This is my punishment for liking Rie
Kugimiya’s Tsunderes.
And not through any fault of hers. As
a voice actress, she still gives 100% bringing Louise to life in this
one; few actresses could pull of the “cute scream-crying” that’s
needed in this one, and she does. No, the problem is that some
things are better left buried. Or, less melodramatically, the
problem is the script she was handed, not how she handled it.
That script makes Louise one of the
most miserably unlikable characters I have ever encountered, at least
out of characters the audience isn’t intended to hate.
Back in season one – and I’ll
probably be referring there a lot – Loiuse had something of a
jealous streak regarding Saito. But her treatment of the matter made
sense, was consistent with the character, and didn’t feel like it was
outright malicious. Louise hated Saito giving the time of day to
Kirche because she was rivals with Kirche, and knew Kirche was
intending to seduce her familiar and, basically, steal her property,
so of course she took umbrage to Saito going along with it. She also
had some resentment for Saito’s friendly relationship with Siesta,
but that jealousy was much less violent in nature; Siesta was
prettier than her, and it needled her pride to have a boy (as she
began to see him) who was with her more often than not looking at a
lesser as special, so she tended to get a little huffy when Siesta
was around. Also in season one, Louise would tend to punish Saito by
hitting him with a riding crop. Her behavior, on the whole, was
decidedly not awesome (especially when it was revealed she had a
fiancee she cared about the whole time… though he turned out to be
evil) but it was within the realm of tsundere-driven slapstick.
Louise was a hot-tempered and entitled young woman who didn’t know
what she wanted, only what she didn’t like, and that was how she
acted.
Enter Season 2. As of Season 2, Louise
seems to see Saito as a person, even a desirable romantic partner.
And, you know, that makes sense. Not only did they do a lot of
bonding over the last season, but Saito did kind of give up his
opportunity to go home in order to save her (as well as, with her
help, her country). It was kind of a big deal, and it deserved to be
acknowledged. At first, with the start of episode 1, it looks like
the story is going to move forward from where we left it, with Saito
being treated better: he’s sleeping in a bed rather than on a pile of
straw, and Louise even seems ready to show a little dere, because she
has a gift for Saito.
It turns out, though, we’re not as far forward as we thought, and the gift is a trap: a gaudy pair of magic glasses that weld themselves to Saito’s face and loudly alert Louise if he feels anything lewd looking at anyone else. It’s not funny. Naturally, on their outing with Saito wearing the glasses, they come across Kirche and Siesta, who both trigger the signal despite Saito’s increasing efforts to avoid it. Each time the glasses fire, Louise punishes Saito, and she’s upped her game. The riding crop will see use again, but explosion magic now seems to be her standard reaction to Saito’s bad behavior and/or unintentional offenses. This isn’t funny, either. Lastly, they go to see Henrietta at a parade. Saito does everything in his power to avoid watching the parade, because he knows Henrietta is pretty, and he knows by this point the cursed artifact dear Louise glued to his face under the pretense of a gift is going to go off and get him blown up again. Louise forces him to watch properly despite his terrified protests and when, as one might expect, he has some manner of impure thought, however mild, about the gorgeous young queen of the realm he is of course rewarded with the biggest blast yet, enough to finally shatter the magic glasses and end their reign of terror. By the end of the episode and only tenuously through any fault of his own Saito is beaten, bruised, and put back in the proverbial (and essentially literal) dog house. The status quo is restored. And it’s not funny.
The astute reader may have noticed that
I point out several times that this incident isn’t funny. And if it
were an isolated incident… okay, the rollback of any progress in
the story would still be frustrating in its own right, but it would
be forgivable. The problem is that it’s not an isolated incident.
Louise’s interactions with Saito throughout the season come off as
far more selfish and abusive, and they aren’t funny. I get it, humor
is subjective, different people are going to find different things
funny. But there is still such a thing as bad comedy, and that’s the
tip of the iceberg for the second season of Familiar of Zero. In the
interest of understanding the downfall of Familiar of Zero, let’s use
the first episode and examples of Louise’s behavior from later
episodes, combined with analysis of better comedy, to analyze her
character and dissect why I’m not laughing.
