Little Princess School

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♥ This article is dedicated to the Brazilian Portuguese voice actress of Cindy, Elisa Villon (October 17, 1963 - January 8, 2019). May she rest in peace.
Little Princess School
Vídeo Brinquedo's poor version of Disney Princess but with none of the personality or likability.
Genre: Fantasy
"Family"
Running Time: 11 minutes
Country: Brazil
Release Date: 2008
Network(s): Direct-To-DVD
Distributed by: Vídeo Brinquedo
Starring: Thayna Almeida
Lene Bastos
Luciana Minei
Claudia Victoria
Elisa Villion

Rebecca Soler
Kerry Williams
Andi Whaley
Lisa Ortiz
Erica Schroeder

Seasons: 5
Episodes: 15

Little Princess School (Escola de Princesinhas in Portuguese) is a mockbuster TV series made by the infamous Brazilian animation studio Vídeo Brinquedo.

Plot

Young princesses Cindy, Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade go to Princess School to learn to be beautiful. Along the way, the five girls often get into trouble and annoy their teachers with their curiosity, childlike naivete, and mischief.

The Complete Series

[1]

Season 1[2]

  • "Sleeping Beauties"
  • "The Enchanted Toad"
  • "Defenseless Princes"

Season 2[3]

  • "Bianca's Dragon"
  • "The Enchanted Flower"
  • "The Delicate Challenge"

Season 3[4]

  • "Three Orders"
  • "The Giant and the Butterfly"
  • "The Hampered Fairy"

Season 4[5]

  • "The Summer Student"
  • "The Idiot"
  • "The Lead Soldier"

Season 5[6]

  • "Golden Curls"
  • "Candy House"
  • "Eternal Life"

