I love the character designer for the 2026 movie, and it had some decent animation bits. Yeah though unfortunately weak writing and a lack of Yuri.

It's a very pretty movie (until the 3D animation goes onscreen) and like I said before, I remember it had a great soundtrack. But that's style. And when the style is all there is to praise about the film, it's the definition of style over substance.

I wanted to like the movie, but... yeah it was just a disappointment.

That’s definitely fair, I’m mostly saying it at least had some good elements but I do agree with your general summary. For me it was an “okay” flick to watch for the art, minus the 3d as you mentioned, but sadly the writing was not memorable.

Oh hell yeah, this has all of my attention!

Time to see if Wilema can stand to kill this remarkable princess

This is incredibly interesting! I hope to see more. :)

This feels like something from 2009

You know, ladies, if you are this keen to insert long phallic objects into each others' bodies, there are other Toys for you yet to try.

a woman couldn't be king women are simply too inherently kind says the ruthless assassin. lmao

Oh wow, so this really is a remake of the original from the 60s?

I remember watching a bit of the anime way back then.

Anyway what's that binder made of? And how is she not in constant agony lol

Anyway what's that binder made of? And how is she not in constant agony lol

I know, right? Somehow it's not even shifting the breast fat around, they just vanish. I have to assume it's a binder of holding.

Ribbon hero make miracles to bring back this forgotten manga

a woman couldn't be king

Meanwhile in real history we have the likes of Tamar and later her daughter Rusudan in Georgia and much later, albeit briefly, Jadwiga in Poland. And that's what I know off the top of my head, there may have been more woman kings that I either forgot or never knew about.

If you define that as not a ruling queen but a female ruler who doesn't hold a female ruler title the pickings aren't many. Hatshepsut was a woman treated as a male pharaoh.

that assassin can pin me instead but I'd prefer Sapphire

Technically it is.its similar somewhat.so there.also you coould of been nicer.

yeaa sorry, you're right. I'm mad the movie, not you.

But I just disagree that it's an adaptation. I'm convinced it's a generic script that had minor edits made, to give it a princess knight skin and therefore drive interest in the film. Imo, if it wasn't originally written to adapt something, it isn't an adaptation.

np.though I want an adaptation of this version tbh

Having read these two chapters after hearing someone call the MC trans-coded, I am forced to conclude that if she is, it's in a transphobic direction.

Like "cis girl wishes she could Be A Girl" isn't really trans-coded in a positive sense, because a lot of transphobes love to pull out "well you're only being a boy because your parents/peer group are forcing you to and you'd secretely love being a girl" regarding trans men.

The manga basically goes-> Saphir has a body that is "female" > therefore she must secretely like "girl" things-> therefore being seen as a guy is bad for her. And like, sure, you can see it as kinda transfem coded but it ignores the entire context around such a presentation. (Also FTM crossdressing manga loves this trope, from Hana-Kimi to Ouran)

Forgive me for the rant but... I really don't like this trope at all. It's a huge pet peeve of mine.

Edit: to clarify what I mean when I call this "kinda transphobic" the common view among transphobes is that raising a child as trans or GNC is damaging towards them. This is why they're very sympathetic towards David Reimer (who was "forced to be the wrong gender") but not towards most trans kids (who are also "forced to be the wrong gender" but they don't count to transphobes). Princess Knight follows this trope of transness/GNCness etc being a damging "outside" force imposed on the child, in defiance of their "natural body"

(Sorry again for going a rant.)

last edited at Nov 12, 2026 8:25AM

Re: the woman-king thing: Isn't this just an artefact of english being weird as heck? At least in every other language I can pass judgement on, the terms for a male and female monarch are identical save for usual grammatic gender, e.g. König -> Königin in german, مَلِك -> مَلِكَة in arabic or kráľ -> kráľovná in slovak. Or, for romance languages (in my case french) reine / reina / reinha / etc. which are basically just direct consequence of the latin regina.

(Tbf I'm not sure if 여왕 is still used in contexts where you don't have to stress it's a female monarch, but even then it's literally just "woman-king" and I suppose 남왕 for a "man-king" would be understood, but is just uncommon.)

