Did you click on this just to know if you should watch the show or not? If so, your answer’s just a few scrolls away at the end of this review in a TLDR. Otherwise, go ahead and be enlightened with the result of my wasting valuable time whining on the internet about some animated frames. Spoilers ahead, although that doesn’t exactly matter since (IMO) nothing of worth happens anyway.
When I first heard about this story being adapted into an anime, I couldn’t help but think to myself, ‘wow, out of all of the fifteen million fantasy isekai webtoons, this one’s getting an adaptation?’ I was very curious to see how this would end up, so I decided to watch it. Truthfully, I was captivated by the romance that this series allegedly promised, and me having a massive guilty pleasure in regency-style smut with an interesting premise, I immediately took to giving this a go. However, instead of getting those sweet little butterflies, I ended up finishing it with a sour taste in my mouth that couldn’t possibly be alleviated unless I would complain about it in depth on Anilist.co (real).
In general, I’m not one to complain about animation. I understand how difficult and time-consuming it is to draw, let alone color, shade, and, in the end, animate it all frame by frame. But in this show it feels like they aren’t trying at all. All of what you would consider ‘cool’ movements (ex. falling, sword swinging, etc) are covered up and substituted with a sound effect, which is, in my opinion, such a lazy way to avoid animating. I didn’t have a problem with it the first few times, but good God, is that the only thing you could come up with? It doesn’t even feel like I’m watching a show anymore. It’s more so a visual novel or just a moving storyboard. In scenes where there is a crowd around, their faces are always greyed out, and this makes the background seem even more empty than if there wasn’t anyone around in the first place. Even the walking sequences, which were probably the only effort to ‘animate’ anything, feels unnatural. CGI is used pretty badly- on the horses and carriages, as well as that one ballroom scene with MC & FMC. I could not enjoy their conversation with the contrast between the different movements (main characters dancing frame by frame & CGI background people dancing), and it feels so out of place and disconnected. Yes, their budget definitely isn’t equivalent to half of that of ufotable’s, but still, could you not try to use what you have in an engaging way? There’s nothing interesting happening, visually. Also, the facial expressions of the characters are so deadpan, and every time they talk, they show legitimately zero emotion at all, especially the main guy, Noah. I could go on and on about how blank and lifeless he always looks, even when he is apparently showing affection for Raeliana.
And here we go onto my next point. Noah. He’s hot, and that’s his only personality trait. In the first episode, he is described as this devilish, horrible man with a black heart. This description was never portrayed at all, and I’m not taking ‘well, that’s because he just really likes Raeliana’ as an excuse. We never got to see anything other than one of the most uninspiring characters ever saying corny and lowkey creepy things to FMC. He has no dimension. We did see parts of his past that attempted to add character, such as how his mother tried to kill his older brother so Noah could be king, and how his father was deceived by love, but this development was not expanded at all, and, certainly, Noah was not concerned about being ‘deceived’ into loving Raeliana. And to top it off, there was no mention of ‘why’ he even likes her. He just seems so emotionless that I doubt that he could even feel such a sentiment. Okay, you know what, they actually might be right about him being an awful person. There was one part where Raeliana accused him of exploiting her, waking up in the morning one day on his bed, her lower body aching. He didn’t actually do this, but he took her charge so nonchalantly that I was shocked. He did apologize to her, but in the most manipulative way possible, pinning her to a bookcase and sucking on her fingers (what the fuck?) until she said she’d forgive him. If it weren’t for the fact that she was obviously developing feelings for him (who would though, in the first place??), this event is just so creepy if you think about it, and it still is even if she does like him. He is also overly protective and possessive, treating anyone of the opposite gender who might even have the slightest smidgen of interest in her like a maggot on spoiled meat. He appears so randomly in the story, always ending up as the ‘knight in shining armor’ whenever his beloved maiden is in trouble. His voice, while initially pleasant, ends up becoming so irritating with the cringe that he spits out that I do not understand how Raeliana can have a conversation with him without punching him in the cranium every fifteen seconds. The amount of physical touch that he imposes on her is astonishing; there are probably more frames of their hands touching than there are millimeters from Earth to the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s obvious that his VA is trying extremely hard to sound alluring and irresistible, and it just feels so forced at times that I can’t help but laugh at this ridiculous goober. He is much more likable in the manhwa, so if blushing for him is what you want, go ahead and read it instead of watching this.
