Kingdom of Dreams

Last week I said the only way this could be resolved in a way that would make sense would be the characters waking up from a dream. Well the characters didn’t wake up and this ending does not make sense other than the power of friendship, prayers and dreams. Now why on earth did I expect anything more?

As the final episode rushes to a conclusion we kind of know that Setiq wants to bring Yuan back though why he believes stealing dreams is the way to achieve this, or why Kihel’s dream in particular would work, is never adequately explained. Nor is the butterfly guy ever anything more than a cackling annoyance who once it becomes clear Setiq’s plan is a bust simply starts breaking the place apart until the Princess’ prayer illuminates him out of existence.

Why Kihel isn’t put to sleep by Setiq’s attempt to steal his dream, or why the other townspeople just wake up at the end of the episode is all just kind of plot convenience and explained away by saying it was the prayer, but they’ve never explained how that works either so you might as well tell me it is because we ran out of episodes. And really that’s the problem underlying this entire series. We still don’t know anything about anything. Who the Princess was before she was summoned, what the dream eaters actually are, how any of their powers work, and why despite them reminding us this episode that the Princess is supposed to be waking up sleeping princes the only prince who was asleep was Avi in episode 1. Every other prince is just kind of emotionally stunted rather than sleeping.

Still, if you just want a ramble with a range of guys and the occasional confrontation that is solved through the power of love and prayer than there is a chance you’ll really enjoy this. It works for what it is but there’s so much more it could have been. It is at best sitting on average and most of the time slightly below in terms of story, characters, or anything else.

I will get to a full review of this anime soon but in the meantime I’d love to know your thoughts.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow
• Episode 7: This Was Not A Well Thought Out Plan
• Episode 8: It’s All About Kihel
• Episode 9: What If Wonderland Were A Modern City?
• Episode 10: The Cat and Kihel
• Episode 11: Confusing Villain Motivations – Check

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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I’m almost hoping that this series ends with the characters waking up and realising the whole thing was all just a dream because that’s about the only way this is going to make actual sense. Then again, I guess I wasn’t expecting all that much from a villain who sits around for 90% of the series doing nothing but watching because to be honest you have to really question how motivated they are to do anything at all.

Any compelling story line that may have existed as Kihel went to find Setiq to figure out what happened in the past and maybe save his kingdom more or less got shot in the foot when Setiq just decides its time, for reasons unknown, and essentially sends the road straight to our group of travellers bringing them to Kihel’s forgotten Kingdom. It isn’t exactly a satisfying or particularly interesting way for a quest destination to be reached given it just kind of happens with no real triggering event to justify it, but this is more or less par for the course in 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Switched Off Audiences.

With one episode to go, it is abundantly clear that the majority of characters we’ve met will get no further anything. Also clear that by the time this story wraps up Kihel’s plot and we figure out what is happening in Atlas, that will be it. The unnamed Princess is unlikely to suddenly get some kind of backstory or point and has essentially been a spectator and Avi is entirely superfluous to anything at this point in time given his Kingdom has never come into sight at all.

I’m actually interested in Setiq’s deal, I’m just not convinced that I’ll be overly impressed with how this anime chooses to execute it. It is all kind of a shame because the initial premise was actually kind of promising and mostly this show has meandered along and now we’re finally at the end but I don’t really feel like we’ve gotten anywhere. Oh well.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow
• Episode 7: This Was Not A Well Thought Out Plan
• Episode 8: It’s All About Kihel
• Episode 9: What If Wonderland Were A Modern City?
• Episode 10: The Cat and Kihel

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

Consider supporting the blog by:

Or use one of my affiliate product links:

The Cheshire Cat continues to run away from Avi, Kihel and Navi while dragging his ‘Alice’ along (not that she’s Alice but whatever). In the process, Avi and Navi get held up by some talking trees due to an inability to make anyone laugh so Kihel goes ahead which just further cements the idea that he’s going to be about the only character getting any actual story here. For 100 Sleeping Princes, this show has so far only had one sleeping prince and seems only interested in telling one story.

