With a title like Princess Army, you have to be at least curious as to what this story is about. Guess what, no princesses and no armies. Oh well. One might describe this two-part OAV series, based on a much larger manga (Japanese comics) series, as Marmalade Boy with some judo. The main character is Nonoka Aida, a high school student who is fabulous at judo. She also has three older brothers who are each judo champions, but Nonoka is better than all three of them. Nonoka and her brothers have lived alone ever since their parents died. The trouble begins when their father's best friend, who is also their monetary benefactor, comes to visit, bringing along his extremely pushy son. The two other main characters of the show, who are featured much more prominently in the manga, are Yuya Hashiba and Shinobu Oda. Yuya is on the judo team with Nonoka and is a very dedicated judo player. Shinobu is one of Nonoka's close friends. He is also a judo genius, but we don't see much of that in the anime. The rest of the judo team are somewhat strange individuals as well.

The primary background of the story is that when Nonoka was about 5 or 6 years old, she was attacked by a drunk wielding a broken glass bottle, and a boy (actually two boys) protected her by getting in the way of the attack and throwing the attacker to the ground. She never found out who the boy was, but she vowed to practice judo until she met her savior, at which point she'd quit judo and try to become his girlfriend. In the first manga volume, it is revealed that Yuya and Shinobu were the two boys who protected Nonoka in that incident, which is why she is such close friends with them both.

Princess Army is more of a romance/drama/comedy than it is a judo show. The manga captures the judo flavor somewhat better, but this anime doesn't feature as much judo as the premiere judo anime/manga, Yawara. Nonetheless, for a two-OAV series, the show is entertaining in its own right and has an unmistakable shoujo style.

[12/2/04 Update: For further articles by Lawrence Eng, see his anime page.]