Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 12 (Fin) – Back to the Way Things Were

The Sleepy Princess show, a surprise smash comedy hit of the Fall, closes out just how the title above says: with things back to where they were at the beginning. But at the episode’s start, when the demons find a letter to santa in Sya’s stocking asking to “go home”, they wonder if the princess has finally become homesick.

…She’s not, of course; she just wants to stop by Goodreste Palace to grab her special Christmas woolen undies. Rather than try to stop her (which would probably result in her going it alone), Twilight and the Cleric decide to transport straight into her palace bedroom. Predictably, Sya loses focus and has a quick nap in her lavish king-size bed.

When her mother the queen hears all the noise in her room she goes in to investigate, and lifts the covers to find…Cubey?! Yes, Cleric stowed Cubey away in case a body double was needed, and what do you know, the queen is convinced it’s her daughter! I was waiting for her to comment on how she changed her style while away.

The queen takes Cubey away, but Sya and the demons know they can’t just leave her, so the princess dresses up in one of her coolest dresses and strides down the halls without a care in the world. The three end up hiding in a giant suit of armor to avoid Paladins, but one of them, Evening Star, regales the comrade he thinks he’s talking to with super-embarrassing stories of Sya when she was little. Naturally, Twilight and Cleric can barely contain their delight.

Evening Star chases them until dawn, when he falls asleep instantly (he’s apparently a night owl). The gang regroups in Sya’s room, where she decides she’ll take responsibility as a princess and ensure things go back to the way they were.

Just as “Princess” Cubey is about to speak to the entire Kingdom of Goodreste (with TV feeds reaching to the Demon Castle), Sya cuts in with her own speech thanking her subjects for their love, which has helped her remember she is a princess, not a hostage.

Sya also speaks to how her experiences with the demons have not only helped her learn a lot about herself, but about the ways humans and demons can have better relations down the road. Then she somewhat undermines those words by accosting Cubey while wearing a hastily-scrawled Twilight mask and his cape, declaring he’s taking Sya back to his castle after all.

In short, Sya was only back for a quick Christmas drop-in and hello. In order for things to “go back to the way they were”, she needed to ensure she went back to her second home with Twilight, Cleric, and Cubey. Her mother, who recognized her voice during the speech, seems to understand her daughter’s intentions, and wishes her well on the adventures to follow. What a cool mom!

Sya & Co. return to the Demon Castle where she’s warmly welcomed, and the castle proceeds to throw one hell of a Christmas party. Twilight and Cleric than curse themselves for forgetting the main reason for going to Goodreste with Sya—to retrieve her woolen undies—but Sya seems unconcerned.

For one thing, she may have grabbed them after all before leaving, and is wearing them as they speak (though she’s thankfully grown beyond the skirt-lifting necessary to prove it). Whether she’s got them or not, she seems quite happy distributing other sets to her Teddy Demon friends as thanks for their loyal service. With that, she lets out a big ol’ yawn and drifts off to sleep with her signature “Syaaaaaa”, her final quest complete.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 11 – Princess Popular

After waiting in line with the autograph-seeking Teddy Demons, Harpy invites Sya to a pajama party, somewhat disingenuously promising it will result in more cheerful sleep. Sya can’t pass that up, but she needs more information on what a pajama party is…so she hops into the Demon King’s bed to “practice” such a party.

Jumping in bed to practice is an extremely misinterpret-able scenario for, say, Cleric, who also overhears Sya talking about demons and humans falling in love. As a result, his devotion to protecting Sya’s chastity overrides his loyalty to his lord, and he attacks Twilight with lightning. The battle eventually gets too loud for Sya to sleep, but upon returning to her room she gets the cheerful sleep she sought…precluding the need to attend the real party.

Poor Harpy…she just wants to be friends with the princess! The succubus Cubey, on the other hand, has an ulterior motive: she wants to become more popular (popularity literally being the life blood of Succubi). When she learns she and Sya closely resemble one another, she seeks Sya’s tutelage on how to be more popular.