Here’s my thesis: Louise beating and
blasting Saito isn’t funny because it doesn’t have the right
reactions and the right chain of cause and effect to make it funny,
and the show doesn’t treat it properly in order for it to be funny.
First of all, there’s the matter of
pain. It’s a commonly accepted truth that in order to have comedy,
generally somebody has to suffer somewhere along the line. It might
not be universal, but even surreal comedies at least have the mental
agony of the straight man dealing with the crazy scenario. The
classic routine “Who’s on First?” wouldn’t be a laugh riot if it
weren’t for the frustration the characters attempting and failing to
communicate were feeling. This is especially true in slapstick,
where physical pain and injury are incorporated into the canon of the
humorous and expected to provide most of the laughs. But, and this
is something that’s easy to miss, it’s not the pain itself that’s
funny. More pain does not equal more humor. Instead, it takes a
delicate hand to transform that suffering for the character into
comedy for the audience. It has to be for the right reasons and at
the right scale, and there needs to be a proper distance between the
victim of the comedy and any empathy we might have.
Let’s compare the first episode of
Familiar of Zero season 2 with a much better comedy routine that has
the same pattern: the Three Stooges routine “Niagara Falls”. In
both cases, a sucker twice ends up the victim of some slapstick
injury thanks to unknowingly or unintentionally giving provocation.
The third time the opportunity comes up, the sucker tries to avoid
his fate, yet ultimately ends up getting it worse than before. It’s
a fairly similar backbone. In “Niagara Falls”, the first time
the slapstick happens, it’s a total surprise, catching both the
audience and the sucker character offguard (twice). There’s a flow
and a pacing to it; the sucker isn’t just punched to the ground. And
the character performing the slapstick is an exaggerated character,
an eccentric nut. He acts out in a way that the sucker couldn’t have
predicted, and his mania adds another layer to the routine. He’s not
just hitting the sucker for saying the phrase ‘Niagara Falls’, he’s
driven into a bizarre reenactment of a previous fight. The second
time, the buildup is a little different. The sucker doesn’t know
there’s going to be an exact repeat of the previous incident (because
one very specific manic reaction to those words was strange enough),
but once it starts he knows what’s going to happen and reacts
appropriately, with fear and apprehension rather than shock. The
third time, the formula is shaken up from the beginning. The sucker
watches his previous tormentors come up to one another… only to
embrace each other as old friends, rather than the mortal enemies
they depicted each other as in their previous stories. This
naturally frustrates the sucker, who sees his previous suffering as
being for nothing. He tries to manipulate the others into triggering
on one another, only to put his foot in his mouth and get twice the
beating… except that he actually runs off stage; we don’t even need
to see the slapstick at that point because we know what’s coming,
what it will result in. We’re already laughing.
In the first episode, some of those
fundamentals are different. Saito knows what the glasses do, and he
knows Louise (as do we the audience) so there’s not really any
surprise when running into one or more of the busty beauties about
which he would very naturally, as a teenage boy, have impure thoughts
gets him punished by Louise. There’s no timing or narrative to what
she does to him either; it’s just a single explosion. For the right
reason and at the right moment that could be funny, but it is missing
an opportunity here. On the third scenario, where Curly signs the
warrant for his implied beating with his foolishness and big mouth
(limiting the empathy we feel for him. He’s basically innocent, but
he still brought it on himself), Saito instead does everything in his
power to avoid triggering the slapstick scenario. Curly begs too,
but only when the action has already started and can’t be stopped.
Saito, unlike Curly, is an entirely unwilling participant in his
downfall. As for the one doing the injuring, Louise isn’t the same
sort of exaggerated character as Larry or Moe. When they slap Curly,
tear his clothes, and knock him down, they do it in a seeming fugue
state, and he can even get at least one apology about the effect
those words have on the loon he’s sharing the stage with. Louise is,
in theory, a right-thinking teenage girl and a noblewoman with honor.
She’s also supposedly in love with Saito, or at least interested in
him, so the motivation for hurting him the way she does feels a
little off.
