Premise: Second daughter of the famed Sanchez family, Carolina has grown up steeped in intense emotional abuse from her perfect older sister Flora, who blames Carolina for their mother’s death after childbirth. Flora has convinced so many nobles of Carolina’s uselessness that when the kingdom needs a woman to assuage the ire of an enemy empire, the king offers Carolina to marry the empire’s second prince, a man rumored to be brutal to even women and children.
The premiere establishes Carolina’s home life and only leads up to her initial meeting with the prince, but it’s carefully done, using example after example of biting remarks Flora whispers in ways to save public face and promote her saintly image. For anyone who has grown up being told they’re not enough, it’s depressingly familiar and heart wrenching.
Verdict: a strong foundation to a Cinderella story that speaks to modern audiences’ wounds.
Bonus: This is not the most lovingly animated or beautifully drawn anime, but the wall art in the noble house is done in European styles appropriate to the time of the setting. They are jarringly detailed, which I’ve also noticed in other recent anime, like Ascendance of a Bookworm.
I look forward to seeing whether the attention to detail in the wall art mirrors the attention to detail in the characters’ emotional growth.
(Also, by reputation and premise alone, I’m picturing the second prince as a Aral Vorkosigan-type character, and if so, I am so here for it.)
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