Unfortunately for Cubey and like most things regarding Sya, she isn’t popular on purpose, it just happens. Also, Sya misunderstands Cubey’s intentions from the start, believing her to be a potential body double in need of elite training. This results in Sya tying Cubey up and dragging her around the castle causing havoc, from murdering ghost shrouds to plucking Quillodillo quills to…well, actually, brushing Teddy Demons is delightful!

By the time Sya has Cubey on a cliff overlooking the lava lake impressing upon her the importance of staring death in the eye, Cubey’s struggling and yelling causes the cliff to collapse, and Sya falls into the lava and dies…again. Cubey fails to become more popular or learn anything useful from Sya, but Sya’s quest to get better “rest” succeeds.

Finally, Twilight and the Big 10 are having another important meeting when Sya again busts in like she owns the place, parks herself at the table, and tents her fingers like a petite, adorable Gendou Ikari. Whatever they’re discussing in this meeting is irrelevant: she has a task for them: to determine why the quality of her sleep has been lacking of late.

Twilight brings in Hypnos, noted sleep expert, to determine the cause. He arranges so the group can watch Sya’s dreams in real time, and the culprit to her crap sleep is revealed: “D-Whatsit”, AKA Dawner, AKA Akatsuki, the hero. Out of a desire to hang out, he is relentlessly pursuing Sya in her dreams.

While Cleric has known for a while now that Sya’s fiancée D-Whatsit and Dawner are the same person, both Sya and the rest of the Demons only come to this realization while her dreams unfold. Regardless of who he is, Sya doesn’t want anything to do with him, and shifts between attacking him and running from him. But like a chipper T-1000, he Just. Keeps. Coming.

Eventually Hypnos determines that Dawner is in Sya’s dream thanks to a letter bearing Sya’s signature…which Twilight learns he himself let fall out of his cape and into Dawner’s belt when he was redirecting the Hero’s party away from the still-under construction area of the Demon Castle grounds.

Once Twilight retrieves that slip of paper (not depicted on camera), Sya’s sleeping demeanor instantly improves dramatically to her usual tranquil “Syaaaaaa”-ing. And so, due to her acute aversion to the Hero, Sya further delayed her own rescue. But as we’ve seen, she’s not in any particular hurry to ever be rescued. She’s got the place on lock!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 10 – Demons in Humanland

Princess Sya has her most far-flung adventure yet, though it begins with a false start as she attempts to travel to the Human Realm on her own to purchase a state-of-the-art massage pillow. She puts her hear up and dons a gym uniform to enter ALL OUT MODE, then demonstrates her speed and agility as she outruns the Demons and eludes their attempts to stop her. Twilight, Siberian and Cleric are transfixed by her surprising athleticism, noting she’s like a football player out there.

When she starts getting perilously close to the poison swamp on the extreme edge of Demon Castle grounds, Twilight sets a trap with a bed in a cage. Nobody thinks it has a chance of working…until it works perfectly! They return Sya (cage and all) to the castle, where she tells them she won’t try to go alone if they accompany her, remarking that she knows they’re kind deep down.

The flattery works, and the next day Twilight, Siberian and Cleric accompany Syalis to the Human city of Endopolis. Sya is resplendent in her tidy traveler’s garb, but the demons’ disguises are so abysmal she resorts to pinning large notes on their backs reading “Practicing for Halloween.” Once in town, she spots a new Deluxe version of the pillow she covets on sale. All they have to do is wait in line…for three hours. Sya falls asleep on Siberian’s shoulders, but eventually the pillow is purchased.

By then it’s nighttime, and the anti-demon festival fireworks begin. When getting in the wrong line earlier, Twilight secured a VIP lottery ticket, and ends up winning a primo private viewing spot complete with snacks and cocktails (I’m really not sure about banana milk tea flavored popcorn though!) Just when the Demons start to think Sya is simply stalling because she doesn’t want to leave her own realm, she draws them a “grinning demon” symbol and suggests they head home—home, of course being the Demon Castle.

Once there, what becomes of the expensive massage pillow they went all that way and went through all that guff to get her? She pawns it off on the Teddy Demons. Hey, at least someone will enjoy it! Every episode of Sleepy Princess is an absolute hoot, but this was even more fun and hilarious than usual, all while deepening the bond of friendship between a human hostage and her gold-hearted captors—which is starting to bode well for future peace between their realms.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 09 – My Uninhibited Hostage Life!