So not to go all Sapir–Whorf on y'all, but I think this is simply a linguistic difference that doesn't exist in languages that didn't inexplicable choose to distinguish the proto-germanic term for "crone" a gendered royal title. It's like pointing out how most countries do not distinguish between slander and libel; both these hangups aren't unviversal but very particular to the british.

---

But somehow I spend even more time thinking about the snake. Why is it there? How did it got here? What is it doing on the roses? Does this take place in australia? Who screwed up to let it get this far to the prince(ss)? And does it count as "taking out the competition" when it was beheaded by Willema the assassin? So many questions...

Edit: to clarify what I mean when I call this "kinda transphobic" the common view among transphobes is that raising a child as trans or GNC is damaging towards them. This is why they're very sympathetic towards David Reimer (who was "forced to be the wrong gender") but not towards most trans kids (who are also "forced to be the wrong gender" but they don't count to transphobes). Princess Knight follows this trope of transness/GNCness etc being a damging "outside" force imposed on the child, in defiance of their "natural body"

I think it's really a matter of how you look at it. You could just as easily read it as "being forced to present as a gender that you don't identify with leads to unhappiness." Sapphire presents a certain way because the patriarchy itself demands it, not unlike what most trans people have to deal with.

I think reading this through a trans interpretation is misguided either way though, honestly. As you said, Sapphire is a cis girl that is being forced to present male because "ermmmmm wamen can't be leader" so whatever commentary there is is far more directed at plain old misogyny rather than trans misogyny, because she's not trans, and the story doesn't really frame her crossdressing as anything to do with her internal identity.

While transphobes COULD read it the way you're saying, it requires you to basically ignore the entire context around why she's presenting male. She's not being, as they would accuse - "brainwashed" into thinking she's a man. The people facilitating the ruse aren't interested in convincing her that's she's FtM, it's purely a political maneuver. So I would argue that such a reading is tenuous at best and very superficial.

last edited at Nov 12, 2026 6:41PM

Real-Life Kino said:
Having read these two chapters after hearing someone call the MC trans-coded, I am forced to conclude that if she is, it's in a transphobic direction.

Like "cis girl wishes she could Be A Girl" isn't really trans-coded in a positive sense, because a lot of transphobes love to pull out "well you're only being a boy because your parents/peer group are forcing you to and you'd secretely love being a girl" regarding trans men.

[Snipped]

Your argument is basically that a transphobe could disingenuously read their gross worldview into the work. Which...yes? You can disingenuously read just about anything into just about anything. As evidenced by the fact that this is literally a disingenuous complaint that someone could make a disingenuous complaint. This is just concern trolling, and while that does seem to be a favored pastime on this site lately, being this brazen about it kinda gives the game away.

Zesc said:
But somehow I spend even more time thinking about the snake. Why is it there? How did it got here? What is it doing on the roses? Does this take place in australia? Who screwed up to let it get this far to the prince(ss)? And does it count as "taking out the competition" when it was beheaded by Willema the assassin? So many questions...

The garden is the area of the castle most familiar and hospitable to a snake. If a snake gets into the castle somehow, it's going to want to get out, and the garden is as good as "out". My guess would be it hitched a ride in someone's warm bag or coat in the winter as a juvenile, and has only now grown large enough that it can no longer hide. Having spent a few months hiding so close to humans might also have desensitized it, which is why it chose to threaten instead of having the sense to flee.

last edited at Nov 12, 2026 7:43PM

Your argument is basically that a transphobe could disingenuously read their gross worldview into the work. Which...yes? You can disingenuously read just about anything into just about anything. As evidenced by the fact that this is literally a disingenuous complaint that someone could make a disingenuous complaint. This is just concern trolling, and while that does seem to be a favored pastime on this site lately, being this brazen about it kinda gives the game away.

Ty Caraise, I didn't even know 'concern trolling' was a thing-
Anyway, I couldn't agree more. There's plenty to complain about with this series, but this? this is dumb.