The other characters aren’t much better, either. Almost none of them are memorable in the slightest. The main girl is your average clueless shoujo protagonist who tries to use lengthy inner monologues to create the illusion that she’s smarter than she actually is. Considering how this is an isekai, we should probably have a bit of background information on who exactly she was before she became Raeliana McMilan, right? Nope, we didn’t get anything at all. There is zero explanation on her original identity, Rinko Hanasaki, other than the fact that she’s a graduate desperate to get into a good college. So what’s the point in having those moments where there’s a little flash of Rinko’s image beside Raeliana? It just seems so unnecessary for this to even be an isekai, since we know literally nothing about Rinko- what she liked, what she did, her personality, etc. I do give credit that they at least tried to make her somewhat reliant on herself and not a complete idiot. However, key word, somewhat. There are moments where she’s pretty badass, such as that one scene with her taking Noah’s gun and threatening to shoot Francis Brooks, but she always ends up getting saved by Noah anyways. She always tries to ‘get herself together’ around him and seem witty in every single conversation they have. It was entertaining at first but this style of interaction ended up being so overused that it feels like different ChatGPT generations of the same prompts. Here’s how their discussions would go:
Same formula, over and over, again.
The antagonists are exactly what they’re supposed to be. Anti-gonist. Against the protagonist. So, they have to be immature pieces of shit, right? Yup, we’ve got the jealous villain woman, Vivian Shamal, who has no character trait other than wanting Noah all to herself (goodness gracious, what the hell do these women see in him?). I honestly hate these kinds of characters, not because they suck, but because they’re not interesting at all. There aren’t any underlying motives behind anything they do, nothing that might make me relate to them. They have no purpose other than to be hated. Beatrice might seem to stir up something cool, but that’s because we also know nothing about her. We see slight snippets that she may be the one wanting to kill Raeliana, but Raeliana thinks about her, at minimum, about five seconds in each episode, before her train of thought is interrupted with the appearance of the incorrigible numbskull that is Noah Wynknight. The only character that I do actually like is Heika, the high priest. He’s funny and has a personality. I do understand why he’s always alone, because everyone else in the story is nothing but infuriating, shallow excuses of ‘people’.
In moments of high tension it falls flat. Like when the cursed crystal that Raeliana wore in her hair was about to explode, the screen immediately cuts to the shocked but static reactions of the people watching, just like in a children’s gag comedy. It was such a laughable attempt at suspense, and the crude animation made it even more awful. Well, Heika did literally pull a fucking Jotaro’s Star Platinum time stop when that happened, though, so that was kind of one of the only awesome moments.
The plot itself is a mess. The scenes are dragging, and the progression makes no sense at all. The politics makes no sense. The ‘mysteries’ throughout the show are so blatantly obvious, since, guess what, they were all revealed to us in the first place! While Raeliana spent three episodes wondering who exactly wanted to kill her, we were blessed in advance with this knowledge from a great scene where it was shown to be none other than Vivian Shamal. Seriously, could you at least make these characters just a bit less shallow? They legitimately have as much depth as those inflatable kiddie-pools they sell at Wal-Mart. I’m not sure if this is the right word for it, but the dramatic irony in this story makes it fifteen times worse than it already was. Destroys the very last smidge for any excitement that I could have about it, ignoring all the romance. What was supposed to be the main focus (What’s happening with Beatrice, the isekai world’s protagonist) gets flashes of relevance here and there, as mentioned before, and is only truly the subject in the final episode, but throughout the series it just seems like a side quest, romance being the highlight. Really unfortunate, because I was pretty invested in that, as well, in the beginning.
Then again, this is probably all on me. I shouldn’t have expected anything more from an isekai shoujo, but whatever, I’ve already written this thing at full length. If you liked this anime, I am personally very jealous of you, since I definitely did not experience here the desperately-sought giddiness, familiar to all, in enjoying a nice, heart-thumping romance.
TLDR: Overall, I do not recommend watching this. The story flows more smoothly in the manhwa, and it’s better than watching dull, pretty much moving slideshows for 12 episodes (although, besides the eyefull of attractive people, the manhwa itself isn’t amazing after giving it a go). The MC is an irritating and entitled troglodyte and does not come across as ‘charming’ at all other than his appearance. The dialogue and interactions between the characters have almost no meaning at all, and the story just seems to go nowhere with its main narrative. I do have hopes that the next few seasons might be more enjoyable, but, from what I experienced, I’m not very optimistic.
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