When Syalis smashes the equivalent of a phone when the “Human Shopping Channel” won’t ship a waterbed to the Demon Castle, she starts a quest to build her own. At the same time, Twilight and the Big Ten have a quest of their own: Ignore the princess so she’ll start feeling and acting like a hostage.

Naturally, this backfires. Not only does Syalis successfully collect all of the materials and tools she needs, but those items are sourced directly from the Big Ten. While they are all silent towards her, when she ties leashes to them and drags them around, they dare not resist lest they accidentally harm her.

This results in the unprecedented scene of her pulling the King, Cleric, and Siberian like she’s walking her pets. When Alraune tries to restore order, Syalis yawns and they misinterpret her tears to mean their ignoring her has harmed her emotionally, so they give up and help her build her waterbed.

The next Big Ten Demon Quest comes from a suggestion from Hades to put the princess to work. Syalis herself takes on the quest to complete all the work she is given in a single day, as she was raised to understand that she can’t sleep until her work is done!

Oddly enough, her work takes the form of summer vacation homework, with math problems, a diary in which she writes entries for every minute (instead of day), and arts and crafts. She performs all of this work in her “work clothes”, a fetching shoulderless black dress.

Once she’s done an entire month’s work in a day, the Top Ten concludes that continuing to give her that amount of work is unrealistic, and could in fact cause more harm than good. Meanwhile, Syalis plops on her bed without changing and falls asleep using her usual pink robes as a blanket, her quest complete.

0-for-2 so far, the Demons make it a trifecta with a third quest: Teach the princess how to be a proper hostage by showing her other hostages in the form of recently-captured human bandits. Syalis takes one look at the conditions of these prisoners and assumes the demons are planning to eat them.

When she’s told to react to the demons as the other hostages do—with intense fear and loathing—she does just that, with Minase Inori completely changing the usual way Syalis speaks to sound more like the classic damsel-in-distress. The demons hate this, and all of the verbal barbs she tosses their way hit their marks and leave them a defeated pile in the dungeon.

The other humans, having witnessed what the princess did to the demons, are now more afraid of her than the demons. Syalis takes the demons’ reactions to mean she should go back to acting the way she has all along, with no regard whatsoever to her hostage status. That said, she still puts on the hostage act…but only when it’s convenient to her.

Finally, while lying in bed before falling asleep, she wonders to a teddy demon that if everyone in the castle has been so kind to her thus far, why can’t humans and demons get along? Could her stay there be the impetus for her taking steps towards a peace treaty once released? Will her first order to the Hero be to stand down?

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 08 – The Nightmare Continues!

Hero Akatsuki’s comrade Kisho is able to open a mini-wormhole using the gem in the princess’ tiara, but it’s only big enough for Akatsuki to pass his hand through and tap Syalis’ head. This apparently causes her to have “nightmares”, so she crashes a Big Ten meeting to tell everyone about it so she’ll feel better. At no point is anyone able to stop her from doing this, once again demonstrating the true Master of the Demon Castle.

I put “nightmare” in quotes, because what she really has is a dream about Akatsuki when they were kids. Of course, he’s so forgettable she refers to him as “A-whatsisname”. Though he’s just presenting her with a bouquet, when he trips on a rock it ends up in her face, complete with thorns and a bee. She also details a “race” they had that ended in his apparent death, only for her to forget him when he returned alive.

The kicker is that she describes this forgettable person as her fiancee, which leads the Demon Cleric (and no one else) to assume she’s talking about Akatsuki. Due to talking about her “nightmare” Syalis is able to go back to sleep, while the Fire Venom Dragon must head into battle with the heroes without a sendoff party, the poor guy!

In the next segment, Syalis writes a death letter to her mother, even though she’s merely suffering from a bad cavity. We quickly learn that she’s overdramatic when it comes to any malady that befalls her, as well as perhaps the worst patient a doctor (or in this case dentist) could have.

