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Anime 101
Princess Knight
Princess Knight (Choppy and the Princess) was known as 'Ribbon No Kishi' in Japan and was based on the Manga publication of 1953-56. 52 episodes were made. It was created and produced by Osamu Tezuka and his own company Mushi Productions, airing on Japanese TV in 1967-1968.. Princess Knight was a beautifully designed colour series about a young princess in a fairy tale kingdom who must pretend to be a male for political reasons.
The series was set in Medieval times. Princess Sapphire masqueraded as a boy and was called Prince Knight (since a girl could not take over the throne). She had a little assistant ‘Choppy' who was an angel who always blew a trumpet. At night she would wear a Robin (of Batman) style mask and was known as the Phantom Knight fighting evil.
In the first episode the King announces the birth of his child as a Prince who will someday be King. He deceives the people as a girl as a princess cannot succeed to the throne according to the law of the land. The lie is to stop the evil 'Duke Duralumon' from getting his hands on the throne as he is next in line. The only other people that knew were the Doctor, Gary and the Nurse. The whole series is based around trying to prove that the Prince is really a girl led by Duralumon.
Princess Knight was actually born with 2 hearts. Choppy was an angel who gave the Princess a blue heart before the head angel gave her a pink heart to be a girl. So choppy was sent from heaven to get the blue heart back from her to make her into a nice little girl. Choppy had been looking for her for 12 years and when he finds her the adventure begins.
PRINCESS KNIGHT is set in a fantasy Europe and concerns the adventures of cross-dressing Princess Knight. Because Princess Knight is a girl and therefore can't succeed to the throne of Silverland, she is forced to disguise herself as a boy, the heir to the throne, to keep the kingdom out of the clutches of the evil Duralumon and his evil toady Baron Nylon, while occasionally aided by her unwitting Prince Frank of Silverland. In this Osamu Tezuka gender-bender, all of the protagonists were originally given the names of precious metals and gems while all of the villains had the names of cheap alloys or synthetics. The nefarious Duralumon has his name based on the word 'aluminium' and Baron Nylon, although pronounced "Neelon" in the anime, is just how it reads. Oriolo's dubbers, in their attempt to match the characters' lip movements, created names as close as possible to the names in the original Japanese pronunciation. The name of Princess Knight's little elfin helper was probably changed from the original 'Tink' to Choppy to avoid any legal problems with Disney's 'Tinkerbell' character, who was often referred to as 'Tink' both in the "Peter Pan" feature and on The Wonderful World Of Disney television program. The creation (both the manga and the anime) is widely considered the first "gender-specific" girls title (a.k.a shojo manga/anime) in Japan.
Special Thanks to: Glen Johnson from Princess Knight for the information.
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