Star #12: Hecate
Through the ages: Princess knight manga, Princess knight anime
See her in action: Princess knight episode 43
Hecate is incredibly awkward for me to write about, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the series she originates from, “Princess Knight”, features a separate main character, one which has yet to be represented in person and provides much of her motivation. Secondly, while I’ve read the entire manga and am well-versed in the story, I did so via my LOCAL LIBRARY, and cannot find a suitable online source for either manga scans or anime dubs. And thirdly, the anime keeps going up and down and up and down in a perverse game of copyright whack-a-mole so either the link’ll work or not who even knows, right now it’s one of those “crop the video to evade the hounds” type of deal.
Tezuka character list bio: Number 36
[b]
- She collects human’s sorrow and pain to use them as ingredients for her magic. She originally appears in the anime “Princess Knight”. Her personality and design are very different between the comic and the anime. Her personality changed from a very tomboy-ish girl to a very introverted girl. This Hecate is based on the “Princess Knight” that appeared in “Nakayoshi”. Hecate is pronounced “Heh-ka-te” in Greek. Hecate is the Greek goddess of darkness.[/b]
In simple terms, Hecate’s a witch. Or, rather, a witches’ daughter. See, Hecate hails from a series wherein the main character, one Prince(ss) Sapphire, was born erroneously containing both the gentle pink heart of a girl and the courageous blue heart of a boy, while Hecate herself is rather lacking in the femininity department. Hecate honestly doesn’t really care about that rubbish and is more than comfortable with her tomboyish attitude, but unfortunately her mother Madam Hell is less than thrilled – thanks in no small part to her desire to marry Hecate off to a suitable prince, thus grabbing power for her daughter and, by extension, herself. To this end, Hecate’s supposed role in the story is an antagonist’s motivation; Madam Hell wishes to capture Sapphire, extract her girl heart, and give it to her daughter, thus doubling up on fem-ness and catching the eye of an eligible suitor.
It’s not as simple as all that, though. “Princess Knight” spends a lot of time focusing on strong female characters, and while its star has some issues when it comes to that, Hecate really doesn’t; she knows what she wants and does what she pleases, and there’s no room in her plans for gobbling up a ball of stereotypical girlyness. Thusly, whenever her mother manages to capture Sapphire and extract her heart, Hecate sneaks out through the back door and gives it right back to her. She’s a mischievous and headstrong girl, but most certainly isn’t evil, and more often than not finds herself helping the protagonists despite her namesake’s rather ominous title.
Nice or not, though, she IS the daughter of a powerful witch, born through her hellish magic, and as such she’s in possession of some sizable demonic powers herself. She’s capable of the basic stuff like casting fireballs and flying through the air, but much more notable are her transformative abilities; from the standard witchy snakes and spirited felines to the less-standard goats and…mushrooms…Hecate’s form is ever-changing as her mood dictates, and she’s even capable of conferring these powers unto others via potion. It makes her a fun character, as she’s constantly casually showing up in odd forms in front of the less magically inclined, and often leads to her stealing the show whenever she appears.
Like many of the other characters in stage 3, Hecate doesn’t pop up too often in other works, much less Astro Boy. Nevertheless, the series she’s from HAS been redrawn and reprinted on three separate occasions, with the bio’s namedropping of “Nakayoshi” being the third and final of the magazines the remakes ran in. It was a girl’s comic magazine, and Princess Knight is actually fairly well-known as being one of the pioneers in “Shojo” manga, as well as fairly ahead of its time with feminist themes, which made it a good place for a character like Hecate to flourish. Her in-game dialogue doesn’t really give a lot of insight to her character, and she won’t be showing up again, but I like her, or at least her manga version. The anime seems to make her a bit of an airhead as “Zenda”.