Clockwise from top left: Narek, Ani, Ruze, Vino, Mare, and Gurimaru.
Once upon a time, there were three kingdoms: the small, rural Inaco, the militaristic Milidonia, and the religious Selenfalen. They lived in harmony, until one day word comes that Milidonia was going to invade Inaco! To make things worse, the king of Inaco is injured, leaving Inaco with very little protection. In order to prevent this invasion, the queen of Inaco commands her daughter, Ani (also the protagonist), to head out and do something about it, by either going to Milidonia and convincing them to stop the invasion, or to go to Inaco's old ally Selenfalen and ask for support.In both countries, she will meet some truly eccentric princes, who she will have to get close to in order to get their help. Will she be able to win them over and protect Inaco...?
Dame x Prince is a mobile Otome Game published by NHN PlayArt, released in 2016. Unlike many of the female-oriented mobile games released around that time, the game's main story works on a route system where each character has their own route, with three separate endings for each. It also has a "caravan" system where you can earn money for unlocking the stories in the routes, as well as earn points for events. And most humorously, the game enables you to make comments that fly across the screen, Niconico-style, when you reread the stories. The mobile game ended up shutting down in 2019.
It has a 4-koma manga serialized online, and an anime adaptation under the name of Dame x Prince Anime Caravan was aired during the Winter 2018 season.
The game provides examples of these tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: Of your average otome game.
- Allegedly Free Game: The game can be completed without spending any real money on diamonds, but it's more difficult and takes a lot more time to save up coins to advance in the game. The epilogues, which take place after you finish a character's route, require diamonds. The events can be done without spending real money as well, but be prepared to spend a lot of time waiting for the right characters to come to the caravan and hope that they'd allow you to advance. The gachas are also diamond-only, so if you want those cute decorations, shops, and story cards, you'd better shell out some cash. It's very hard to save diamonds up as well, since the game is very stingy with giving them out.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: As expected of an otome game, though Riot is more rugged than pretty.
- Cerebus Retcon: The royal line is pretty useless, right? Makes for some great comedic moments, but as it turns out some citizens are tired of the royals doing nothing for them, and want to take matters into their own hands. Narek and Vino learn this the hard way when they get attacked in the climax.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Romantic ending in this case. The game has three versions for each character route: A neutral, a Love, and a Dame. To earn Love, you need to keep your romance score up and lower the Dame score to 0. Dame starts with 1000, and it's the first ending you get for any of the characters.
- Faction-Specific Endings: By the end of Chapter 2, the player has to choose between siding with Milledonia or with Selenfalen. Doing so seals off the rest of the other routes for that playthrough, and it along with the character specific routes lead to different endings.
- Gag Series
- Promoted to Love Interest: Chrom and Riot got their routes a little while after the game released. Teo got his much later.
- Themed Harem: Royalty. Not just any old royalty either: stupid royalty.
- Vague Age: None of the characters are given specific ages. We do know for certain that Chrom is older than Ani and younger than her mother, but everyone else is up to interpretation.
Tropes from the Animated Adaptation:
- Brains and Brawn: The king of Inaco does the fighting, the queen does the diplomacy.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite of having absurdly flawed personalities, all of the princes are fairly popular with the population. Narek (despite of flamboyance) is still a surprisingly athletic Action Fashionista, Mare is somewhat of a Badass Bookworm, Vino is capable of avoiding an international crisis by working behind the scenes ...
- Cloudcuckooland: Really, all three of the kingdoms fit this trope.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Ruze and Narek appear to have a lot of male admirers.
- Eyecatch: Parodied. Each episode, one of the guys is shown in a blatant fanservice scene, except that their comments are taking the logical consequences of said scenes. For example, in the first episode Narek is shown in wet clothes which leads him to catch a cold. In another episode, Teo is shown all bandaged up and seemingly fresh out of the battlefield, putting on the bandages on his own using his teeth, except that he tries to talk while the bandage is still in his mouth.
- In Name Only: Inaco can barely even be called a kingdom. Their only knight bodyguards Ani and then goes around the continent doing odd jobs, their castle is more of a mansion, and their land is just a few farms.
- Lighter and Softer: There's much less to take seriously in the anime than there is in the game itself.
- Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: The reason the people of Selenfalen see Mare as "cursed".
- Mr. Imagination: The antagonist is this. That's right; in this show, even the villain is an idiot.
- Naked People Are Funny: The premise of episode 7. Gurimaru's Magic Misfire blasts the princes out of a hot spring, forcing them to walk back to the resort unclothed.
- Odd Friendship: Narek and Mare become this due to their single shared interest: fashion.
- Punny Name: The name of Ani's kingdom, Inaco, sounds like the Japanese word for countryside, inaka.
- Realpolitik: Ani's mother, the queen of Inaco is very much a low-key chess master.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Inaco's royalty is shown to be very determined to do anything in their power to help their subjects, Mildonia's royalty seems to have an unwritten rule of being the Front Line General, Selenfalen's prince (despite of the heavy influence of the prime minister via advising also being a factor) is willing to host peace talks on their territory etc.
- Running Gag: Several, actually.
- Prince Ruze's radiant smile, which leads everyone around him to feel either smitten or downright coming off as creepy.
- Whenever there is an explosion, chances are that Nerek has arrived.
- Narek seems to have a portrait of him self from every given angle and/or perspective. In the opening theme, he even has one of himself while falling off the sky.
- Being a Hikkikomori, Prince Mare is frequently complaining about being exposed to the sun, and even travels to other places while inside of chests and barrels.
- Chrome pretty much melts whenever he thinks or talks to Ruze.
- Total Eclipse of the Plot: Downplayed. On the day of the Ruze's coronation, an eclipse occurs, prompting the delay of the official coronation until further notice.
