The Prince from Bento Box and 20th Century Television is an abhorrent animation series. It's also a boring animation series at the same time.
The show was created by live-action sitcom writer Gary Janetti whose only experience in animation was on Family Guy, so already the show is inspiring little confidence from me. He also has a reputation for uttering nasty and unfounded remarks to the Royal Family on Instagram, particularly with Meghan Markle and her infant son, Archie.
Janetti came up with the idea of a political satire series starring the eight-year old child, Prince George. Instead of getting rejected by every network from that disgusting idea from a disgusting man for a show to mock three real-life children (George, Charlotte, and Louis), of whom he had made George the "main character" of his satirizing Instagram account, for all of his petty mocking needs. Someone at Fox and HBO Max thought that this would be a good idea worth perusing as a series, despite Janetti's horrible behavior. His credentials on Family Guy made him at home on Fox, and that's all that mattered to Fox and HBO Max despite him not having experience with literally any other animated series. Fox's animation studio Bento Box was tasked with making Gary's vision come true, and the animation was shipped to Bento Box's long suffering, non-unionized Atlanta division of animators.
This show is just Family Guy remade into political satire, but without any of the nuances that had defined Family Guy as a one of a kind brilliant series. The Prince is an empty hollow shell of Family Guy.
The character designs had potential if they had any amount of movement to them. Some of the caricatures are fun in the political cartoon sort of way. But they only move like Family Guy characters, which is to say, not much at all.
In watching this series, you just feel really sorry for the animators in Atlanta who had to animate this series in this completely boring manner, likely because of Gary's restrictions. There is no discernable different from this domestic animation from other similar series that use overseas animation, and that's a shame to me, considering that America has many would-be excellent animators, but then they are either discouraged by the lack of any animator studios in the states or in the rare chance that a studio does open up, they're then wasted in their potential by studios like Bento Atlanta, where they're forced to animate on boring things that make little use of their unique talent such as The Prince.
Another example of this lack of character expression is Prince Charles who only has two facial expressions as well, which is a big waste of potential as he has an interesting and funny design on his own, but then the storyboarding and animation does absolutely nothing with it, and are not allowed to do anything with it. Prince Charles's design should be a starting point for more wacky poses to be drawn on him, using this funny design of him as a base, but the drawing of his design found on the model sheet itself shouldn't be the means to the end in terms of his static animation. It can't just be the default poses on his model sheet that are used to death in this series, but that what Gary wants for some reason.
Take a gander at Prince William's only two expressions. Gary Janetti and other non-experienced showrunners think that just the initial drawing of the character matters and that's it as far as animation goes on their series. Character animation is such an afterthought in most American animated adult sitcoms. Only the first funny drawing of Prince William and Prince Charles is shown on-screen, and you only see that first drawing of those characters sliding around all throughout this series. Nevermind the fact that there can be many more funny drawings of William than just these two stock expressions if the animators actually were allowed to have a say in this series instead of the inexperienced showrunner making all the decisions.
You can see the damage that the lack of expressiveness on the characters' faces causes on Episode 11, in the scene where the Queen denies Charles the crown forever. This is supposed to be the scene where we see the Queen in her meanest, angriest scene in this series yet.
Much of the weight of the character acting animation has to instead come through from the characters' hands, which are given slightly more freedom to be more expressive than the faces. The hands look nice and all, but it's just a ineffective band-aid solution to the bigger problem of the characters' faces being so rigid and stiff. No amount of good hand acting is going to save us from having to watch boring on-model characters. Their faces are much larger than their little hands anyway, and are the focus point of your eyes in most scenes, so you're likely not going to notice any of the good hand drawings. 
Whenever prop animation is involved, it's usually one of the better parts of the animation. Props are animated in a realistic manner, with every prop individually designed and animated. Like when a bunch of ice cubes or George's fashion supplies fall down, they are all animated falling in as realistic a manner as possible.
I don't know why the props have to be animated in such a realistic manner when the characters have unrealistic designs, but Primetime Animation rules confuse me.
The staging is a mixed bag.
Sometimes, you do get these nicer shots, mostly as establishing shots placed at the beginning or end of a sequence. The backgrounds also do at least help out at making the staging look more appealing than it otherwise would be. The background designs are the best part of the visuals.
I wish these backgrounds would be in any other series that doesn't mock real children, because these look absolutely stunning. Artists in the American animation industry are not going to get another chance at doing paintings of London any time soon (I wish they would), so why not go all out on the visuals. These provide welcome relief from seeing the boring character dialog.