Why It Can't Learn to Be Beautiful

  1. The series' characters are bland and blatant rip-offs of the characters of the Disney Princess franchise:
    • Cindy is a rip-off of Cinderella.
    • Bianca is a rip-off of Snow White.
    • Hime is a rip-off of Fa Mulan from Mulan.
    • Iria is a rip-off of Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, though The Princess and the Frog was still in production at the time the series came out.
    • Zade is a rip-off of Jasmine from Aladdin.
    • Professor Bella (who debuted in the show as of Season 2) is a rip-off of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
    • Madame Drastic is a ripoff of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
    • As the series progresses since Season 2, there are also one-off characters that suspiciously look like other Disney Princess franchise characters aside from Professor Bella, such as Iara, a race-swapped rip-off of Ariel from The Little Mermaid in the Season 4 episode "The Summer Student", a rip-off of the Genie from Aladdin in the Season 2 episode "Three Orders", and a rip-off of Alice from Alice in Wonderland in the Season 5 episode "Golden Curls".
  2. Speaking of the second reason, episodes like "Sleeping Beauties" and "The Enchanted Frog" directly steal elements from Sleeping Beauty and The Princess and the Frog, respectively, even though the latter film was still in production at the time the series was made.
  3. On the topic of the characters, as with Vídeo Brinquedo's other animated franchises, the characters are extremely loathsome and beyond detestable. Its main five protagonists, Cindy, Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade are extremely unlikeable as all five of them are nothing more than airheaded, rude, lying, uneducated, and whiny spoiled brats who are overly obsessed with being attractive, constantly break the rules, and often get away with their mischief unpunished, making them Karma Houdinis.
    • Speaking of which, the girls' stupidity isn't funny, cute, or endearing in the slightest, but rather irritating and frustrating. The most obvious example of this is in the episode "Sleeping Beauties" where all the girls, except for Cindy, deliberately prick their fingers on the spindle of the spinning wheel for no reason whatsoever without any further second thoughts and consequently fall into a deep slumber as the result.
    • The fact that Cindy, Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade are so obsessed with being attractive at the age of six is extremely disturbing and is something a pedophile would've dreamed of.
    • Similar in vein to the awful kids' movies A Troll in Central Park and The Emoji Movie, the characters suffer from rather poor representation; Madame Drastic is depicted as the antagonist, even though all she intended to do was to discipline her naughty students that misbehave and break the school rules; similarly, Cindy, Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade are depicted as the main protagonists, despite them being the misbehaving brats who are the ones responsible for most of the chaos that occurs within the school grounds in almost every episode. The show tries to force its audience to sympathize with the protagonist and root against the villain without giving them the usual proper characterization as a reason to do this.
  4. Horrendous and choppy 2D flash animation. To name a few examples:
    • The princesses' walk cycles look more like hopping than actual walking.
    • The character animation is as inexpressive as ever. The worst offender of this is in all three episodes of Season 1, where Cindy, Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade are always shown to be smiling regardless of whatever emotion they're facing such as fear, which makes their facial expressions come across as creepy, unappealing, and uncanny.
  5. The series' premise is confusing as it is full of plot holes. For example, why do the girls need to go to Princess School to be able to take part in fairy tales?
  6. Heaps of animation errors. For example, as mentioned before in WICLTBB#5, the Princesses are always shown to be smiling regardless of whatever emotion they're facing, especially in Season 1.
  7. Very poor editing throughout, such as how most of the characters' dialogues often overlap with each other without any stopping to the point that it gets noisy at times, especially when the Princesses talk to each other.
  8. The animation in this show is so lazy that the animators couldn't be bothered to give the characters a variety of clothing choices that fit the episode's routine. For example, the Princesses are always shown in their signature princess outfits ALL THE TIME, even during gym class and when going to bed in numerous episodes because the animators couldn't be bothered to draw other outfits for them such as athletic wear and pajamas for example.
    • In real life, wearing princess dresses, or formal dresses in general, even during gym class and to bed is extremely uncomfortable, restrictive, and constricting, which is what makes these bad clothing choices do not make any sense whatsoever.
  9. Aggressively childish writing with very poorly written episodes, even for preschool standards.
  10. Pathetically lame, inane, and uncreative theme song.
    • On that topic, the show's theme song is also incredibly misleading as well, as since its main lyrics say that the Princesses go to Princess School to learn to be beautiful, it makes viewers think that the Princess School is a beauty school, but turns out that the beauty class subject is never brought up in any of the episodes of the show and barely has an impact, hence the Princesses never learned to be beautiful in the entire show at all. The only "beauty"-related stuff the show has is basically the Princesses unhealthily obsessing over being attractive and them constantly whining and complaining over the idea of looking "ugly" like a bunch of vain and whiny spoiled brats, which is evident in the episode "The Enchanted Toad". You could replace the Princess School with an ordinary elementary school, and nothing would change in the slightest.
