Among Netflix’s slate of upcoming anime was a bright new film headed to the streamer, The Ribbon Hero. “New” being the operative word because the film is actually inspired by Osamu Tezuka‘s classic manga Princess Knight, though judging from their appearances, you’d be hard-pressed to recognize that. However, rather than recoiling in fear at how different the two works look, I’m actually pretty amped about it.
If you read the above and thought to yourself, “Who’s Osamu Tezuka?” I’m gonna go ahead and rip the rug from underneath you in saying that if you even have a fleeting appreciation for animation, manga, and anime, you’re already predisposed to him, whether you know his name or not. Known as “The Godfather of Manga,” Tezuka is the creator of Astro Boy, Black Jack, Kimba the White Lion, and so much more. He’s your favorite mangaka’s favorite mangaka, inspiring whole generations of creatives, including Dragon Ball‘s Akira Toriyama, Ghost in the Shell‘s Masamune Shirow, and even Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki.
As we near what would have been Tezuka’s centennial, his enduring influence on the anime industry is being reintroduced to a new generation of anime fans through Studio OUTLINE‘s aforementioned anime film, inspired by his 1953 manga Princess Knight, which premieres on Netflix this August.
The Ribbon Hero follows the journey of a “cursed” princess named Sapphire who takes up arms to not only overcome the trauma of her past, but to protect her citizens from feral creatures who wish to do them harm. In so doing, Sapphire does a cute magical girl transformation, makes lifelong friends, and battles a bunch of baddies using the power of her magic ribbon. Sounds like your typical cool anime. It also looks wildly different from its source material, which has some diehard fans feeling a bit conflicted.
For comparison, the Princess Knight manga looks like this:
And these are the character designs for The Ribbon Hero:
So yeah, vastly different aesthetics. So much so that it seemed to ruffle the feathers of fans of Tezuka’s classic manga in the replies to Ribbon Hero’s official X/Twitter account, which posted a key visual of the film, with many people having mixed feelings about how modern and different the anime’s visuals look compared to the manga. Much of the aesthetic difference between The Ribbon Hero and Princess Knight owes itself to the creatives at the helm of OUTLINE’s film. Key among them are character designers Kei Mochizuki (Fate/Grand Order) and Mai Yoneyama (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Lazarus). The film also serves as the directorial debut of Yuki Igarashi (Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX), who is keenly aware of the expectations placed on OUTLINE’s modern treatment of a beloved classic.
“For this film, I poured in my respect for Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Princess Knight; for Ichizo Kobayashi of the Takarazuka Revue, which lies at the root of the work; and for the supreme, classic entertainment they brought into the world,” Igarashi told Netflix. “They also created their works while overcoming hardships such as infectious diseases and war, and those works became the very foundation of our culture. To everyone living in this era, I hope you enjoy this blood‑stirring, heart‑pounding piece of what I believe is ‘true’ mainstream entertainment.”
So what’s the difference between Princess Knight‘s story and The Ribbon Hero beyond their art styles? Well, after procuring Kodansha’s omnibus of Princess Knight, reading the manga, and comparing it to what we’ve seen from Netflix’s trailers, Venn Diagram style, I can say quite a lot, actually. But not in the way that other Netflix adaptations go a bit off the rails in an attempt to be different or self-serious. From what I’ve parsed, The Ribbon Hero seems poised to maintain the spirit of Tezuka’s work while doing its own thing, and I’m honestly a little excited about that.
Unlike what appears to be the setup in OUTLINE’s anime, Tezuka’s manga is the stuff of old fairy tales, centering less on the selling point of a warrior princess, though that’s certainly there, and more on gender. The setup has angels in heaven assigning hearts to babies about to be born. One angel named Tink gifts baby Sapphire a blue boy heart moments before Sapphire is given a red girl heart. This oopsie gets Tink kicked out of heaven to find Sapphire and remove her girl heart—a problem made all the worse by the fortune of her birth as the progeny of a Kingdom whose stake lies in her being born a male rather than a female.
After a snafu in which a retainer with a lisp confuses the kingdom by calling Sapphire a “prinshesh,” the king and queen continue a farcical ruse, raising their daughter as a boy while those who wish to usurp their power try to expose Sapphire as a boy. Along Sapphire’s journey is a slapstick story that feels like a pastiche of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and The Little Mermaid, and all of Tezuka’s titular whimsy. The manga even got an anime adaptation back in 1967 by Mushi Production, so any loyalists worrying about a faithful adaptation can nip those complaints in the bud.
Princess Knight is as silly and fun-loving as it sounds. Looking back on Tezuka’s manga, it’s uncanny how ahead of its time it is narratively, considering that a manga from the ’50s explores gender in ways that predate Rumiko Takahashi‘s Ranma 1/2. Granted, its exploration of gender is still a touch antiquated as a read in the big 2026 (you can fall on either side of it being progressive and a touch misogynistic in Sapphire’s journey). However, it does get there in the end, with both Sapphire’s boyish and girlish nature being seen as a strength rather than a contradiction. That’s rad.
While The Ribbon Hero doesn’t appear to be exploring gender as its tentpole theme, fans have gleaned from its trailers that the film may instead focus on queer themes between Sapphire and her gal pal. Given that Princess Knight inspired old-school queer manga/anime works like MAPPA’s anime adaptation of The Rose of Versailles, it’s likely where the film will go too as a reimagining of its tale. Either that or fans (present company included) are about to lose chess to the dog, as it were, when The Ribbon Hero releases this August. Either way, adaptations should feel more fearless in branching out of the confines of old myths they retell, so long as they’ve kept their core spirit intact, and Tezuka’s works are no different.
This isn’t the first time Netflix has landed a reimagining of Tezuka’s classics. In fact, back in 2023, Studio M2 released the anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa (Monster) and Takashi Nagasaki‘s Pluto. Pluto, in my humble opinion, was the best sci-fi anime that year. And much of that wasn’t solely in seeing what Atom and its titular villain look like in motion, but from how it used the footholds of its story to strike at something deeper. Namely, Urasawa uses the robot manga to critique the United States’ invasion of Iraq. And that’s just one of the hot-button topics Pluto touched on, weaving new life and perspective, building off the foundation of Tezuka’s Astro Boy.
All that to say, despite its aesthetic and story differences, I’m going into The Ribbon Hero with an open mind to see how another group of creatives will reshape and reimagine a classic like Princess Knight and keep Tezuka’s stories on the mind of a new generation of anime fans.
The Ribbon Hero premieres on Netflix on August 8.
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