Her big hang-up is an absolute refusal to show anyone (aside from her loyal Teddy Demons)  the inside of her mouth, for a reason she keeps secret until the very end: her tongue is apparently a little shorter than average. Due to her histrionics the entire Demon Castle gathers in the operating theater, and we get a cameo from Cubey, another member of the female demons.

In the final segment (there are notably no sleeping quests this week, even though she’s asleep at the end of each segment), Fire Venom Dragon returns to the castle, utterly defeated after a three-day, three-night battle against Akatsuki. When he tells them his bag of items meant to help him in his battle had been replaced by…other things, they all assume it’s more Princess mischief.

However, as he further details the items he found in the bag, one by one his allies remember having placed those items there for various reasons and forgot to replace them with the proper weapons. Of course, each person, including Twilight, is so embarrassed, they take the easy out and falsely accuse the Princess of doing what they did.

This whips the dragon into a rage, but they all hold him back, knowing full well Syalis doesn’t deserve to be chewed out, at least this time. As for Syalis, she’s reading a difficult grimoire, eating avocado, and drinking a potion like a sports drink. Looks like a pretty good night!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 07 – Starting Over from Zzzzero

While there was no danger of Syalis’ antics growing stale at the Demon Castle, there’s nothing like a change of venue to freshen things up. That change occurs when Twilight’s rival Hades kidnaps Syalis in her sleep and deposits her in the far more rundown (but quieter!) Former Demon Castle.

The overarching joke this week is that Hades acts precisely like Twilight and his underlings when they first captured Syalis. Now they know better and harbor a healthy fear and respect for the pint-sized princess, while almost pitying Hades for not knowing what’s coming down the pike.

Predictably, Syalis doesn’t panic or cower before Hades or his adorable henchmen triplets Ker, Ber, and Os. Her first instinct is to simply sleep, in lieu of anything better to do. Then she puts her head on the appallingly cheap pillow and gets a nasty case of deja vu from her first night in Twilight’s castle.

Armed with a new quest to improve her pillow as the first step in a process, Syalis immediately returns to her usual relentlessly resourceful and determined self. When Ker, Ber, and Os try to intimidate them, she casually tosses an explosive pompom at the cell gate and sends them fleeing in terror.

Syalis’ search for fluffy bedding materials takes her into direct contact with Hades, but since he’s busy on the videophone gloating to Twilight (and laughing an exaggerated laugh like Rintarou Okabe) he doesn’t notice her literally ripping his clothes off for repurposing.

She gets an assist from her “friends” at the Demon Castle when they make such a ruckus on the phone, Hades is distracted. They even get him to look and levitate upwards so she can snag his fur boa, and when she does they cheer like Houston celebrating a successful rocket launch!

The pillow, however, is merely the first step. Syalis’ second quest involves improvement of her bedding in general. She soon finds that this Former Demon Castle has a lot more traps, but thankfully none of the needles, flying axes or fireballs end up killing her, and she meets a kindred spirit in Hypnos, the “personification of drowsiness”.

Syalis is immediately impressed by Hypnos’ dedication to sleep and begins calling him “Master” and asking him to teach her. When he shows her that the undersides of the tiles of an electrified walkway are fluffy fur, she jumps several steps ahead, killing the power source and gathering all of the furry tiles.

This sets off a number of traps, but Syalis must have been trained in martial arts and self-defense, because she’s able to dodge all of them, impressing Hypnos enormously. Her final bed contraption consists of a large mobile fur mattress that moves along a track, avoiding fireballs as she sleeps.

But as she’s starting a third quest for another comfortable night’s sleep, Twilight and some members of his Big Ten Council prepare a rescue mission to retrieve their captive. Lower-ranking people in the castle note how quiet and boring it is without the princess. They all want her back!

Hades remains in blissful ignorance, believing it laughable that the princess could leave her cell, let alone do all of the stuff she’s done. Yet she’s in his personal fur stash gathering materials, and just as he’s discussing all of the status-boosting weapons Ker/Ber/Os can use to repel Twilight and his compatriots, Syalis is destroying those very weapons in order to make a comfy neck pillow.

