October | 2021 | Revisiting Fiction

In episode eleven of Fena: Pirate Princess, Abel and Yukimaru square off for the final time, Fena meets her mother, Cody shows up, and questions continue to go unanswered.

There is something to be said about the extent of Abel’s obsession, of how it moved him to literally see Yukimaru as Franz taking “Helena” (Fena) away again. However, I’m too distracted by the unexplained mystic happenings in this episode to focus on any of that. Normally, I am all for magic just existing in a setting without much of an explanation of how or why, so long as I can understand what’s going on in the story itself. Fena: Pirate Princess is eleven episodes in, one episode before its finale, and I still have no idea what is going on.

Abel is dead. That is an undisputable factual statement. Abel got his arm cut off in a swordfight with Yukimaru, bled out, and died on the ground. It is the most grounding thing to happen in this episode after the scant beginnings of a final showdown between the goblin knights and the British navy that I honestly would have preferred to see in full. I don’t even know what to make of the events that happened in Eden. Yukimaru fought Abel and got grievously wounded again, Fena stood there doing nothing, Abel burned away in purple fire, Helena showed up and said nothing concrete whatsoever, Franz showed up to reveal himself as neither Cody nor Franz but as another being entirely, and then the episode ended as though any of that made any sense. I don’t even know if Abel’s reunion with Helena after his death was real or just another fabrication of his mind.

Obviously, I am meant to feel something about Abel meeting Helena in death again. The scene took up a good chunk of the episode and was done so dramatically that I can only assume I was supposed to feel something. However, I was too caught up in just how odd the whole reunion was. Helena has perhaps said more in this one scene than she has in the entire show, giving Abel gentle soothing words of affirmation about how he has done well – though she never says what it is he has done – and embracing him in a way that that has never happened on screen before he majestically burns away. This combined with the harsh cut to Fena and Yukimaru’s perspective of Abel’s dead body just lying on the ground makes me wonder if that reunion just happened in Abel’s dying mind or if Helena just told Abel what he wanted to hear so he would move on. It would certainly explain why Helena was so verbose with Abel but suddenly back to being cryptic and vague with her own daughter whom she hasn’t seen in years.

With the reveal of Franz/Cody actually being a being called “The Observer” or “The Storyteller,” I’m starting to wonder if Helena was even real to begin with. The Storyteller says to Fena that he is here to observe her story. What that actually means is up in the air for another episode, because so far Fena hasn’t had much of a story. Things have happened to and around her, but Fena herself feels more like a side character in Abel’s story of obsession than as the arbiter of an entire story. It gives me Princess Tutu vibes, except Princess Tutu did the theme of fate vs free-will much better. But none of this can be known for sure with one episode left in the story that is implied to have all the answers. It’s my personal belief that an ending can make or break a story. Fena’s ending could very well save this story or it could just as easily condemn it to a once-interesting-but-ultimately bland anime to be lost amongst the hundreds of other anime just like it.

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