When the most involved part of the animation in your supposedly "Wacky Political Satire" cartoon is just scenes of boring people putting on boring clothes, you probably shouldn't be showrunning any cartoon shows.
I am eagerly waiting for Wolfboy and the Everything Factory as that looks to be the rare series where Bento Box Atlanta can allow their animators to actually have fun with the material. But we'll see in due time.
And yet, it feels very restrained because of the limitations of being slaves to the character model sheets. So she doesn't look as angry as her vocal performance suggests her to be. They try to get around the limitation by pumping up her skin color to be red with anger, but it's still no match for a REAL LIVIDLY MAD wacky facial expression that really should have been used here. Instead of reacting to this scene with either laughter or sadness for Charles, the audience is instead just put to sleep by how weak the visuals are at conveying any real emotions.
Much of the weight of the character acting animation has to instead come through from the characters' hands, which are given slightly more freedom to be more expressive than the faces. The hands look nice and all, but it's just a ineffective band-aid solution to the bigger problem of the characters' faces being so rigid and stiff. No amount of good hand acting is going to save us from having to watch boring on-model characters. Their faces are much larger than their little hands anyway, and are the focus point of your eyes in most scenes, so you're likely not going to notice any of the good hand drawings.
I don't know why the props have to be animated in such a realistic manner when the characters have unrealistic designs, but Primetime Animation rules confuse me.
The staging is a mixed bag.
Much of this series is plagued with simple "Two characters standing there talking to each other.". Not a bad way to stage dialogue scenes, but these still feel cheap to me, because of the inexpressive character faces. So you are left with boring cinematography aiding boring character acting.
The best visuals of the series come in form of these scenes set in the underground dungeon where a team of goblins reside to make the queen's tarts. The glowing light of the torch provide the scene with dynamic lighting. It's a shame that it's only shown at the beginning and end of the series, as most of the goblins are killed by one of the servant's flamethrowers. This setting is really the only part of this series that takes advantage of animation as a medium and that drives me to the biggest flaw.
The biggest problem of this series's animation overall is that it just doesn't take advantage of the medium of animation at all. Most of this show is just characters talking to one another, and the occasional dinner sequences with all the characters in one room, and I find that to be really boring for animation, especially when the character acting is so stiff and wooden. It packs no punch for a political satire cartoon because you're just falling asleep from all the boring things happening on-screen.
In Episode 10, The entire cast does a big musical number, but nothing about that sequence takes advantage of the medium.
The sequence is just boring people singing with no real emotion on their faces. This could been all shot with live-action, and there wouldn't be any difference.
Even Family Guy takes much more advantage of the medium in its musical sequences.
It's not that I hate realistically done animation. King of the Hill is one of the greatest series of all time, and that could have been done in live-action as well. But it was the combination of a great coherent art style and great realistic acting from Mike Judge that made the show become its own unique animated beast.
The Prince wants to ape Family Guy as Gary Janetti's only experience in animation comes from that series, but also wants to have its own slice of the grounded, realistic pie at the same time as Janetti's majority of his experience comes from tame live-action sitcoms, and so, the series succeeds at accomplishing neither of them. What you're left with is a boring animated series that keeps things as restrained as possible, when it could have gone all out with the funny main character designs. Granted, it still would have been horrible either way, with the main subject of mockery being an eight year old.
The animation studio that made this, Bento Box Atlanta, should be given much better quality series to work on in the future with much better working conditions. Horror stories from the artists at BBA paint the management as uncaring and the content of this series as humilating to work on, and I can totally believe it by just looking at this depressing series. (See the thread below)
The Atlanta animation industry deserves better shows than The Prince. A show that centers on three real children being mocked should not be one of the only options animators in Atlanta can take for a rare chance of any steady work within their city. The Atlanta industry deserve better treatment of their artists than the controlling and abusive Bento Box Management. They deserve a union.
Link to where you can support the first studio union in Atlanta, Floyd County Productions Guild: https://twitter.com/fcp_guild?lang=en
Link to where you can support the first studio union in Atlanta, Floyd County Productions Guild: https://twitter.com/fcp_guild?lang=en
I am eagerly waiting for Wolfboy and the Everything Factory as that looks to be the rare series where Bento Box Atlanta can allow their animators to actually have fun with the material. But we'll see in due time.
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