When Twilight & Co. finally confront Hades, the two Demon Lords seem poised for an epic one-on-one battle, which is interrupted by the sight of Syalis flying off in a flying contraption also meant for Ker/Ber/Os. Twilight & Co. peace out, taking a rain check on that duel, and chase after Syalis, who reunites with a Demon Teddy and sleeps soundly on the bag of stolen furs as the contraption flies her back to the Demon Castle—a place she’s come to think of as home.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 06 – OK Bloomers

Hero Dawner and his party take three trap-ridden paths that end up leading them all the way back to Goodreste, which undermines the whole point of capturing Princess Syalis. The Demon King wants to fight the Hero, be he also wants the Hero to have a sporting chance.

As the Big Ten Demons discuss all the means by which they’ll lure the Hero to them and level him up (if he ever makes it there), Sya ends up using those to wash a blue stain out of her comforter. She sullies the Fountain of Purity, uses a mini tornado bomb to agitate the washwater, uses the Magnespear as a drying rack, and uses Professor Gearbolt’s new mecha as a spin dryer.

When the seasons start to change and a chilly wind enters her chamber, Syalis realizes she left her prized woolen underwear at home, and so must make new ones. Again, given adequate motivation, she’ll stop at nothing and spare no demon’s welfare to achieve her quests goals.

That said, she remembers her mother telling her as a kid not to lift up her skirt to reveal her undies, nor mention them to anyone, in order to preserve her dignity and that of the crown. As a result, she uses various non-verbal forms of code to try to express to the demons what she’s making. They misinterpret her code and go on high alert, believing she’s creating some kind of weapon to destroy the castle. But nope…she just wants a warm stomach at night!

All this chaos, and Hero’s inability to arrive and get this confrontation over with, has the Demon King in a constant state of anxiety and insomnia, collapsing in front of Syalis’ cell door. While she momentarily considers “finishing him off” with her giant scissors, she instead tries several methods to put him to sleep, none of which remotely work.

That is, until he asks her what she does to fall asleep, and again she remembers what her mom did for her. She pats the Demon King gently on the head until he nods off, then falls asleep beside him until her plush bears carry her off to her bead.

And so without any meaningful action from the Hero, Syalis has successfully neutralized the Demon King and his court. There’s really no coming back from his present drop in credibility as a villain. For cryin’ out loud, he was head-patted to sleep by his supposed hostage!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 05 – The Comfort(er) of a Friend

This week made it suddenly occur to me that there are no women among the Demon Castle court and staff (at least not in humanoid form), but that changes when the “female unit” of the Demon King’s army returns to the castle for the first time since the capture of the princess.

The first girl we meet is Harpy, who is a harpy, but an extremely friendly one. Specifically, she wants to make her first human friend and engage in girl talk during a pajama party. She quickly learns that Syalis is primarily concerned with none of those things, and finds her mostly annoying and—worse—detrimental to her sleep!

Indeed, Syalis rejects all of Harpy’s attempts to befriend her until the harpy spreads her wings and the princess gets a good long look and feel at those silky feathers. Without the slightest regard for Harpy’s welfare, she deems the wings too “impractical” to remove (i.e. tear off) and simply uses the soft wings as her new comforter. Harpy is forced to sleep in an awkward position beside her.

The dimensional limits of Syalis’ modest bed soon rear their head when Syalis’ sleep posture results in them sliding off the bed, so the princess begins a quest for a bigger bed. Despite her shabby treatment thus far Harpy is so intent on being friends with the princess she lets slip a castle secret: those gigantic horns that top the tallest tower are really as light and fluffy as a cloud!

With no regard for Harpy’s quads, Syalis attaches a cloth harness to her legs and has her fly her up to the horns. At first it seems Syalis is content to nap on them, but before Harpy knows it she’s carving her new bigger bed directly out of the horns, like memory foam! Due to a big chunk being taken out, one of the two horns flops over impotently—it’s truly a matter of the princess “making her mark” on the castle!

Harpy’s quads are tortured further by the additional mass of the bed, but the result is a much more comfortable sleeping situation for both of them. I’ve heard of royalty using people as welcome mats, but not a combination flying apparatus and comforter! We can only quietly lament poor Harpy’s entirely unbalanced “friendship” with the princess.