  11. Overuse of low-quality stock sound effects.
  12. The colors are way too bright and sickly sweet. For example, in the episode "The Enchanted Toad", the "south of the lake at the darkest and shadiest spot", which is perceived to be scary by the girls, specifically Zade, is revealed to be colored with nothing but only dark pink hues and therefore does not even remotely come off as scary at all to the average viewer, even to its target audience, hence making the girls come off as complete wusses.
  13. There are lots of mean-spirited moments on characters that often don't deserve it or do nothing wrong, such as:
    • Cindy constantly berates Bianca and her affinity towards animals including her ability to talk to animals in the episodes "Sleeping Beauties" and "Defenseless Princes".
    • Bianca's pet rooster has its beak tied shut and is forced to sleep outside for the night despite having saved Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade from the sleeping spell at the end of "Sleeping Beauties".
    • Madame Drastic gets chased by the titular toad whom she kissed creepily while the five princesses laugh at her fate at the ending of the episode "The Enchanted Toad", which is an incredibly messed-up ending, even for its target audience.
    • The nice monster gets a stomachache for eating all the chocolate in the pantry which the girls laugh about it in "Defenseless Princes".
      • Worse, each of those said endings is supposed to be a happy ending, as suggested by the joyous music playing in the back. They instead come off as sickening.
  14. The series is filled with heaps of offensive racial stereotypes:
    • Hime is always shown with her eyes closed, which conveys the offensive racial stereotype that Asians are blind.
      • On the topic of Hime, the writers for some reason must've confused both the Chinese and Japanese ethnicities, and therefore erroneously depicted Hime as a Japanese-looking character complete with a kimono despite that Fa Mulan, the Disney character Hime is a rip-off of, is Chinese, which is just racist to both Chinese and/or Japanese people by depicting both races as one of the same despite them being two completely different ethnicities.
    • Iria's hairstyle is drawn in a stereotypical African afro hairdo and is often treated as the Butt-Monkey of the group, which symbolizes racial discrimination toward black-skinned people.
    • In the episode "Sleeping Beauties", the magic mirror is drawn in blackface style with brown skin and very thick red lips, which is extremely offensive towards African Americans.
    • In some scenes, Zade, despite being of a Middle Eastern ethnicity like her "Disney clone" Princess Jasmine from Aladdin, has her face erroneously colored with pale white skin color than the rest of her body due to animation errors, which is inadvertent whitewashing.
    • There's even a music video of the Girls singing the classic children's song "Ten Little Indians" complete with Native American boys in the background. Yes, really.
      • This is also pretty ironic because unlike the original version of the music, the Brazilian version is a tribute for the Brazilian indigenous boys, not the Native Americans, who's considered a bit offense because "Índio" (who means "Indian") isn't allowed anymore in Brazil, so this really aged bad like most of the Brazilian cartoons, series and soap operas who tributed the Brazilian indigenous people with this term.
  15. The show is filled to the brim with tons of outdated misogynistic sexism from before the 1910s and offensive sexist stereotypes of both male and female genders:
    • The series' premise is that the girls go to Princess School to learn to be beautiful, which heavily implies that females only exist to be beautiful and nothing else, which heavily re-enforces outdated sexist attitudes towards women.
    • The series' female protagonists as incredibly dumb and airheaded, hence reinforcing the outdated sexist beliefs that females are dumb.
    • The segment "Defenseless Princes" heavily reinforces outdated gender roles on both males and females, where females are heavily implied to not have any courage at all and must be damsels-in-distress that are in constant need to be rescued by princes.
    • Most of the male characters in this show are often depicted as bland, forgettable, or in the case of the toad from "The Enchanted Toad", perverted girl predators.
  16. Laughable dialogue from most of the characters. One example is in the scene from the episode "Defenseless Princes" where the gym teacher reveals the reason why the girls have PE class is that "A princess needs to be in great shape if she wants to do some high-stress shopping!".
  17. The show is so agonizingly happy 100% all the time to the point that it gets irritating. Not helping is the fact that almost all the characters except for Lurch, Madame Drastic, Madam Grimm, and the Magic Mirror are constantly smiling 100% all the time, especially in Season 1 due to bad animation.
  18. Cheap and ugly character designs. Most of the princesses in this show look like a rip-off to that of Little Einsteins, a show also made by Disney. They also look as if they were drawn by a child using Microsoft Paint, such as the toad in "The Enchanted Toad", and the magic mirror in "Sleeping Beauties".
  19. Loads of filler and padding.
  20. Lame and unfunny attempts at humor.
