somenoiseonthewire
1 year ago·Jun 23, 2024
70
/ 100
1 year ago·Jun 23, 2024
All the spoilers.
The premise is quite promising. Our protagonist Anis got isekaid into this world of magic without having magic powers of her own. She compensates for that by being a clever engineer and instead coming up with magitek. This magitek does double-duty in being the biggest tells she’s originally from our world: A toaster, water boiler, and other gadgets that resemble normal house-hold electronics. And then there’s a mana sword and a flying witch broom, because she grew up with too many of our stories. And as major source of conflict for the story, in this tradition-obsessed kingdom Anis lives in (and of which she’s the princess), her magitek is regarded as being sacrilegous. In part for religious/spiritual reasons, in part because nobility sets itself apart from commoners by having magic abilities. The title promises a revolution around this magic-based divide, and so we should be off for a great start!
But then we get into the substance of the story and its characters. There are problems i blame on this show being too short to expand on every detail, and there’re problems of just poor execution. The former i find acceptable, the latter distracted me from really enjoying the story.
To put it simply: The biggest conflicts in the story only happen because the characters are blind idiots. I’ll go into detail about the Queen™ conflict as an example and the final conflict. I’ll leave The Prince™ up as an exercise for the reader.
Anis and her love interest Euphie have a magic duel to decide who’s going to be the next queen. Anis wants to be queen out of isekai guilt, and is ready to give up her magitek for it, because all the people in court except her father hate it. She’s even putting up with the idea of getting a husband assigned to breed offspring, despite being lesbian and in love with Euphie and clearly in terror at the mere thought. Euphie doesn’t want Anis to go through with this, so far so sane, so she wants to become the next queen instead. But, apparently, to do this, she has to forge a »spirit contract«, because that’s what the first king did, so that should be impressive enough to grant her all the charisma points in court and get her adopted by the king. But completely out of nowhere without build-up, we’re faced with this artificial downside that a spirit contract will pretty much delete your personality and make you a soulless immortal. (Let’s put spirit contract lady offering the contract aside, who in her actual behaviour seems to contradict this alleged consequence.) So Anis clearly doesn’t want Euphie to be queen. She loves Euphie, so why the heck would she agree to her voluntarily, slowly deleting her own personality and every memory of them being in love? And apparently Anis also doesn’t want Euphie to be queen, because Anis wants to be queen, because according to her if she didn’t become queen, then she, the creator of magitek and great engineer and infamous monster-hunting and dragon-slaying adventurer, would be »useless«. No attempt is made in pointing that out as a flat-out nonsense. And let’s remember for a moment that the title of this story promises a »revolution«. The ending even says that Euphie is the last queen of this kingdom, implying they have a new form of government afterwards.
So what is the obvious answer to this apparent conflict of interest between Anis and Euphie? Have Anis be queen, have her middle-finger the magitek-hating tradition, have her marry Euphie, have Euphie do the actual governing, have Anis do her magitek research, have Anis bring magitek to the masses, have Euphie dismantle the power structures that be from the inside, make it so finally mages and non-mages are on equal social footing. They’re queens, the title promises a revolution, so clearly the two can do whatever they want. And indeed, in the ending, they both bring magitek to the masses, they appear side-by-side in public as equals, and i already mentioned the »last queen« thing. There’s even a lot of follow-up story potential in this conflict between their unconventional rule and the established noble advisors. So, what did the two end up doing? Anis lost a duel for the throne, Euphie forges the contracts, gets adopted, is made queen right on the spot, Anis just accepts it. Excuse me, what? And apparently for Euphie getting a husband is not something she’s pressured into. And apparently Euphie’s better standing with nobility is irrelevant, for she went through with magitek in her reign anyway, despite Anis having had a scene earlier in which her advisors made it very clear that continuing magitek is unacceptable.
There could’ve been even more alternative options! Undo the king’s banishment of the prince, get him back on the throne after his speedrun-redemption. Get someone else entirely onto the throne, even. But no, that last option allegedly doesn’t work. You see, immortal spirit contract lady clearly stated in her infinite knowledge and wisdom, that right now on this entire planet Euphie is the only person worthy and capable of forging said contract, despite never clarifying why that would be plausible. Not even a »chosen one« legend early on, no mysterious special blood line. This limitation, like many others, just came up on the spot to constrain issues created right on the spot.
The story has far more issues besides the main conflicts, though. I mentioned the prince’s »redemption speedrun«. Pretty much everyone’s plot lines apart from Anis’ are resolved at break-neck speed. In part i blame it on this show consisting of just a dozen episodes. Really, though, it’s more of a trend i see in most shows, where interesting and promising character backgrounds are resolved ASAP just so the writer can quickly get to the character arrangements they actually want to work with. It’s unimaginative, or dare i even say »lazy«. More importantly, though, it’s unfortunate. In a longer show, i’d’ve loved to watch e.g. the forced engagement between Euphie and the prince fleshed-out more. Tied better into the story of the prince’s rebellion than just the one-liner »but i don’t love her, daaaad«, have the aftermath for Euphie be more significant than »oh sorry, bro, i was brainwashed« and »all good, yo, no grudges«. There wasn’t even an attempt at drawing a parallel between the prince and Euphie, and between Anis and whatever random man the council of nobles would’ve picked for her. And thus, ultimately i conclude that this story is mostly unused potential.
Did i have fun watching it?
Yes, except during the two major conflicts. There i was just shaking my head, wishing for the show to get on with it.
Final verdict:
7/10
How i rate X/10:
7.5 out of 9 users liked this review