Animesque to the max!
Sea Princesses (known as Princesas Do Mar in Brazil) is a children's animated series that debuted in 2007, based on a series of books created by the Brazilian writer and cartoonist Fabio Yabu, previously known for the Japanese hero-inspired webcomic Combo Rangers. The series was produced by the Spanish studio Neptuno Films and the Australian distributor Southern Star Entertainment, while supervised by the Brazilian studio Flamma Films.
Just like in the books, the animation takes place in a universe where there is a hidden world at the bottom of the sea known as the World of Salacia, founded by the goddess Salacia so that different families of sea people known as Salinos could reign over each species of animal in order to protect each species from the dangers that threaten them. The animation also features the trio of princesses Polvina, Tubarina and Ester as the main protagonists.
Sea Princesses contains examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: Isa, the Princess of the Penguins, was afraid of water, but with the help of Santa Claus, she overcame her fear.
- Adults Are Useless: Most of the problems that occur in the World of Salacia are resolved by the protagonist trio, even major issues like "The Rescue", where their world was at risk of being discovered by the Drylanders due to a baby trapped in a cave in the middle of the sea. Polvina and her friends are the only ones to discover the problem and solve it. In fact, even the animals have proven to be more useful in solving problems than kings and queens, as was the case with Tentie in the episode "The Sea Quake".
- Aerith and Bob: The princes and princesses have names based on their animals in Portuguese. Many of them are common names like Ester, Marcello, Bia, Hugo, Leia, Marley, Isa and Vivi, but some are invented names like Polvina, Tubarina, Tata, Sirilo, Elektra, Camarina, and Maurico.
- Ambiguously Brown: Vivi, Lia, Maurico and Matilda are the only characters to have dark skin.
- Animesque: The characters have large eyes similar to those in Shoujo manga. This is no surprise considering that Fábio Yabu was responsible for illustrating his books and has already shown himself to be a big fan of anime like Sailor Moon, which had several references in his previous series Combo Rangers. The only exception to characters who do not have these eyes are adult men who have black bead eyes.
- Anime Hair: Camarina and Soraia notably have blue hair, while Marcela and Caramelo have green hair. Polvina also has pink hair (red in the book) in the shape of an octopus with a face serving as her crown, originally in the first book it is mentioned that the octopus is not her real hair (nor a real octopus either), however in the episode "The Makeover" it is shown that this is in fact her hair.
- Babysitting Episode: In "The Babysitters", Ester and Marli confidently set out on their first babysitting job. But it all goes horribly wrong when they lose the Sea Lion King's son, Naimo, who disappears in search of his favorite toy.
- Balance, Speed, Strength Trio: The protagonist trio fit into this, with Polvina representing the balance, Ester the speed and Tubarina the strength. The three of them always work together to solve many problems.
- Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Just about every single princess wears midriff-baring crop tops, matching both their girliness and their aquatic theme. By comparison, the princes are either shirtless (like Marcello, Maurico and Sirilo) or wear a full shirt (like Hugo).
- Battle of the Bands: In "Battle of the Bands", the three princes have started a band so they can enter the 'Battle of the Bands' competition. Tubarina, Polvina and Ester decide they'll start a flute-playing band, and beat them.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In "Grow Up", Marcello wishes he had bigger muscles, just before he cuts his leg on poinsonous coral that makes him delirious and pass out. He has a dream where he wakes up with huge muscles. Not knowing how to control his newfound strength, he wreaks havoc wherever he goes, culminating in him collapsing the Shark Palace.
- Beast in the Building: In "One Too Many", Ester has been constantly bringing various animals to live in the Starfish Palace, much to the dismay of her mother, who orders her not to bring any more animals or she will send them all away, however, Ester accidentally ended up bringing a baby shark that she had promised to help, but she ends up losing sight of it in the palace.
- Bilingual Bonus: The princess' names are based on the Portuguese names of the animals their kingdoms represent, usually bordering into Punny Name territory. For example, Polvina is the Octopus (polvo) Princess and Tubarina is the Shark (Tubarão) Princess and Ester is the Starfish (estrelas do mar) Princess.
- Canon Foreigner: Marcelo was created for the animated series. In the books, Tubarina had a female cousin named Marcela.
- Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: After Polvina saves a sea bass from a diver's net in "The Ungrateful Fish", she's surprised to discover that instead of being grateful, it becomes very aggressive towards her.
- Cosmetic Catastrophe: In "The Makeover", it's Polvina's birthday and Ester and Tubarina have a surprise party for her and also a surprise makeover! When the makeover turns out to be an ugly disaster, Ester and Tubarina have to try and unmake it before the party.
- Curtains Match the Windows: Just about all of the characters have hair and eyes of the same colour. And some of the characters have pink hair...
- Dances and Balls: In "The Royal Ball", the princesses are all very disappointed because the night of the Royal Ball has finally come and they are forbidden to attend. But curiosity gets the better of them and they decide to sneak into the ball.
- Demoted to Extra: In the books, Maurico was shown to be the main boy interacting with the other characters, but in the cartoon, his role was drastically reduced, having only one episode as the focus, "The Big Game". This was probably in favor of the new characters Marcello and Hugo. Marcello, by the way, behaves in a very similar way to Maurico.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first book, Polvina is presented as a girl who was afraid of sharks, especially because she was the target of a shark attack in the past and this reached the point where she rivaled Tubarina on the first day of school until overcoming this fear at the end of the same book. In the cartoon Polvina only shows fear of sharks in the first episode while throughout the rest of the series she sees several sharks without showing fear of them.
- Expressive Accessory: In the original books, the princesses' animal-themed crowns can change emotions. Subverted in the cartoon, on which, for budget issues, the crowns don't change their faces.
- Fever Dream Episode: In "Grow Up", after wishing he had bigger muscles, Marcello cuts his leg on some poisonous coral, becomes delirious and faints. While delirious, he has dream where he wakes up with huge muscles that causes him to wreak unwitting destruction wherever he goes.
- Fiendish Fish: Due to sharks being portrayed positively, barracuda take up the “menacing predator animal” role in their stead; one episode reveals that they’re supposed to have their own royalty to keep them in check, but that the royal family vanished long ago.
- Food Fight: In "The Dingleberry Mystery", a huge food fight is happening in the school. Miss Marla calls everyone inside and demands an explanation for what happened. Tubarina is identified as the one who seemingly started the fight, but she tells her that she didn't; she was just sitting down to eat her lunch when the dingleberry hit her out of nowhere, causing her to throw her lunch in the air, which lands on Vivi, Leia and Marli.
- Gossip Evolution: In "Rumours", Bia sends a note to the princesses telling them she's coming to visit. They're delighted but Marli and Vivi are not. They've heard that Bia from the Abysmal Kingdom is a strange creature with six tentacles who walks weirdly.
- Gratuitous Princess: The main characters are all from royal families that rule over different species of marine life. This leads to a lot of royalty crammed into a small area.
- Homemade Sweater from Hell: A beanie rather than a sweater, but in "The Runaway Grandmother", it's Salacia Day and every year Ester's grandmother knits her an embarrassing red beanie, which she loses so she can wear something much cooler. This year, she replaces it with a headband, just as her grandmother appears.
- Last of His Kind: In "The Last One", the sound of a shark wail brings Tubarina, Polvina and Ester down to the Abysmal Kingdom. None of the girls have ever seen a shark like this and think it is one of a kind.
- Kid Hero: The trio of protagonists are elementary school students, but that doesn't stop them from taking risks to solve many problems that put the safety of their world and its inhabitants at risk.
- The Masquerade: The first law of Salacia is that Salacians should never be seen by Drylanders. The princesses do break this several times throughout the series, although always with some plausible deniability (of the Paper-Thin Disguise or one time All Part of the Show sort).
- Misplaced Wildlife: Elektra is the Princess of the Electric Eels: a creature that is a freshwater fish.
- Never Bareheaded: The main characters are almost never seen without their crowns. In particular, Tubarina, the Princess of Sharks, and her cousin Marcelo are never seen without their shark-finned skullcaps.
- Out of Focus: Due to the massive number of characters, several princes and princesses ended up not receiving much focus in the series, especially due to the fact that it focused heavily on the protagonist trio. In the animated series, many of the characters were the main focus only in a single episode, yet characters like Matilda and Agostinha never received their own episodes. The same can be said of the kings and queens, King Shark seems to have too much focus, while other kings and queens very rarely appear, Polvina's father was the one who appeared the least in the cartoon.