The return of the women means the return of the only female member of the Big 10 Council: the beautiful Neo Alraune. When Red Siberian shouts at Syalis to get out when she constantly interrupts their meeting with her vuvuzela (where the heck’d she get that?!), Alraune feels bad for the captive princess, who after all must be terribly lonely.

The Demon King, Siberian, and other council members scoff heartily, then switch on the reconnaissance drone presently following Syalis, to demonstrate what a goddamn terror she’s been. Sure enough, in her quest to build a log bed she is furiously hacking away at Alraune’s big brother (who happens to be a greaser tree—a term I never thought I’d type!).

In the midst of witnessing the systematic destruction and hollowing-out of her kin, Alraune seems ever torn between continuing to sympathize with the princess and acknowledging that her fellow council members might have a point. Even when she makes the excuse that her brother feels no pain, and that the princess is being eco-friendly by using all of the wood, right on cue Syalis discards most of the wood she cut as too rough.

The ordeal compels Alraune to visit Syalis in her cell, to ask if she really is human. After all, who among the human race could cause so much chaos in the domain of demons? Why, Her Royal Highness Aurora Suya Rhys Kaymin, that’s who!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 04 – Do You Want to Build a Bathtub?

Despite being a hostage and captive, Princess Syalis is still entitled to the occasional bath, same as all the other inhabitants of the Demon Castle. However, the Red Siberian ordered far too small a tub based on inaccurate information about her size, so it isn’t long until her frustrated fists have pummeled the tiny tub into rubble.

So she sets off in search of water and materials for a new tub. She uses the communication piping to pipe hot water directly from the public demon baths into her cell, then happens upon Rocket Turtle, which features a fuse for a tail. Upon blowing the turtle up, its shell is left behind, making for the perfect basin in which to luxuriantly bathe and eventually sleep.

There are no consequences of Syalis setting off the largest explosion to date in the next segment, in which the Summer heat has afflicted everyone in the castle. Searching for releif, Syalis hears about the “cold area” of the castle, and “borrows” the outer body of the Tire Genie in order to brave the area without freezing.

The ice demon subjects of the area, who have long harbored resentment for the perceived better treatment of fire demons, mistake the princess for their leader, Ice Golem, and she uses that mistaken identity to issue them orders to equip her cell with an igloo, three seals, and some shaved ice, even claiming that Syalis will be the next Demon King!

With Syalis having acquired both leisurely sleep in a hot bath and a wonderfully cooling setup in the summer heat, the third segment offers something completely different: While on another excursion to steal supplies, she shakes an hourglass and ends up shrinking herself to half her normal, already-petite size.

Her clothes don’t shrink, so it’s hard to move, and she can neither lift her stolen goods nor climb out of her present location without help. When she uses the Procupine and Minotaur as a ladder, Quilly won’t let her go, as there is apparently something uniquely pleasant about holding a small human child—especially knowing what a menace she is when full-sized!

As a result, other demons flock to the suddenly-tiny princess, leading to the fiasco she had hoped to avoid (and her strategy of repelling the others by shooting Quilly’s quills only goes so far). But, to her surprise, she doesn’t have to return to her cell to get a good night’s sleep; simply being in Quilly’s warm embrace eventually bestows upon her a child’s sleep that comes after a full day of play. All’s well that ends well!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 03 – Waking in the Light

Grimoires sap the MP of humans but in exchange allows them to use powerful magic; the demons assume Syalis would try to steal one in order to gain said magic, but really she just wants to read something boring so she’ll fall asleep!

The first grimoire doesn’t make her sleepy, but unbeknownst to her it lowers her MP to critical levels. As a result she’s unable to stand or walk and must roll around like a log. That said, she doesn’t die and require resurrection by the Cleric!

As she bounces down steps and pinballs off statuses, she inadvertently unlockes the most powerful Forbidden Grimoire’s seal. Once again, the princess manages to foil the castle’s defenses quite on accident!

When Azalif, Spirit of the Grimoire is awakened, he assumes the princess wants to use him to break out of the prison and lend power to the Hero. Instead, she smushes him back into the grimoire.

