Otome

So here we are at the end of the season, and for once, our hero is in true danger. Ever since the end of the first episode, Leon has basically been invincible; thanks to Luxion, Leon’s mecha and gear have so far outclassed every opponent he’s faced in terms of combat effectiveness that it really … Read more

Despite the fact that we have a major airship-versus-monster battle filled with magic and mecha, this episode is more about the melodrama than the action. It’s the emotional turning point for both Livia’s personal growth as well as her relationships with Angie and Leon. With Angie captured and Leon fighting through hordes of monsters to … Read more

Continuing on from the last episode, Leon, Angie, and Livia have all pulled away from each other. Leon feels guilty for treating Angie and Livia as characters instead of people. Angie feels guilty for once believing people like Leon and Livia had no value because of their lower birth. And Livia feels guilty for sponging … Read more

Last week, we took a deeper look into Leon’s relationship with Livia—how part of him still sees her as both the main character of this world and his proxy character to control like when he played the game in his past life. Livia’s tearful explosion at the end of the last episode has forced him … Read more

It’s taken a while, but with this episode we finally get a deeper exploration of the series’ villainess—and no, I don’t mean Angie. Ever since we entered the second arc of the story, Stephanie Fou Offrey has taken over the role of being the main antagonist to our heroes. While Leon has remained largely unphased … Read more

Over the course of this series so far, we’ve seen Leon go from a guy who was just trying to keep his head down to an unrepentant, over-the-top asshole. Of course, it’s not quite that simple—otherwise he’d be a thoroughly unlikeable character. Leon is only an asshole to those he believes deserve it—ie, people who … Read more

As this series makes clear from the start, the biggest issue facing the Holfort Kingdom is its ultra-misandry. However, this episode chooses to focus on another of the kingdom’s systemic ills: its class system. While we’ve seen what it’s like to be a noble at the bottom of the totem pole through Leon, Livia, as … Read more

This episode is all about consequences—especially the unintended ones. As we talked about last week, Leon knew from the moment he stepped up to protect Angelica that it was almost certainly the end of not only his school days but anything amounting to a comfortable life within the kingdom in the future. As a man … Read more

Can budget animation enhance a show’s storytelling, even unintentionally? Because that might actually be the case with this episode. This episode is technically one long mecha battle. Yet despite this, there’s not really much actual fighting in it. Most of what we see is dialogue interrupted by only the briefest action scenes, and even then, … Read more