor that wants to vivisect him. It’s shown that the doctor actually works for another vampire, who we later find out is Zeppili. He’s famous among vampires for being tacky — really.
Zeppeli releases a “nameless” horror in a motel in the next episode. The body-snatching eye-spider is a bit gross, but this episode doesn’t advance the plot, and it’s really only so-so.
One thing I wondered about before this point was, “when are we going to see the panda from the opening and closing?” And, another new character is introduced — Ryu-Ryu the panda. At first, things don’t go so well in Ryu-Ryu’s attempts to become Sherwood’s servant, but then monsters attack (Spider-bats serve vampires? What?) and Ryu-Ryu and a few more pandas are permanently added to the cast.
Flan, yes FLAN, then bumps into an another android that needs repairs and says that he escaped from a deuterium mine. A friend of mine was discussing this — while deuterium is valuable, nonetheless as a form of hydrogen, it’s a bit weird to imagine it being mined as shown. The new android, thank goodness, is not a permanent addition to the cast (Out of ideas? More characters! But it works here, sort of).
I think the next episode exists strictly to show how oblivious Sawawa, Hiro’s sister, really is. Hiro brings home a cat. Said cat transforms into a cat girl. She finds nothing unusual about this at all. Strange, unlikely-to-actually-catch-anyone traps start appearing throughout the mansion. The cat-girl turns out to be a mind-controlled assassin. At the end of the episode, there’s a bit of oddity, Reiri appears and says that there are other brainwashed children; How does Reiri know this? And we never hear anything about it again. There’s clearly a part of this story missing that was intended to be added in later, but was left out.
Then, mummies attack. This episode has one of the coolest scenes — Hime wielding two chainsaws akimbo.
The next episode is strange. Apparently everyone and their cousin in this world knows that a lunar eclipse is bad news, yet somehow Hime and Hiro end up a ghost town. Which was actually flooded years ago after a violent fight between the townspeople. Scott and I can’t decide if this is a Higurashi reference or not
Episode 14 is a bit of gimmick episode where Liza races against a headless horseman. Oh, and Hiro meets Zeppili, who promptly has him possessed by an artifact.
Next, we’re introduced to three of Hiro’s classmates, who are obsessed with Hiro’s not-harem (and it really, really is NOT) and decide to visit the mansion. Hillarity ensues, as they want to serve Hime and Hiro is replaced by a look-alike. Photo-guy is especially… noticable. The Hiro-clone actually reminds me of Escaflowne.
The next episode focuses on Liza again, who complains that she can’t find anyone to spar with that has the same number of dots in brawl on their character sheet. There’s an assassin of the week who just so happens to have known Liza’s brother. The plot for this episode is cliche. Very cliche, and very predictable. Princess Resurrection tends to do things “by the book” — that’s even a bit of its charm — but this episode is extremely lazy, and you can tell exactly whats going to happen from pretty much the first two minutes.
Moving away from the randomly shift from character-to-character, the next episode has a soul-eating witch. There’s a subplot of Sherwood trying to get skin lotion to look… younger? Despite the fact that she’s easily the youngest-looking main character. And also despite the fact that she’s an immortal Pheonix so the entire concept of anti-aging therepy doesn’t make much sense for her. Reiri acts out of character by getting directly involved by hitting the witch with a frying pan at one point. Both Reiri and the witch are repelled by dumplings — maybe it’s be because they have garlic in them (it’s never explained), but it’s been established in other episodes that garlic doesn’t have an effect on pureblood vampires like Reiri. Whoever wrote this episode didn’t pay any attention to consistency with anything else in the series — why?
Of course, there has to be another Reiri epsisode, although in a way, the last episode was a Reiri episode. There’s a vampire hunter (a delightful reference to another anime); we learn that he’s in it for the money, because he’s out of work and there’s a bounty on vampires; who pays this bounty? Werewolves? This episode is funny, and I laughed like crazy at some of the scenes. The episode ends with an fight between Zeppili and Reiri, with a few twists.
The next episode combines the undead, a ghost-ship, mermaids, introduces another werewolf, and has a FLYING SHARK! The ending even has a giant robot, in the service of Hime’s brother. An awesome episode all around.
“Duke Dracul” makes an appearence in Episode 20. He’s sadisic, he’s powerful, and he’s a perfect excuse for Reiri and Liza to team up to rescue Hiro.
Picking up this storyline, in episode 21, camera guy reappears, determined to tell the world that Reiri is a vampire. This is incredibly convenient as she’s been missing for a few days, and Hiro is looking for her. We find out she’s being attacked by Duke Dracul’s servants. This lead to some rather transparently fake “Why should I help a vampire?” moping from Liza. Who cares though — there are some excellent fight scenes, and Reiri actually does seem like a really powerful vampire in this episode. We also see hints of Hiro maturing as a fighter — he holds off several of the attacking vampires quite well.
The next episode opens with a brief explanation of how Hime lost her servants. Reiri briefly runs into three werewolves on “a mission” — this scene is actually a bit confusing; it’s implied Reiri is in trouble, but why doesn’t she just turn into bats and fly away? As a matter of fact, how do werewolves EVER defeat vampires in this universe, given that they don’t seem to carry white ash stakes with them, and we’ve seen a vampire survive a giant explosion at point blank range? The werewolves turn out to be immortals working for one of the royal siblings. What do you do with immortal werewolves? Shoot them over and over again with silver bullets until they’re dead for good.
The next two episodes are the climax of this series, a showdown between Hime (we learn her real name is Lillian) and her brother Zerverus. He’s apparently in league with the Umbrella Corporation, which is a serious no-no for monsters, even royalty.
The penultimate episode features Flandre going complete insane, which makes for one of the funniest episodes available in the series. The animation is intentionally lazy at parts, but somehow this actually works better than usual.
The final episode is a surreal, final exam recap of everything, and also makes the relationship between Hime and Hiro a bit more explicit, as Hiro almost manages to pull off a kiss at the end.