  21. Intelligence-insulting idiocy is rampant throughout the entire show to the point that it is frustrating rather than funny. For example, in the episode "The Enchanted Toad", the girls got dismissed from PE class all because Cindy broke her nail. WE KID YOU NOT.
  22. The lip-syncing is way off.
  23. Constant use of recycled animations, such as the characters' walk cycles, the lip-sync of the Magic Mirror in "Sleeping Beauties" even though the lip-sync doesn't even match what he's saying in that episode, as well as the titular toad's speaking and dancing in "The Enchanted Toad", again even though the lip-sync doesn't even match what he's saying in that episode.
  24. Dreadful soundtrack, whose music score is a combination of generic stock music and an instrumental rendition of the series' theme song which isn't any better.
  25. Horrible Portuguese voice acting, especially from the late Elisa Villon as Cindy, Claudia Victoria as Bianca, Luciana Minei as Hime, Lene Bastos and Iria, and Thayna Almeida as Zade.
  26. At all times, the show lacks subtlety as it constantly feels the need to talk down to its audience as if they're complete idiots, like in "Sleeping Beauties", the school janitor Lurch tells the audience that he needs to label all the keys because he has trouble trying to tell apart which key is which when it was already implied when he's also doing it at the same time without even letting the audience pick it up for themselves.
  27. Despite being a show aimed at younger audiences ages 6 and under, there are several scenes of risqué innuendos in this show that are extremely inappropriate for its target audience. For example:
    • "Sleeping Beauties" literally starts with Cindy telling Bianca "There's no point in trying to hide that crazy rooster of yours", which is basically a penis joke on erection.
    • Again in "Sleeping Beauties", the Magic Mirror tells Cindy that the only way for Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade to break the sleeping spell is to be kissed by a charming prince, which means he's encouraging the girls to be in romantic relationships with boys despite being six years old girls, which is incredibly unnerving, sickening, and creepy since the girls are way too young to be in romantic relationships.
    • Once again in "Sleeping Beauties", after the rooster saves Bianca, Hime, Iria, and Zade from the sleeping spell, Bianca from that point on refers to her pet rooster as "Prince Crooner" twice as if the rooster is her love interest, which is bestiality.
    • In "The Enchanted Toad", the toad asks Iria to give him a kiss in return for him helping her find the mandragora root. She does it, and she gets turned into a toad in the process. The very fact that Iria is six years old, and the toad is originally an elderly wizard, makes this scene incredibly disturbing, sickening, and creepy and therefore makes the toad come off as a creepy pedophile.
      • Again, in the episode "The Enchanted Toad" when the toad asks Iria something in exchange for what she wants to know before the latter kisses him, Iria responds to him with "Oh my goodness! Why can't you tell me without having to give something in exchange? Men are all the same". While that line of dialogue itself is very poorly-written and makes no sense whatsoever, if one pays attention to the last sentence in Iria's dialogue "Men are all the same" as well as the ensuing scene where the toad asks Iria for a kiss, it is heavily implied that Iria herself, despite being only six years old, has often been pressured by grown men to kiss them in exchange of what she wanted to know from them every time, which is extremely unnerving, sickening, creepy, and disturbingly pedophilic if you think about it, since it's likely implied that Iria herself was often a victim of child grooming and/or child trafficking.
    • Again, in the end of "The Enchanted Toad", after Madame Drastic kisses the toad, he transforms into a creepy humanoid frogman and starts chasing her like a creepy rapist wanting to have sex with women without her consent.
    • In the episode "Defenseless Princes", during the opening scene at PE class, if you listen closely to the background sounds, you could literally hear little girls making sexual noises in the background as the Princesses' panting noises, which is incredibly sick, creepy, disturbingly pedophilic and highly inappropriate if you think about.
    • Zade, despite being only six years old, wears a skimpy bikini-like tube top as her regular outfit like her "Disney clone" Princess Jasmine from Aladdin. The same can be said with Iara, the race-swapped Ariel knock-off from "The Summer Student", who, despite being only six years old like Zade, wears a skimpy bikini-like tube top as her regular outfit in the same vein as Ariel's mermaid form from The Little Mermaid.
  28. The scene where the toad does a song and dance number in "The Enchanted Toad" is a pathetically lame rip-off of Michigan J. Frog from Looney Tunes.
  29. Heaps of bad morals as the series teaches kids to constantly lie to their teachers, break the rules, and be rude to one another.
  30. Its Christmas special in Season 5, "Candy House", is a complete mess; their version of "Jingle Bells" is not only a big cringe-fest, but they sang "Ore the fields we go" instead of "Over the fields we go".
  31. It even spawned a stand-alone sequel film The Frog Prince also by Vídeo Brinquedo a year later with Iria being the only returning character of the show, which is not only a blatant rip-off of Disney's The Princess and the Frog, yet it also drastically flanderizes Iria further to become a lot dumber and vainer, arrogant, and whinier than she already was in this show.
  32. Most of the side characters of the show are unnamed, which is utterly lazy.

