The Ribbon Hero review – do-gooder princess battles giant flying earwigs in update of classic yarn
The Guardian's review of The Ribbon Hero, director Yûki Igarashi's first feature-length adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's postwar manga Princess Knight, finds the film a disappointingly conservative reworking of a pioneering source. Where Tezuka's original was celebrated for its gender-bending premise, the reviewer argues this version narrows its focus to a conventionally feminine, saccharine heroine, sidelining the material's more radical elements in favour of formulaic battle-anime tropes.
The story follows princess Sapphire, exiled after a giant flying "Nergal" creature destroys her kingdom of Silverland, who takes refuge in neighbouring Goldland and later gains the power to transform into the crime-fighting Princess Knight. Despite praising the animation's inventive mix of styles, including ornate European-style pageantry, 2D backdrops, chibi sequences and shadow play, the review concludes the film fails to capitalise on Tezuka's more daring instincts, ending up as unremarkable "girl-power puff" rather than a bold reinvention.
- Guardian review pans Princess Knight film remake as overly conventional
- Sanitises Tezuka's gender-flipping original into a saccharine princess tale
- Praises the animation's visual variety despite weak storytelling
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Osamu Tezuka is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Japanese manga and anime, and his postwar series Princess Knight was notable for its heroine who possesses both a boy's and a girl's heart, an unusual premise for its time that dealt with gender in ways ahead of its era. The Ribbon Hero is director Yûki Igarashi's first full-length animated film based on that story, following princess Sapphire, who flees her destroyed kingdom and later gains the power to become the sword-wielding Princess Knight.
Adaptations of classic manga are common in Japanese animation, and how faithfully or boldly they handle the source material's original ideas is often a point of debate among critics and longtime fans. This background matters because the review under discussion weighs the new film against the more unconventional aspects of Tezuka's original work, considering how the story has been reshaped for a modern audience.