The birth of shōjo manga, which primarily caters to a young female demographic, took place at the turn of the 20th century. The 1950s and ‘60s paved the path for creative innovation, allowing this diverse category to bloom in the ‘80s and beyond. However, any conversation about shōjo would be incomplete without Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight, whose serialization began in 1953 and continued up until 1968.
The influence of Princess Knight can be felt in innumerable classic anime, including Sailor Moon, The Rose of Versailles, and Revolutionary Girl Utena. On April 23, Netflix announced a new anime film inspired by Tezuka’s groundbreaking manga. Titled The Ribbon Hero, the upcoming movie is being helmed by Yuki Igarashi (Star Wars: Visions) and his studio, Outline.
Princess Knight takes place in a fantastical version of medieval Europe, where a princess named Sapphire pretends to be a male prince to inherit the throne of Silverland. This central trope of female-to-male gender swap via cross-dressing can be traced back to William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night, but Princess Knight is one of the trope’s earliest integrations within the shōjo category.
Beloved genre works like Ouran High School Host Club and Hana-Kimi have embraced this genre trope, challenging heteronormativity and expectations attached to traditional gender roles. While Tezuka’s manga interprets these themes with a clear feminist bent, it unfortunately indulges in dated ideas that need to be reworked from a contemporary lens.
Igarashi’s anime will have to contend with lofty expectations, but the director affirms that this new interpretation is built on a sense of reverence. “For this film, I poured in my respect for Osamu Tezuka…[and] for Ichizo Kobayashi of the Takarazuka Revue, which lies at the root of the work,” Igarashi told Netflix’s Tudum.
Takarazuka Revue refers to the Japanese all-female musical theater troupe, who have been playing both male and female roles since 1914 (unheard of at the time). This group unambiguously served as the inspirational blueprint for Princess Knight. To bring this specific aesthetic to life, Igarashi is collaborating with Kei Mochizuki (Fate/Grand Order, Touken Ranbu) and Mai Yoneyama (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Lazarus) for character design and concept collaboration.
Sapphire’s reasons to dress as a man aren’t solely tied to cross-dressing. Societal perception about male identity has hounded her since birth, when her father publicly announced the baby as a boy. This was a strategic decision to prevent the ascension of the antagonistic Duke Duralumin’s heir, but Sapphire was forced to meet gendered expectations throughout her adolescence. Moreover, her literal heart accommodates both masculine and feminine halves, which are denoted in blue and pink. This, in itself, is a dated gender binary that the manga fails to challenge, but Sapphire’s ability to effortlessly switch between genders is the right step towards positive queer-coded representation of a shōjo protagonist.
At its core, Princess Knight is about reclaiming personal agency. It is a quest for identity within a society that’s eager to shove individuals into neat boxes built on false dichotomies. Sapphire’s autonomy is both bolstered and undermined throughout, making Tezuka’s manga more complicated from a thematic standpoint. If the Netflix film is opting for a relatively modern treatment, these character moments need to be reframed. Some characters, like the swashbuckling noblewoman Friebe, would work best as their original iterations. Friebe is a promising example of a woman unfettered by gender expectations. Her strong, self-assured nature counterbalances some of the sexist underpinnings of Sapphire’s arc.
There’s also a fun, campy undertone to the original, which will hopefully carry over to Netflix’s iteration of the classic tale. There are tons of visual and tonal cues to be gleaned from the 52-episode television anime, in the meantime, along with several stage musicals that cropped up since the 1980s. With that said, The Ribbon Hero could be the streaming platform’s next bona fide hit. Princess Knight has all the ingredients for a beautiful, rousing story about an androgynous woman eager to make her mark in the world.
You can expect The Ribbon Hero to stream on Netflix in August 2026.
