After last week’s episode, I asked, “What’s left?” I guess we gotta have a wedding. Sort of a victory lap for the story, I suppose.

— Nevertheless, Cecil still has a few minor obstacles to overcome. The first one is Bertia’s little brother Aneth. Even though we’ve barely seen him at all, he is attached to Bertia and refuses to let her get married. Plus, Bertia has been talking to herself in her sleep about Cecil, so Aneth is spouting all this nonsense about harems and capture targets. Okay, a bit extreme for a first-time appearance. Why is he sneaking into his sister’s room at night? Second, do we really gotta give a little kid character a “sister complex”? Yuri in Spy x Family has a sister complex, and it’s barely tolerable.

— The father calling Cecil a demon king is nothing new. The prince shouldn’t be surprised to hear this.

— Rather, it’s Bertia’s mother who is a complete mystery. Other than surviving in this timeline and giving birth to Aneth, she really has no character. She hasn’t had any screentime. In fact, does she even have a single spoken line?

— Cecil easily persuades Aneth by telling the kid that 1) a villainess and a demon king getting together is just fitting, 2) he’ll gain an older brother (-in-law), and 3) he can visit anytime. So… that’s it? One conversation does the trick? It’s not a sister complex, then. It’s just a kid being a kid. He thought his sister was going away forever. Bah, don’t toss terms like “sister complex” around so blithely like that.

— A huge procession right before the wedding? Don’t you wanna do this afterwards? Actually, I wouldn’t know. I don’t give a damn about weddings so I shouldn’t question it.

— When Bertia has free time, it seems like all she does is produce all these booklets with fancy graphics and illustrations. Also, her familiar is giving this to Cecil now on the day of the wedding? Sheesh, talk about poor planning. Plus, Cecil’s just going to delegate most of these tasks to his familiar. In other words, Kuro’s light-hearted revenge plan is only screwing Zeno over, not Cecil.

— Bah, there’s nothing to talk about. Her father walks her down the aisle, they are presented with fancy rings, blah blah blah. This is a victory lap in every sense of the term: boring unless you’re a mega fan.

— The thing is, this is Bertia’s biggest day, but even now, she doesn’t really have much of a voice. Her needs and wants are passively conveyed to Cecil via a booklet passed on through Kuro. Other than that, she’s just window dressing. And that has always been the one gnawing flaw about this show. I get it, Cecil is the real protagonist. Fine, but Bertia should then be the deuteragonist. She doesn’t have the sort of agency befitting of that role, though. Cecil highlights the fact that Bertia is sliding a ring onto his finger with her own “free will,” but there are degrees to this. Yes, nobody is literally forcing her to marry him, but does she feel like a character with her hands on the reins of her life? Nah, man. She’s been on rails the entire time (“I must pair the prince up with the heroine no matter what!!!”), and now she’s getting married. Bertia’s the same character she was at the start of the show.

— Bertia’s father simmers as the couple shares a kiss and exchange vows. Why do we gotta do this? Quit being weird, anime. Fathers do not get mad at a wedding playing out like a wedding should.

— In fact, Bertia’s got a bunch of overly protective weirdos on her side, including Kuro. What is the familiar even mad about? She’s still going to be with Bertia 24/7.

— And just like that, Cecil feels shy and embarrassed for the first time in his life. Fine, this is all part of his emotional growth as a character, but this is what I’m talking about. Bertia doesn’t get even half the development that Cecil does. Again, he’s the main character, but where’s her inner thoughts? Where’s her own personal development and growth?

— The only major change we ever hear about is how she lost weight — back as a kid and even now. Kinda messed up.

— Odd fourth wall breaking moment.

— Of all the people to catch the bouquet, it’s Kuro because she thought they were playing fetch. When told that catching the bouquet means she will get married next, she immediately looks to Zeno standing off to the side. Sigh, just anime being anime again. First, she looks like a kid. Second, she literally thought they were playing fetch! The show quickly makes up an excuse about how Kuro is actually much older than she looks. Uh-huh.

— The CGI horses are such an eyesore.

— As they depart for their honeymoon, Bertia starts talking about what their future children would like before she realizes the implications of what she’s saying and gets embarrassed. This is why kids shouldn’t be getting married.

— Bertia starting a wedding magazine is one thing — in corpo speak, she’s finally “leveraging” her talents — but naming it after herself is a bit tacky.

— Right before the episode ends, Bertia has something super important to tell Cecil, but the audio cuts out. I guess it doesn’t really matter what she has to say, because the story is more or less over. Still, I’ve heard about what happens in the manga, and they left out the part where the couple has two children. Weird, isn’t it? Well, Kuro also has a kid, and maybe they didn’t wanna explain that.

— Well, I’ve been following this show extensively on a weekly basis, so all of my praise and gripes have been equally extensively documented. But let’s just do a quick recap. It’s an interesting if not wholly original idea: the villainess’s knowledge of how the story should play out causes the events to diverge greatly. The problem, however, is that there was only ever one dynamic character, and that was Cecil. As a result, everyone else felt like hollow dolls, which is ironic because he’s supposed to be the emotionless mannequin who eventually learns how to be human. I also just didn’t like the fact that Heronia never got the opportunity to avoid her fate. She was rendered too stupid to realize what she was doing until her familiar died. Everything else can diverge — everyone else can have happy futures — but someone still has to be punished as the villainess in the end…? It’s inconsistent.

— Ultimately, I was mildly entertained, but we could’ve done much better.