Further, the damage done is different. This is more pronounced in other Louise incidents than the first episode, but in “Niagara Falls”, Curly’s beating is firmly in the category of… annoying. His clothes are ruined and probably his day with them, but even when he flees offstage there’s not a sense that he would really be in fear of his life. Louise’s explosions vary. We saw her explode Saito once or twice in the first season, and herself about as much, and as far as I recall every time was essentially by accident (counting trying to silence him with magic and receiving explosion+translation as an accidental explosion). In Season 2, she has better control over her powers, and is intentionally hitting him with magical bombs. How strong are they? Multiple times in season 2, the very punishment explosions that hit Saito are shown to shatter rock walls, and when Saito’s been beaten in this show (usually by Louise), aftermath shots are not cartoony. He is honestly hurting and bruised in a somewhat realistic manner, which makes you feel empathy with his pain, not humor.
Now, I know the objection that many of
you have probably made. “Louise is a Tsundere”, you say. “Of
course she hits Saito because she likes him, she can’t deal with her
feelings.” With all due respect, if this is the excuse for her,
it’s wrong on multiple counts.
In the first season, Louise couldn’t
deal with her feelings because she didn’t know what she wanted.
Saito appealed to her, but there were also a lot of barriers,
including the world they lived in and his more frustrating traits.
Because of that, she would lash out. In season 2, Louise knows what
she wants. She wants Saito, and she is determined to get him; he
doesn’t have a choice. She doesn’t lash out thanks to emotional
turmoil, she punishes Saito for not living up to her image of a
perfect partner, or attacks him to forestall any threat, real or
imagined, that he might not become hers.
Second, it’s not necessary for a
Tsundere to engage in slapstick. Some, even some good ones, do.
Others simply have sharp tongues and hot tempers. The typical
Tsundere is the queen of the mixed message. “I’m not doing this
because I like you, bakka.” Tsunderes aren’t honest with
themselves and their partners, their harshness comes out as a way to
cover for their insecurities. A Tsundere might strike her love
interest (and it could be funny for her to do so), but that’s not the
defining trait of Tsundere behavior. Louise… doesn’t fit this
model, at least not as of this season. Louise’s desires are
unambiguous, save in the cases where she’s ticked off and Saito can’t
be sure whether she wants him alive or dead. The problem is not
honesty with herself or comfort with her feelings, it’s the fact that
she wants absolute primacy and absolute devotion, beyond what can be
realistically achieved.
From this, I derive a theory: As of
Famailiar of Zero: Knight of the Twin Moons, Louise is no longer a
Tsundere. She has evolved into a Yandere, and a type of Yandere that
isn’t funny either.
And I know what you’re saying,
imaginary objecting audience member who only exists for rhetorical
purposes, “Louise can’t be a Yandere, it’s not like she tries to
kill any of her rivals.” But that’s not the core backbone of the
Yandere. The core of the Yandere archetype is that the Yandere is
crazy about someone. And by ‘crazy’ I mean that her (and it’s
usually a her) affection enters the realm of mental illness. For the
true epicure of the lovesick insane, there are many possible
expressions of the Yandere psychosis. The eliminating Yandere, who
seeks to expunge her romantic rivals with bloody violence, is
probably the most famous form, but it’s the obsession and not the
murder that’s core to the archetype. If the most Tsundere thing in
the world is denial (it is) like the stock line reproduced earlier,
the most Yandere thing in the world is unhealthy desire. “My
beloved will be mine, he doesn’t have a choice.” Once that is
established, worry about the Yandere’s particular methodology is
window dressing.
It’s this behavior that marks Louise as
a Yandere. She wants Saito. She knows she wants Saito, and she
accepts it herself. And she wants the Totality of Saito. She’s not
satisfied with mundane love, being the girl he likes best and wants
to spend his life with. She has to be the only girl in his life and
his mind; he can’t find anyone else pretty or have female friends
(considering how jealous she gets of Saito’s time spent with others
for innocent reasons). I’m not going to claim that Saito is entirely
innocent or a sane girl wouldn’t get at least a little annoyed with
him now and again, but Louise’s needs in this relationship are,
frankly, not achievable by functional humans.
As for how she tries to see her needs
met, her methodology is to threaten Saito with violence if he incurs
her displeasure. It may not be stated clearly as such, but it’s
coercive. Saito can’t get away from her and has to conform to her
wishes or suffer painful consequences. If anything deviates from
Louise’s script, she blames Saito and tries to ‘teach him a lession’
about whatever it was or wasn’t. Saito doesn’t suborn himself to
Louise’s demands, and because of this he gets hit with
life-threatening explosions, beaten, and otherwise generally chewed
up.