I’m going to skip to the end of the episode, because it is about the only part of any significance. The black butterfly guy gives Kihel a push and so Kihel borrows the time watch to recover his lost memories. It isn’t entirely successful but we get enough of it (as do the Princess and Avi) that the direction for the final pretty much set in stone. We kind of know what happened between Setiq and Kihel though we still don’t know why or what happened to Kihel after that and before he met up with the Princess and Avi.

The rest of this episode is mostly just the cat taking Alice various places and dialogues between characters that really fail to be engaging. We get another fight against some dream eaters but they seem less a threat than ever and more just a distractor or a reason for Kihel to be facing black butterfly guy alone.

Pretty much motives for the main cast remain murky or unexplored. The other princes encountered in this particular story were uninspired and served little to no purpose. The resolution of the stolen watch was at best bland. So all and all this anime that started out as an okay fairy tale romp has mostly just become a chore. Now I still actually want to know what is going on with Kihel so I will finish it up but there’s not a lot of fun to be had at the moment with this show.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow
• Episode 7: This Was Not A Well Thought Out Plan
• Episode 8: It’s All About Kihel
• Episode 9: What If Wonderland Were A Modern City?

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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The concept is raised as the Princess and the two Princes find their way into a modern city-scape but we very quickly abandon this line of questioning as the characters find themselves onto a rooftop garden and from there it is all pretty standard antics for an episode focusing on Alice in Wonderland style tropes.

I’ve mentioned before that episodes and stories based on Alice in Wonderland are very hit and miss, and a lot of the issue is they rely on you just accepting weird stuff is going to happen because ‘wonderland’. This episode of 100 Sleeping Princes isn’t an exception. While the idea of a wonderland in a world of mostly pre-industrialised countries being a city full of skyscrapers most definitely could have potentially been interesting, nothing was done with this in the end and other than Avi getting some coughs and the momentary fun of watching him freak out in the elevator, this somewhat unique setting was horrendously underutilised before it got scrapped by a time reversing watch reverted the city to a forest.

Similarly, the characters we meet in this place are all caricatures of Alice in Wonderland characters and in the brief screen time they get they don’t do much to break the mould or make themselves in any way memorable. About the only point of interest is the black butterfly is in wonderland and joins that party for tea dropping a few hints about Setiq before disappearing again.

And that’s where this feels like filler. We’ve more or less established that Kihel’s story is the only one this anime actually cares about. We’ve never addressed who the Princess is or what she was doing before she appeared in this world. She doesn’t even ask if there’s a way to go back. She’s just kind of existing for us to follow along with. Avi, despite initially suggesting he was going to return to his kingdom, has just strapped in for the ride. He has no actual story of his own that we’re aware of (and barely any personality). So Kihel’s story and finding Setiq has more or less become the only goal and other than a few minor titbits, this episode contributes nothing toward that.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow
• Episode 7: This Was Not A Well Thought Out Plan
• Episode 8: It’s All About Kihel

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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We seem to be closing in on the mysteries around Kihel’s missing memories. What I can’t figure out is whether this is going to be resolved next week or whether this is actually going to be an arc that takes us to the end of the series. Either way, it doesn’t seem like the anime is interested in dealing with its premise with the Princess appearing from another world as she doesn’t seem even vaguely concerned about that.

As an episode, this one was pretty dull with the main characters spending the entirety sitting beside a lake and talking or sleeping. However it did fill in a substantial amount about Kihel’s background and set up a fairly compelling oncoming confrontation and we finally got a bit more insight into Setiq so it isn’t as though this time was wasted. They could have found a better way to integrate this into some kind of story, but I guess 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams has long since proven it isn’t really all that sophisticated in how it rolls out its plot.

This episode does its job in that it leaves the audience feeling like they are getting closer to something while leaving us with a huge number of questions which will make us watch on. What it doesn’t really do is deliver any of this in an engaging way, unless talking and flash backs are your thing. And that’s literally all there is to this episode so I’ll just leave it here.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow
• Episode 7: This Was Not A Well Thought Out Plan

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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If we forget for a moment that other than Avi none of these princes are sleeping and that the dream eaters no seem to be some sort of controlled minions, I still have to ask what the villain actually thought was going to happen this week. That was one terribly planned out kidnapping.

