Princess Sara Episodes 1-14
Thought I'd break up GE999 with a bit of World Misery Masterpiece Theatre, since I enjoyed Alps Story: My Annette a little while back. Geez, and people think we get a lot of child suffering in today's anime. Probably one of the more cynical takes on humanity I've seen a while. The moral of the story so far seems to be that everyone will bend over backwards for you if you're fabulously wealthy and kick you to the curb if you're poor, and being a nice person has little to no effect. Also the middle classes spend their time fawning over their betters waiting for an opportunity to screw them over and take their place or hoping to get trickled down on and the working classes just want someone lower than them to kick. Actually this all seems quite well observed, clearly not much has changed in the past hundred years.
Horrible self-serving caricatures though almost every adult in this show might be, at least some of the kids are slightly more interesting. The fact that Sara is rich and spoilt but isn't a total brat and is instead one of the nicest characters is kind of refreshing, usually stories like this of wealthy people who've known nothing else ending up dirt poor have them learn a lesson about being better people or something, however that's clearly not a lesson Sara needs to learn. But I am interested to learn what the point of the story is exactly, if it ends up being "virtue is rewarded" after all this unbridled cynicism it's going to feel a bit jarring. But then I guess the children, relatively innocent as they are (except Lavinia, who I feel ambivalent towards because despite her needless cruelty and petty jealousy, she's also the only character savvy enough to see through all the adults' bull****) are going to be the heart of the story - Sara's ability to transcend class boundaries and genuinely care for people (in a way almost no-one else in her world seems to) is leading somewhere.
That all said, Princess Sara has still hooked me with its drama, aesthetic and pleasant pacing just the same way Annette did, so I feel like I might get a lot of mileage out of these shows in the coming years.