Arriving on blu-ray recently from Sentai Filmworks comes the complete series of Majestic Prince with this release including the Majestic Prince Special and full-length film follow-up not found on any prior disc. Now let’s go hop into a mech and go kill some Wulgaru for the sake of humanity!

Humanity is on the cusp of interstellar exploration when some rude aliens called the Wulgaru show up and start destroying everything. Humans now have no choice but to deploy a secret untested program originally intended for exploring the cosmos, a group of genetically-modified teenagers whose DNA is coded to control high-powered mechs capable of evolving based on a fight-or-flight response (yea, it’s a little weird and I still don’t quite get it). The problem is that this particular group of kids, designated Team Rabbit, happen to have issues with teamwork. There’s the headstrong and spirited Izuru, whose lifelong goal is to be a hero. There’s Kei, the seemingly cool and calculating tactician of the team. Asagi seems like a true alpha male but is riddled with weak nerves and anxiety. Tamaki is the bubbly, big-boobed airhead who only wants to crush on boys. Ataru is the geeky guy with glasses who just wants to date a girl. Will this team be able to come together, utilizing their experimental mecha effectively and save humanity?

If you couldn’t gather from the summary above, this show isn’t the most original series out there. If you’ve ever seen a mech combat anime, much of this will feel familiar. In the first half of the series, the characters feel extremely one note and unoriginal with little given to care about them very much. But the series makes a wise decision around the halfway point to take a break from the action and actually develop the characters which it does pretty decently actually. I mean, they still lean hard into those tropes but at least to start to learn why and what motivates them which goes a long way toward caring about them to an extent. One area that a lot of people have complained about is Hirai Hisashi’s character designs. If you’ve ever seen a series designed by him (Gundam Seed, s.CRY.ed, Fafner), you’ll probably immediately recognize his stiff, same-y style. He seems to be kind of a love it or hate it character designer, so be forewarned. Frankly though, regardless of the characters and plot, where the show truly delivers is on the battle sequences. The mecha action animation is very good and the battles are very well-directed and exciting, particularly the big final battle that spans the last several episodes of the main series. If you only come into this series wanting to see some some cool mecha blowing stuff up, I think you’ll probably be satisfied with what Majestic Prince delivers.

Sentai has given us a quite nice transfer to really show off those big explosions. It looks especially nice in the big multi-colored battle in the movie Genetic Awakening. For audio, the series has both English and Japanese 2.0 stereo tracks while the movie has a proper DTS-HD 5.1 track (both in English and Japanese as well). Between the two, the movie obviously sounds much better with the battles sounding pretty epic, and it’s unfortunate that the series couldn’t have also gotten a remaster in 5.1, but I’m sure that would’ve been prohibitively expensive. On the extras front, there’s really not much of anything. One nice bonus in addition to the movie that the previous releases of Majestic Prince didn’t include though is the special, Wings to the Future. It’s a full 25 minute episode where we are introduced to a new crew who aspire to fight alongside Team Rabbit. It’s not essential but it’s a neat addition that helps flesh out the world building aspect of the series, showing it from other perspectives.

While Majestic Prince isn’t going to win any awards for strong characterizations or plotting, it definitely delivers on the big space battles with quality action animation, well-designed mechs and very clean, impactful direction.