It’s the day of Cecil’s graduation, and it starts off auspiciously enough. A generic speech here, a generic speech there, Courtgain is officially appointed the next student council president (it’s not voted on?). All seems normal so far… but anyone who has played the otome game is waiting with rapt anticipation. If you’ve ever watched a villainess show before, the villainess in question always gets humiliated at one of these big, glamorous events. There, in front of everybody, the prince will single out the protagonist, accuse her of all sorts of trumped up crimes, then announce his love for the oh-so-innocent heroine. According to Cecil’s parents, however, he has a trick in store for Bertia. Is this the first time we’ve even seen Cecil’s mother? Well, no matter.

So what happens? Cecil… uh, announces that she will become his wife when she graduates. Bertia is already betrothed to him, so this is already a foregone conclusion. I guess he’s just moving the timeline up. Plus, this isn’t really ideal. I know what he’s trying to do. After all, Bertia is dead set on the idea that Cecil has to pair up Heronia. He doesn’t know why she believes this, so he probably assumes that he has to make some grand romantic gesture to allay her fears. But public proposals are kinda shitty, because your partner has almost no choice but to say yes lest they humiliate you in front of a crowd. Not only that, Cecil doesn’t even wait for her answer. He starts sliding the ring on her finger while she’s shocked and stunned. Again, they’re already arranged to be married, so eh… but yeah, I’m not keen on this trick of his.

Naturally, Heronia steps forward to object. She starts accusing Bertia of all sorts of crimes, but Cecil anticipated this. He counters all of Heronia’s claims with ease. When all else fails, Heronia resorts to her trump card: she apparently had someone investigate Bertia’s father, so she has compiled a complete report on his wrongdoings. Well, we already know that Mr. Noches is working secretly for Cecil, so this gambit is also doomed to fail.

I’m sort of unsure of the timeframe, but how long has it been since Heronia first appeared until now? Let’s say a year or two. Don’t you feel like over that period of time, the seed of doubts would’ve started sprouting within her? I mean, she’s been trying to garner Cecil’s attention to no avail. Hell, she can’t even score with the other romantic options. So you would think that after all that time, she might have had an inkling that, “Gosh, my plan to win the prince over might not work. I can’t seem to charm anyone but background characters!” But no, Heronia harbors no such worries. She has remained steadfast in her belief that everything will work out for her, and this is what I find difficult to understand. Even if I know a game inside and out, once the story starts defying my expectations even once, I would immediately question what I know. But neither Heronia nor Bertia seem to do this, and I find it so damn bizarre.

Or maybe they’re just poorly written characters. I like the concept of the show, but I can’t really excuse the fact that the two main female characters aren’t written in a way that allows them to be dynamic. The show’s major flaw is pretty much this: both Bertia and Heronia are kinda dumb. Hell, it would’ve actually been tragic if Heronia recognized that the script had greatly deviated from its original course, but a compelling reason — a personality flaw or some other unavoidable conflict — forced her to clash with Bertia anyway. Instead, she just comes off as a complete fool. Likewise, it would’ve been nice if we could see Bertia grapple a little more with her feelings. For example, she dares to entertain a happy future with Cecil, but she can’t risk it. She can’t risk the chance that Cecil’s life might fall to pieces even though it might seem like her actions have completely changed the story. And we do see a little bit of this… but not enough to make Bertia seem fully aware. Like Heronia, she still feels a little too dense.

As Heronia is about to be dragged away, she finally blurts out that she’s “the only one who can turn [Cecil] into a human.” Again, she slavishly adheres to the game that she knows by heart and refuses to acknowledge the truth right in front of her: Cecil is already human and Bertia is the reason. But this isn’t the final episode, so we can’t wrap things up just yet. As a result, Heronia’s familiar seemingly launches a desperate, all-out attack on… Cecil? Bertia? Or both? Kuro tries to protect them, but the bird still manages to sever the chain on Cecil’s earring. Y’know, the one that supposedly protects him from Heronia’s charm. Maybe this is what the familiar was aiming to do all along.

When we next see Cecil, he’s just floating in an empty white space surrounded by glass shards. Each shard seems to contain a memory of the past, but crucially different from what he knows. For instance, he sees his first encounter with Bertia, but she’s decidedly less animated (and thus less amusing) than she was at the beginning of the series. I think it’s obvious what the bird is trying to do. We’ve been clamoring all this time to understand why Bertia and Heronia both feel that the latter is the better choice for Cecil. Cecil wants to know this reason as well. So I guess the bird’s going to show him how things are supposed to play out, i.e. the original script. I can see next week’s episode going through this alternative timeline from start to finish. Hell, it might even take two episodes to unfold. We will likely see an alternative version of Bertia — the one that is nasty and truly villainess. This whole exercise will probably culminate in a glorious happy ending with Heronia… buuuuuuut this seems silly, doesn’t it? Again, Cecil’s already happy with Bertia. If the thesis is that Cecil will end up a robot without Heronia, then it’s just dead wrong.