- Princesses Rule: Bia is the princess of the Abyssal Kingdom, responsible for maintaining order in Beyondness sea and take care of the throne while her parents are travelling throughout the kingdom.
- Puppy Love: In "The Crush", Ester thinks love stories are ridiculous. Well, maybe it's not so ridiculous when Ester is struck with a crush for the new boy Caton.
- Required Secondary Powers: Elecktra/Electropaula, as the princess of electric eels, is immune to electric shocks. This becomes a plot point in “Shooting Star”.
- The Rival: Marli is the Princess of Swordfish, an arrogant girl and rival to Esther, wanting to overcome her at school and at any activity.
- Royal School: Averts most of the usual attributes associated with this trope. While everyone attending the school is royalty, the school is co-ed, and is not devoted to teaching children how to be princes and princesses. Rather, it seems to teach a normal curriculum (or, at least, normal for an undersea school).
- Secret Diary: In "The Diary", Polvina's diary has been stolen, and everyone at school is on the hunt for it. Ester and Tubarina want to help Polvina, but deep down are more intent on reading it to find out exactly what Polvina's secrets are.
- Shout-Out:
- In the episodes "The Missing Crown", "A Weighty Problem" and "The Great Escape" a pair of fishermen appear as antagonists. These fishermen resemble Don Ramon and Sr. Barriga from El Chavo del ocho. Similar to this, the Tubarina doll from the episode "The Doll" resembles the character La Chilindrina.
- The Combo Rangers are seen making several appearances in the series, usually appearing as teenage Drylanders in the episodes where they show the beach. However, in the episode "The Pirates", alternate versions of them appear as children dressed as pirates at a costume party and have a major focus on the episode's plot.
- Single Malt Vision: In "Grow Up", After cutting his leg on coral, Marcello sees two of Hugo and the rest are moving around.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Each family of Salacian royalty can communicate with the type of sea animal they represent (there’s a bit of flexibility in this, however; Marcello is the prince of hammerhead sharks only, but he can speak to all sharks). Healer Duante, for unknown reasons, is able to speak to all sea animals.
- Treasure Map: In "The Treasure", when the Shark King leaves a secret treasure map lying around, Tubarina, Marcello, Ester and Polvina see it and go off in search of the treasure.
- Under the Sea: The stories are in the world of Salacia, a hidden kingdom under the sea, full of princes and princesses from different animal species.
- The Un-Reveal: In "The New Princess", the girls suspected a Dryland girl to be a descendant of the lost Barracuda Royal family after seeing the usually grumpy barracuda being happy and friendly towards her, and also the girl had an barracuda royal bracelet in her possesion, was familiar with the ancient barracuda language, and the Shark King and Queen talked about a legend where a Barracuda princess once fell in love with a drylander and could had have descendants. However, the dryland girl and her mother leave their island before the princesses could discover more about her, leaving it unclear if she's actually a sea princess. It was only implied the girl saw the princesses as she left them a message in ancient barracuda language saying: "Goodbye friends".
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Or rather swimming shirtless scene in this case. Marcello is always seen bare-chested. (It also applies to some of the other princes, but Marcello gets the most screen time.)
- Water-Breathing Humans: The Salacians, naturally, can all breathe underwater. They can also breathe regular air, but don’t come up to the surface often due to fear of being discovered by Drylanders.
- Yellow Sash of Power: In "Lunch Power", the power goes to Tubarina's head when she is made lunch monitor, and she winds up sending all of the other students to the study room for the most minor of infractions and, in some cases, seemingly no infraction at all.
- You Go, Girl!: In "The Big Game", Maurico, the Urchin Prince, is looking to form a team in the Flubberball Little League. Ester is the best player around but Maurico refuses to have a girl in his team. Ester plans to form her own team for the League.
- You Just Ruined the Shot: In "The Pirates", Caramello the Sea Snail Prince goes in search of adventure. He sees a group of children on a ship seemingly being endangered by pirates. He boards the ship and suppresses the pirates, only to discover it is actually a dress-up party.