I woke up today hoping that this week’s episode would be the season finale. Alas, we still have one more to go. Nothing better for Christmas Eve than the season finale of a middling anime. Bah, let’s get this over with. So when we last left off, Iana wanted the fix the vampire’s seal before it broke. But where’s the fun in that? You can’t mention a vampire without showing us one, so of course, Iana and her team of pretty boys — Sol and Yomi — are too late. The seal has already broken, and the entire elf village has been subjugated. Well, these look and act more like zombies than vampires.

Iana hasn’t been having a good time lately, because as you’ll recall, the duchess still died. Basically, our heroine/villainess is facing the same future no matter how hard she tries to change the story. Personally, I think the sample size here is too small to draw any definitive conclusion. But hey, my life isn’t on the line, so maybe that allows me to be a bit more rational. I just think it’s funny that Iana’s losing her marbles over the duchess of all people. “Why couldn’t the future change?! Why are we trapped in this nightmare where a serial kidnapper and probably rapist had to lose her life?!”

When we last left off, Cheneau had told Iana to run away and look for help, but she steadfastly refused. She believed that if she left, he would most certainly die at Amaryllis’s hand. So instead, right at the start of this week’s episode, our heroine/villainess strikes a pose and embraces her identity as Iana Magnolia. The animators probably intend for this scene to be comedic — and I know Iana is just bluffing — but I’m still cringing. It’s just that she doesn’t really have a plan to get out of this mess. Rather, she just thinks she could tap into her inner chuunibyo and scare Amaryllis into backing off. Well, luckily for her, the cops soon arrive thanks to ideal Konoha awakening to some of her saintly powers.

When we last left off, Iana remembered that the duchess is the evil mastermind behind all the kidnapping. In fact, Amaryllis has gone mad, so she is also now a murderer. Basically, we have lives to save. But Iana can’t do this alone, so she predictably has to team up with Cheneau. You know how it goes. He has been at her throat for the past two episodes, so this antagonism makes their working relationship a little spicier. And in the aftermath, when he discovers that Iana has been innocent this whole time, he’ll finally bend the knee. They’re going to redeem Cheneau because he’s one of the bishies, but I don’t care because fuck this guy. Threatening to send anyone to their death without an ounce of evidence makes you scum. Forget the gallows. He doesn’t even have a reason to arrest her. What crime has she committed? The crime of running around the mansion and opening doors?

When real Konoha returns to the party, she finds Menoa’s her half-sister berating the poor girl in front of everyone. This seems rather gauche for a noblewoman, but no one around them seems to care. I guess it’s okay to act like a petulant brat if you’re bullying a child born from a sordid dalliance with a mistress. Well, thanks to Reddit, I’m so over step or half-sibling drama. As an only child, I simply can’t understand wasting so much time and energy hating on someone like this. Perhaps real Konoha seems to agree, because Iana suddenly steps in and takes the “blow,” i.e. a glass of red wine to the face. The choice to make it look like she’s bleeding from her eyes must have been deliberate. I guess this makes her look like a villainess? Well, she certainly still has that reputation, so now everyone thinks Iana is out to get the mean half-sibling.