The first episode opens with a little girl doing flips in the air as she beats up monsters. It’s so silly, it’s like Yoda from Attack of the Clones. We are then told about a woman who was so strong, she defeated a god. She was so strong, she never found a single person who could give her what she wanted: death in battle. Oh no, is our heroine a combatsexual? Dude, I’m so sick of combatsexuals. First, I had to deal with Zenos in two FFXIV expansions, and yet his fans still want the writers to bring him back. Then, I just recently got done with Dietrich’s chapter in Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, and I was miserable the whole time. I don’t understand the appeal of these sociopaths. And now you tell me that this little girl just wants to find someone to fight? Ugh…
Well, it turns out she also wants to repay her parents. That is, her new parents. Our heroine is a reincarnator. She was supposed to be dead, but she wakes up one day in the body of a four-year-old girl by the name of Nia Liston. The original Nia is unfortunately dead. Nothing to be done about it, really; she was always meant to die. Her healer, however, needed the money, so he went and plucked a soul from… I dunno, hell? Point is, he found one and stuck it in the little girl’s body. That soul just happens to belong to the aforementioned combatsexual. And somehow, the new Nia Liston retains all of her powers. I guess our strength is somehow tied to our souls. Who knew! Anyway, this woman, this hero — whoever she was in her previous life — is at least thankful that she gets a second lease on life. Granted, she just wants to use it to find someone to fight, but she’s grateful enough to want to repay her new parents.
This is a setting with some technology. It’s rather fantastical technology like airships and the magivision, which is something akin to a portable TV. The form factor makes me think iPad, but it functions like a TV. It’s called a magivision, and Nia’s parents invested heavily in it in an attempt to save their daughter’s life. Well, they didn’t really get their daughter back, but details, details… As a result, Nia feels the need to go on air to help popularize the magivision, which hasn’t quite caught on with the general population. Alright, cool, she’s not quite as cold as Zenos or Dietrich. Nia’s got some personality.
Nevertheless, Nia’s dark side still leaks out from time to time. At one point, she takes her older brother’s practice wooden sword and nearly manages to cut through another practice wooden sword. When she later visits a blacksmith after fully recovering from her illness, she can’t help herself. She takes a sword and cleaves through a shield even though the weapon itself wasn’t that well made. The worst example of Nia’s dark side, however, is when she randomly imagines how easy it would be for her to kill her servants in one strike. Sure, we all have intrusive thoughts from time to time. Mine mostly involve jumping off a bridge whenever I see one. If I’m holding a baby, I have an irrational fear of dropping the child. As a result, images of me doing that exact thing will flood my mind. Still, intentionally killing people is a bit much… but maybe that’s just me.
What really bugs me, however, is that… well, her family doesn’t really seem to know Nia, both the old and the new. Granted, this kinda makes sense. In these rich, noble families, I’m sure the servants do most of the childrearing. As a result, the only people who seem to notice that Nia isn’t acting like herself are the maids. They spend every day with her, so they should know if her personality has changed. But this is still a bit sad, isn’t it? I’m not saying that Nia’s parents are bad parents. They were obviously desperate to save their real daughter, and they needed money to do so — money that they had to work for. But still, a parent should know their child, even if that child was only four years old. And if that child suddenly becomes a different person, you should notice it, dammit. It’s not like the new Nia is doing a bang-up job pretending to be the old one. How can you call yourself a mother or father if you don’t?
Anyway, I’m curious to see if the new Nia will still have a burning desire to die in battle as the story unfolds. Maybe with her new chance at life, she’ll learn to be… I dunno, a more well-balanced person? Will she become attached to her new family? Or Nia simply stick to repaying them? It’s anime, so there’s a good chance she won’t undergo any character development whatsoever. That would suck, but it wouldn’t surprise me either.
Oh yeah, this is going into Villainess Villainy for now. The first episode doesn’t convince me that there’s enough meat here to get its own post.