8 December 2008: The Great Scrapped Princess Re-Watching Project, Part II
Starting with the episode where the Casulls meet EIROTE! and Senes, there is a lot of exposition as the series transitions from "Pacifica on the run" to the "we told you that story to tell you this one" portion of Scrapped Princess. I advise new viewers to listen carefully because the show rips through a lot of backstory in a relatively short time, but basically explains everything that's going on. There's a running gag within the show about how difficult it is to digest all this sometimes-boring information so quickly, so it's not too bad overall. It's not like shounen jive with people boasting about power levels or crap like that ad infinitum, at least.
The big event that turns a lot of viewers off is an amnesia angle that appears in disc four of the DVD set. I usually don't care for amnesia stories but this is honestly resolved pretty quickly. Plus it sets up a great sight gag I've completely missed during my previous watchings. It's quick, but so obvious I don't know how I failed to notice it before. (It occurs at the ramen stand.)
This is probably my fourth time watching Scrapped Princess, yet somehow I also never noticed before that Shannon and Zefiris combining contains obvious sexual overtones in the second half of the series. It's definitely intentional, although less overt than the VanDread metaphors. My guess is it's intended to highlight Zefiris' jealousy when Shannon and CZ's relationship grows less hostile.
I still maintain Scrapped Princess is an excellent series. Really, I waited too long to buy these DVDs. I'm not sure if the cliffhangers help or hurt the show for viewers marathoning the series for the first time. (If I remember right, only two episodes don't end in cliffhangers.) However, I marathoned Monster the first time I watched it, and that series also has a lot of cliffhangers. With Monster I just kept churning through more episodes. The first time I watched Scrapped Princess, I had to impatiently wait a week—every week. New viewers today probably won't enjoy/endure the same wait. With the aforementioned caveats in place, I'm still going to put Scrapped Princess on my short list of recommendations.