Syalis rejects all of Azalif’s offers to help her defeat the Demon Lord, but when he mentions she can “incapacitate” everyone in the castle, she performs the spell, which again uses almost all of her MP.

Everyone in the castle falls into a deep sleep for three days…except for Syalis, the caster. Not about to be defeated, she finally completes the quest by using a grimoire…as a pillow.

One day, Syalis becomes obsessed with the pressure points that aid sleep, but her teddy slave is too soft and plushy to apply the necessary pressure, so she breaks out of her cell to find someone who will.

Preferring to keep her intentions vague, she only makes things awkward for everyone, including the Demon Lord himself, with her misleading phrasing:

I need someone to touch my body.

I’ll fall asleep in an instant, so please touch me in my room.

You…Don’t say a word and push here.

The Demon Lord relents, presses the right spot, and Syalis goes out like a light. But she soon realizes that without sunlight (the castle resides in eternal night) her internal clock will become more and more messed up and she’ll never feel rested.

Making use of various items she’s stolen in past episodes, she escapes to the Forest of Sacred Treasure to investigate a bright light that turns out to be the Demon Lord’s ultimate weapon: the Sword of Valor.

The demons assume the princess is escaping to meet up with the Hero and prepare to chase her down, only for her to quietly walk past them and back towards the castle, the sword on her back gleaming and humming along. Of course, she has no intention to use it as a sword, but as a makeshift sun to greet her in the morning.

As with all of the things she’s done, the Demon Lord is terribly bemused and befuddled, but that’s Princess Syalis for you—always in her own world, seeking nothing more or less than the best possible night’s sleep.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 02 – Her Own Little World

As the Hero Dawner and his party brave the labyrinthing dungeons leading to the Demon Castle, the Demon King shows up to taunt them. Dawner is convinced Princess Syalis is in appalling danger and terribly frightened, but we know better that the King is just putting up a brave front. In reality, the captive Syalis is an entity entirely separate from both man and demon, concerned only with her own comfort during her captivity.

As such, once she wakes up with a bug bite and realizes her cell is open to the elements, she determines she needs a mosquito net. Since she lacks a net, she makes one out of the perfect material: the boss of the ghost shroud she turned into bedsheets, who paid her a visit to give her a piece of his mind only to fall to her giant scissors. If you’re going to confront Syalis, you’d better not be made out of something she can use to make herself cozier!

With the net made, she must reach a point high enough above her bed at which to hang it so it will be effective. Again the means of achieving this objective walk right into her cell in the form of a cat with suction shoes. She “borrows” them (but never gives them back) and climbs up a tower outside her room at the right angle. This happens to be the location of a phoenix nest with the first eggs laid in a century, but she couldn’t care less—she’s just hanging her net!

Her next quest involves locating a pharmaceutical means of improving her sleep quality. When her very blatant efforts to swipe a bottle of sleep potion in the middle of an elder demon meeting come up short, she has the teddies break her out and explores the castle, eventually finding a grove of giant mushrooms that double as fluffy mattresses. Unfortunately, they are toxic, and she dies…again! Turns out she’s died a lot, and the Cleric is working overtime to impress upon her the importance of valuing her life.

Syalis’ attempts to secure sleep potions put her over the 100-mark when it comes to Demon Castle code violations, as recorded by the rule-obsessed leader of the Red Siberian guards. After reprimanding the guard who almost gave Syalis the potion without the Demon King’s consent, he returns her to her cell for a full inspection. When he tells her the hostage (i.e. her) is supposed to be “sleepless out of fear” of the king, her look is so spacy it’s as if she was briefly transported into the cosmos.

After her cell is organized and (most) of the stuff she stole returned, he proceeds to deliver a lecture on the Demon King and his castle. His droning cadence eventually lulls Syalis into acute fatigue, and when she realizes the Siberian’s mane is soft and fluffy, she falls right to sleep, utterly ignoring his pleas for her to be more afraid. It sure seems like a losing proposition, especially since much of the rest of the castle has given up. It’s Syalis’ world, and they’re just living in it!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 01 (First Impressions) – Comfort At All Costs

In an effort to claim the Human kingdom of Goodereste as his dominion, the Twilight Demon Lord takes Princess Syalis hostage. But rather than despair in her unadorned cell, all Syalis really wants to do is get a good night’s sleep!