Qualities That Can Learn to Be Beautiful

  1. The voice acting in the English dub is decent as it uses many of the same voice actors from 4Kids Entertainment, with Erica Schroeder (4Kids voice of Monkey D. Luffy) as Cindy, Lisa Ortiz (4Kids voice of Amy Rose) as Bianca, Andi Whaley (4Kids voice of Liza, Katie, and Cassidy on Pokémon) as Hime, Kerry Williams (4Kids voice of Nami on One Piece) as Iria, and Rebecca Soler (4Kids voice of Tecna on season 3 of Winx Club) as Zade.
    • Speaking of Schroeder, her performance as Cindy in this show was a massive improvement over her performance as Luffy as she was poorly directed as the latter character she voiced.
  2. Despite how unlikable and loathsome its lead characters are due to them being nothing but whiny, airheaded, misbehaving spoiled brats who are unhealthily obsessed over physical appearances, at least Iria is a bit more tolerable in this show than what she'd eventually become in her spin-off solo film The Frog Prince, though that isn't saying much.
  3. Despite looking cheap and ugly, some of the designs look admittedly cute.
  4. At least Hime and Iria's designs are distinctive from their Disney Princess counterparts (Fa Mulan and Tiana) and don't look too similar to them, unlike Cindy, Bianca, and Zade, who look too similar to Cinderella, Snow White, and Jasmine.

Reception

As with Vídeo Brinquedo's other animated properties, the series is universally panned by both critics and audiences alike, with many criticisms targeted at it being a blatant rip-off of the Disney Princess franchise, as well as its extremely low production values, its nonsensical premise, it's extremely unlikable characters, offensive racial stereotypes, rancid morals, it's inappropriate and sometimes pedophilic risqué humor (which is mainly targeted at its female leads) and it's extremely sexist and misogynistic approach by portraying its lead characters as being weak, airheaded, whiny, fashion-obsessed damsels in constant need to be rescued.

Most reviewers on the internet who had reviewed the show itself such as Bobsheux for example (evidence via the videos below) hated the show so much that most of them were unable to finish watching the rest of the episodes from Seasons 2-5 of the show, having given up watching after the entirety of Season 1; some even gave up after watching only the first episode.

Trivia

  • This was the only animated television series ever produced by the Brazilian mockbuster company Vídeo Brinquedo (not counting The Little Cars film series).
  • As mentioned before, after the series was canceled, it was later followed with a stand-alone spin-off feature film "The Frog Prince" featuring only Iria from the show, which was made by Vídeo Brinquedo solely just to cash in on Disney's The Princess and the Frog a year later.
  • Each season of the show is unusually short with a total of only three episodes which have a total run-time of 11 minutes long each. When released on DVD by both Vídeo Brinquedo and MorningStar Entertainment, all three episodes of each season are compiled altogether and sold as one feature-length film with a total run-time of between 35-40 minutes, including some Brazilian TV commercials tied in between each segment as filler content[7].
  • While Seasons 1-4 of the show were originally produced in 4:3 full-screen format and standard definition, Season 5 is the first and only season to have episodes produced in 16:9 widescreen format and high-definition.
  • While the series' theme song in its original Brazilian Portuguese audio is normal-pitched, for some strange reason, the English theme song is higher-pitched to PAL speed (about 4%-5% faster than usual), though the instrumental version of the theme song is sometimes played at PAL speedup this way, such as over the title card of the episode "Three Orders" from Season 3.

Videos

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The Entire Series

Season 1

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Season 2

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Season 3

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Season 4

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Season 5

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Reviews of the series

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Commentary of the series

References

  1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ufvPXRmXIE&list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z&index=14&ab_channel=CRIAN%C3%87ASINTELIGENTES
  3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ezSjfIU-nQ&list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z&index=15&ab_channel=CRIAN%C3%87ASINTELIGENTES
  4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SBC5jTqzZk&list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z&index=16&ab_channel=CRIAN%C3%87ASINTELIGENTES
  5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ab678YPksM&list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z&index=17&ab_channel=CRIAN%C3%87ASINTELIGENTES
  6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkzCDwDrI3Y&list=PLknt52tNJzu5x2xRK0flbBGljjAdZKs-z&index=18&ab_channel=CRIAN%C3%87ASINTELIGENTES
  7. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VnwrVRuPDE

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