Guess we’re doing stories for the capture targets already. But there’s a good reason for this! To avoid Heronia falling for anyone but the prince, Bertia needs to eliminate Cecil’s competition. In other words, she needs to start playing matchmaker. The funniest part, however, is that she’s the biggest reason why Heronia and Cecil won’t get together. On the other hand, what will Cecil do? Apparently, she’s been trying to fix him up with the heroine for a year now. Surely, he must be tired of this by now. He clearly has no desire to even get to know Heronia. I would personally like to see him take a stronger stance. I would like to see him make it very, very clear to Bertia that he will not entertain the thought of getting to know Heronia. Yeah, yeah, it might be amusing to watch Bertia screw around and fail. But I’m a “cut to the chase” kinda guy, so I want to see the prince be more active than passive.
One of the capture targets’ love interest is supposed to be sickly and bedridden. But thanks to Cecil defeating the epidemic before it could get outta control (and Bertia feeding him crucial information), the girl has never been healthier. Even the horse’s mane has never been more luxurious! These are all good things, right? Cynthia can’t capture Vald’s heart if she’s on her sickbed. More importantly, I dunno how Bertia keeps forgetting that the epidemic never ravaged the kingdom. I could understand it if several major events have deviated, but it’s been like one, right? Sure, this one change has been the catalyst for several smaller ones, i.e. her mother surviving, her father not turning evil, getting a new younger brother, etc. But it all comes back to the same thing: quelling the epidemic. I think Bertia might be kinda slow on the uptake, guys.
Anyway, Charles, one of the other capture targets, is a bit of a womanizer. But you can’t blame him too much, because the girl he likes is betrothed to his older brother. He’s basically trying to drown out his feelings for her by dating around. Still scummy, but a little more understandable than him just being a pure cheater. Plus, logically speaking, does Charles have to end up with Anne? So long as he isn’t Cecil’s competition for Heronia, it should suffice, right? Of course, I’m arguing this from Bertia’s perspective. I guess she’s just trying to adhere to the story she already knows by heart: if Charles doesn’t win Heronia over, he ends up with Anne instead. At least, I assume that this is the case. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter anyways, because thanks to Bertia’s meddling, Anne now knows how Charles truly feels about her.
After being yelled at by Bertia and reassured by Cecil, Charles makes a heartfelt plea to Anne. As a result, she will wait for him to make something of himself. Well, that was quick. In fact, all of these stories are relatively swift and painless. We already know Cynthia and Vald are chill. Bertia didn’t have to do much here. As long as Cynthia’s healthy, then her ship with Vald is sailing. As for Joanna, she has to put in a little more elbow grease, but not much more. Just bake the shota some sweets. She doesn’t even have to be good at it. Well, I guess Cecil also helped bolster the shota’s confidence a little. Finally, Silica runs into the most trouble with Nelt who has seemingly taken her for granted. But again, it’s nothing that a quick lecture from Bertia can’t fix. And y’know what? I’m fine with that. I’m only really here for Bertia and Cecil, so the faster we can get these side characters out of the way, the better. So yay, look at all these happy couples! And one super jealous, petty heroine… I guess Heronia wanted a harem and not just Cecil. Last but not least, we have a mysterious… somebody.
I went into this episode a little pessimistic. I wasn’t really excited to see four drawn-out side stories involving the side couples. Luckily, the show won’t bog down the pacing with characters I don’t know nor care about.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Pretty sly of Cecil to come up with a way to make Bertia cling to him.
— Jesus, those eyes.
— Eh, she’s right but only to a certain point. And I’m saying this for all genders. Yeah, love is the most important… unless you’re literally poor, destitute, and thus dying. Of course, these characters won’t have to worry about that. These characters will live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
— Last but not least, we have a mysterious individual…?
— Speaking of vegetable cookies, I had chocolate zucchini brownies recently for the first time, and uh… they surprisingly work. Still not healthy enough to scarf them down, but hey, if you wanna pretend that you’re eating vegetables…
— Joanna can’t bake to save her life. On the other hand, shotas (and their female counterparts) are an abomination, so they don’t deserve anything good anyway.
