6HP (Six Hearts Princess)

📖 SYNOPSIS

Meet Haruka Hani — a bubbly junior high student who spends her days writing drama club scripts and dreaming about being a princess. She lives in Hinomori, which sounds quaint until you learn it's literally the last town left in a dying world, constantly under siege by creatures called Zaiju — Beasts of Sin. One night, a member of the Moon Cat Clan offers her the chance to become a Heart Princess, a legendary warrior who protects the town. She transforms into the Pink Princess, embodying benevolence, and her fairy tale dream suddenly has real teeth.

This is a 2016 TV special from Studio Poncotan with artistic direction by Takashi Murakami — yes, that Murakami — and you can tell. The CGI style is distinctive, blending pop art sensibilities with magical girl aesthetics in a way that feels genuinely different from anything else in the genre. Each Heart Princess is tied to a traditional Japanese virtue, which gives the character writing more texture than the usual elemental color-coding.

The setup starts warm and school-life cozy, but the premise has that same unsettling undercurrent you get from Puella Magi Madoka Magica or Yuki Yuna is a Hero — a cheerful girl in a doomed world, handed power by a mysterious creature. If you liked Heartcatch Precure but want something with a stranger visual identity and a more fragile world underneath the sparkle, this is worth your time.