But it gives me an excuse to talk about something interesting that this reboot does to develop the concept later, so whatev. Spoilers for chapter 7. The story introduces a trans girl, who by way of her name (Amber) is clearly meant to be a comparison to Sapphire. That is to say, they were born different, but in the end they both just wanted to be the same thing: girls. "I was born as a boy, but I've always been feminine, so I grew up as a girl. Even though you dress as a boy to be the prince, you've never stopped being a girl."

Interestingly, Amber's hometown was not accepting, so the guy she likes 'stepped in and carried her away from them', as Kuriri put it. Which implies that Amber was committed enough to staying a girl that she stuck with it in the face of everyone she knew being transphobic.

That sort of makes me find jumping to those conclusions dumb. This series literally has a relatively respectfully written trans girl in it.

last edited at Nov 13, 2026 12:39AM

You could just as easily read it as "being forced to present as a gender that you don't identify with leads to unhappiness." Sapphire presents a certain way because the patriarchy itself demands it, not unlike what most trans people have to deal with.

The thing is that. That kind of thing doesn't exist in a vacuum. The way patriarchy treats cis people and trans people is different.

Your argument is basically that a transphobe could disingenuously read their gross worldview into the work. Which...yes? You can disingenuously read just about anything into just about anything. As evidenced by the fact that this is literally a disingenuous complaint that someone could make a disingenuous complaint. This is just concern trolling, and while that does seem to be a favored pastime on this site lately, being this brazen about it kinda gives the game away.

I'm not actually concern trolling, and you kind of missed my point.

For context: I spend a lot of time reading various dogshit crossdressing manga. A very, very common trope in "girl dresses as boy" ones is that the girl crossdressing in them doesn't actually want to present as a guy and wants to be a real girly girl and is only a boy because of Tragic Circumstances. This often comes along with some...extremely bigoted assumptions about gender and how it works. From "you have to be a girl if you want to date a guy" (Hana-Kimi, a bunch of others) or "all women will find their happiness in traditional feminity and heterosexual marriage to a man and being removed from that hurts them" (too many to count if I'm being honest)

These literary constructs track with common stereotypes about transmasculine people, often to a tee. Transmascs are secretely unhappy, transmascs are only that way Because of Misogyny, you'd be so much happier if you detransitioned etc.

So when I saw Princess Knight do this I went "here we go again...it's that shitty trope... I am so sick of this...I am so sick of having everyone around me say that transmascs are really self-hating and would be so much happier as women and then go read a manga where a cis girl laments about how terrible being a boy is and see everyone praise it as trans-coded"

It's likely it's just me overreacting, especially considering what's been said about the latter chapters. But I truly despise this trope with a passion.

That sort of makes me find jumping to those conclusions dumb. This series literally has a relatively respectfully written trans girl in it.

I did not know this, since there are only two chapters out in English. This makes me look more kindly upon the series, and think it actually has something interesting to say about gender.

I kind of just went "fuck this trope I hate this trope it's literally everywhere I keep trying to find a manga where they don't do that but the number of such can be counted on a hand" without knowing much else about the manga beyond the two chapters I read.

last edited at Nov 13, 2026 5:26AM

Real-Life Kino posted:
It's likely it's just me overreacting, especially considering what's been said about the latter chapters. But I truly despise this trope with a passion.

[...]

I kind of just went "fuck this trope I hate this trope it's literally everywhere I keep trying to find a manga where they don't do that but the number of such can be counted on a hand" without knowing much else about the manga beyond the two chapters I read.

Yup, it was, and yup, ya did. The rest of your post was pretty extraneous, and I suspect you're using writing to hash out your thoughts. That's not a bad thing, but we don't necessarily need to see the entire process. Backspace exists for a reason. = /

last edited at Nov 13, 2026 6:33AM

Yup, it was, and yup, ya did. The rest of your post was pretty extraneous, and I suspect you're using writing to hash out your thoughts. That's not a bad thing, but we don't necessarily need to see the entire process. Backspace exists for a reason. = /

I just like writing essays about gender-related stuff. It's interesting even when it's bad, after all.

idk what its called, but this style of art that was more common around older manga is something i enjoy. idk if it even has a name to it.