Simply put, this show was just not for me. I’m all for more shoujo anime being out in the anime world, but this was not the best showing of what the shoujo genre can offer. It’s just a simple story in a royalty setting, where someone who doesn’t really belong tries to fit in, and people get jealous because she’s the prince’s fiancée. It’s quite the bland story with a very straight forward romance, and boring politics that I couldn’t bring myself to care about.
STORY:
In a nutshell, Elianna Bernstein, a noble from the Sauslind family, which was not the most renowned family out there, is invited by the Crown Prince, Christopher Selkirk Asherald, to become his fiancée, in exchange for being able to enter the royal archives filled with books to satisfy her craving to read, as she’s a bookworm. Elianna believes the relationship is just one devoid of real love, but just convenience, so she constantly thinks that she’s no match for Christopher, and that she’s a burden to him.
This sentiment from Elianna lingers for most of the series, and eventually, she does try to prove that she is worthy of the prince’s hand in marriage, but these doubts in her mind constantly hold both her, and the show back, because it just dances around this theme, and is quite slow in developing effectively.
ART:
It looks fine, though the movement is quite limited. I would have expected a bit more from Madhouse, but they haven’t been nearly as good of a studio for quite a while now.
MUSIC:
Not very noticeable, the OP and ED are quite generic and average, and so is the soundtrack.
CHARACTERS:
By far, Elianna does have the best development out of all the characters, but it’s still quite slow. She learns over time that her words matter, and that her knowledge due to reading books can be put to good use to help others. She’s sadly quite gullible while being smart, and I suppose that’s due to her limited interactions with others since she spends a lot of her time reading. She’s so much a bookworm, she’d probably care more about books than Prince Christopher.
Most of the other cast members, including Christopher, just didn’t really do anything for me. Most of them support Elianna well, and for Christopher, there are some good romantic moments, but he didn’t do anything too memorable.
ENJOYMENT:
I never really liked it, or hated it, it was just consistently average all the way through.
THEMATIC EXECUTION:
If anything, the romance was executed decently, but not very memorably. The political themes were not really intriguing at all, and I struggled to care about them. Some of the normal royalty tropes were there, with the drama, but they were only decent at the start.
OVERALL:
There wasn’t much to take away from this, other than the aesthetic being quite decent. There could have been more done around the dramatic aspects of this show, and it felt more slice of life than anything else. It’s not bad by any means, just very average and bland for me personally.
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