While the general fairy tale nature of this story continues to be one of its more positive traits, everything else is kind of just doing what it does. The butterfly finally took form this week mostly to taunt the characters but giving the villain a voice in the action actually made it worse. Whether he was mocking the Princess or teasing the Princes, he came off like a silly child and as soon as Frost showed up he bailed. About the only noteworthy part of this character’s appearance is that he was clearly controlling the dream eaters which just makes you wonder what they actually are anyway.

This part two does quite a reasonable job of dealing with the three brothers and we see Frost and Graysia kind of come to an understanding of sorts, but it is at the expense of anything of note happening to our main cast. you could argue that Graysia was only kidnapped because of the Princess, but if we just remove the Princess, Avi and Kihel from the story, we could more or less run the same plot with Graysia getting trapped and Frost having to search for him and ultimately save him. It is never a good sign when the main cast can be utterly removed from events without altering them in any way of note.

However, this story came to a close and the trio have headed off again so I guess we’ll meet yet another kingdom and Prince next week.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones
• Episode 5: A Ghost Ship with Friendly Ghosts?
• Episode 6: From The Ocean to the Snow

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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After the build up last week, episode 5 was mostly a let down, unless you are watching this just for the Princes, in which case there were many here and they had plenty of screen time.

This show started out with a pretty simple premise; Princess is summoned to wake up the sleeping princes and fight the dream eaters. Except, other than Avi, none of the princes have been asleep (unless they are technically asleep even though they are walking around) and the dream eaters have kind of disappeared entirely out of the last two episodes. Just not sure what the objective is at the moment or what’s really going on.

They do continue to build some intrigue around Kihel’s character, but the more build up it gets, the more concerned I am that it is mostly just going to be a giant let down when we finally find out what is going on with him. Much as the ghosts on the ship and the storm ended up being.

If anything, this episode really suffered from being overly cluttered. Too many princes and other characters with too little actual purpose. And then the pirate guy thanks the Princess for being the one to help him change and I’m just not sure what exactly she did (although she did actually save Kihel by herself for once so that was probably a step forward).

The shine might be coming off of this one. We’ll see what next week brings.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters
• Episode 4: Not All Dreams Are Good Ones

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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Despite the Disney like fairy tale narrative being spun here, episode 4 kind of shows us the darker side of the dream land with pirates, mermaids, death at sea, and a past that seems determined to resurface.

No surprise that I started getting a little concerned as soon as I realised they were about to get on a ship because it seemed very likely our nameless heroine would get swept overboard at some point. Fortunately this anime has so far shown that danger is fairly swiftly overcome so I wasn’t too worried about an actual drowning. The closest we really get to it this episode is a reference to the flowers around the ship being there in memory of those who have died at sea. It’s about as tame as a fairy tale can get while still claiming a slightly darker edge.

Kihel’s story continues to develop and while the whole amnesia with flashes of memory thing has been done to death, in the context of this show it kind of works. What works less well is that fact that other than Avi, none of the other Princes appear to actually be trapped inside rings so I’m not entirely sure why the Princess is needed at all here or why that was a thing in the first place. The rings were super important for all of one episode and now they aren’t even mentioned. It kind of breaks the overall world building going on here.

That said the Princes we meet this week are an interesting group, whether human or not. Plus we ended on a fairly dramatic cliff-hanger once again so we’ll get to spend more time with them next week and hopefully have a bit of fun.

They have gone to a lot of effort to not name the heroine though. At one point she was asked point blank who she was and before she could speak Navi jumped in and said she was the Princess of wherever. After that, all the characters she met just happily called her Princess and seemed to forget even caring what her name was. Despite the fact that almost all the other characters are Princes of somewhere but still have a name. It’s a little bit weird, though kind of shows the source loud and clear.

Previous Reviews:

• Episodes 1 + 2: Fairy Tale Logic At Work
• Episode 3: No One Is Really Bad, Just Possessed By Dream Eaters

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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