We follow her increasingly creative efforts to make that happen through the gradual improvement of her sleeping conditions. That’s it…that’s the show! There isn’t the slightest effort to make either her captivity or its political ramifications remotely serious, and that’s just fine! Syalis has her priorities, and they begin and end with her nightly comfort, The End.

Her efforts are laid out as individual “quests”, four of which make up this first episode, starting with a new pillow. At first she considers whether to kill the demon teddies who serve her meals, but she instead simply brushes them of their excess fluff.

Syalis proves wonderfully resourceful and industrious when it comes to locating the materials and tools with which to create said pillow, which makes you wonder whether she wouldn’t be in captivity and the Demon Lord wouldn’t be a threat if she used her powers for things other than improving her bedding!

With her pillow quest completed, she proceeds to have a wonderful night of peaceful sleep, which is very much the opposite of what her host wants. At the conclusion of each of her quests, the Demon Lord stops by her cell to talk, only to find her sleeping so soundly even he dare not disturb her, and holds off their chat to a tomorrow that never comes.

The Demon Lord isn’t the only softie in this giant, lightning-wreathed, otherwise intimidating-looking castle. His guards, servants, and members of his own court are either two Cokes short of a six-pack or simply too bewildered by the princess’ unexpected okayness with her captivity to do anything.

Syalis’ next two quests have her exchanging her crown for a sorcerers’ scissors in order to make a “soft crown” she can sleep in without it marring her forehead, and then stabbing and (re?)killing a “Ghost Shroud” she deems the softest and most luxurious bedsheet.

The latter quest is an exhaustive castle-wide cloak-snipping rampage that none of her captors can stop or even slow down! It’s also aided by the fact her meal teddies are always ready and willing to give her the key to her cell in exchange for a good brushing.

Her final quest of the week involves finding a more overall comfortable bed, away from the din of the various monsters and demons snoring in her cell block. This leads her to literally stumbling upon a wind shield that suspends her on a soft cushion of air…which happens to be a shield the Demon Lord absolutely needs in order to maintain his military advantage.

In order to take the smaller wind-producing piece of the shield with her, she smashes the shield to bits with a passing “diamond guard” she tosses into a pillowcase to make a blackjack. I don’t know why a princess knows about mob weapons, but I don’t care; it’s hilarious, as is the way she jumbles together the useless remains of the shield and tosses it into a chest.

With a potentially ideal air-bed in her possession, Syalis searches the castle and grounds for the best place to set it up. In the process she is spotted by guards, then trips on a slippery demon, falls into the magma moat…and dies. This happens hilariously quickly and casually.

No sooner does she realize she’s dead doe she wake up in the demon chapel beneath the castle, run by the Demon Cleric. She also wakes up in a coffin, and proceeds to use the Cleric’s goat horns to sand smooth, then lines with the ghost shroud and her new pillow.

Her new bed thus perfected, Syalis closes herself into the coffin, away from the noises of her cellmates, and passes into a deep slumber, none the worse for wear after her death-by-magma and rapid resurrection. Of course, that’s when the Demon Lord arrives at her cell to talk, only to have to postpone it for another time, because he’s not one to interrupt a princess’ sleep!

Nimble, imaginative, and filled with lovely stylized fantasy imagery, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle is a lot of fun, anchored by the always-charming vocal talents of Minase Inori and a supporting cast of colorful supporting voices.

I love how the Demon Lord and his minions are basically a bunch of big ol’ softies who can do nothing against Syalis’ easy, breezy charm. She basically dares them to wake her up and throw her in a dungeon, but that ain’t happening…and even if it did, she’d probably make the most of it!

Finally, there’s also a Hero and his party out there trying to rescue the princess, unaware that she doesn’t need to be rescued. She doesn’t even remember the guy’s name, and trying to remember would be a waste of time better spent improving her bedding.