And Yanderes can be funny… if they’re
the right type of Yandere and the narrative they’re in knows how to
use them. Purely obsessive/delusional type Yanderes, who have the
methodologies of making over-the-top and sometimes disturbing
romantic overtures, can be hilarious. If used right, the narrative
will know that this character is unbalanced. The things she does
will disturb the other characters, and probably have a self-defeating
effect on her intended mark as a conventionally sane target for the
Yandere will have the expected reaction to her excesses. This is
funny because the Yandere’s behavior will probably subvert
expectations (which are based on normal individuals rather than
insane ones) and we can get funny reactions out of the mark and
onlookers who are creeped out by the Yandere and the Yandere who
honestly doesn’t understand why her devotion isn’t winning her the
day.
Violent Yanderes are harder to make
funny. Because of their coercive nature, there’s always a serious
edge to their antics. If we’re actually feeling afraid for the
Yandere’s mark or sympathetic for the hurts the mark receives, we
can’t laugh at the injuries done because we have too much empathy for
the victim. Typically, to get good humor (and not black humor) out
of a violent Yandere she needs to be essentially harmless.
Essentially, it becomes just another form of the excessive and
disturbing overture, when she threatens her mark or her rivals, but
isn’t competent enough to actually hurt or kill anybody. Even if a
character is having a knife swung at them, because the effect is
minimal (fear rather than bloody injury) we can accept it as funny.
The alternative is that the violence is very cartoonish, and while it
might hit or ‘injure’ its mark, it doesn’t have realistic
consequences.
Louise is not funny. She’s violent, and her violence has a serious or even realistic edge to it rather than being cartoonish. The show takes her and itself too seriously; everything she does could technically be funny with the right framing, but the framing and overall tone don’t support it. That’s the last and most critical difference between the first episode of the season and “Niagara Falls” – the latter is a comedy sketch that isn’t even five minutes. The former is one episode of a show that isn’t even entirely a comedy. There was comedy in Familiar of Zero, but that’s not its primary genre or purposes. Familiar of Zero isn’t a comedy the same way KonoSuba is a comedy, it’s a romance and an adventure and it does actual drama fairly often, so it doesn’t have the consistent barrier between what’s on screen and reality to numb our empathy and make honestly dreadful levels of violent abuse humorous. So when Saito declares he loves Louise in a grand gesture and rescues her from her domineering family in the middle of the season only to be met with severe hostility at the provocation of Siesta (the only sensible pick) being their getaway driver… we’re not with her.
Yet the show still expects us to regard Louise and her bad behavior as belonging to the funny – or at least forgivable – Tsundere she was in season 1 rather than the coercive, attacking Yandere she’s become. There’s an episode later where Saito got beaten by one of Louise’s sisters. And while that beating wasn’t exactly funny, the reasons and reactions at least had a comedic bent to it, so that if we’d cut where the scene with the sister cut, I would at least acknowledge that as a actual comedy even if I still didn’t find it funny myself. Later, Louise and Saito are together, and Louise, of course, isn’t very happy with Saito. In the process of removing his shirt, we (and Louise) see that Saito is still injured from his beating earlier. This strips away some of the funny, because his bruises are depicted in a realistic manner (for the medium) adding consequences we can empathize with to the previous beating. So, Louise sees Saito (who we are supposed to believe she loves) has been hurt – how does she react? Well, because she’s not a sane woman who would express some concern for her beloved being injured, her response is to blame Saito. She assumes that he must have deserved his beating and, in fact, decides that he deserves worse, presumably because she hasn’t had the chance to beat him yet. And she pulls out a giant, spiked whip to deliver her punishment with. And, recall, we’ve just been primed to take injuries received by Saito seriously (because his previous beating resulted in real bruises). So when we cut with Louise brandishing a spiked whip… that’s not funny. It’s sick. It is downright sick and disturbed and drives me to absolutely despise Louise.
In a sense, I could cut the review
here. Familiar of Zero: Knight of the Twin Moons has already Failed.
Why? Because like I said, Familiar of Zero isn’t a comedy. At its
heart, the genre that gets the most focus, the backbone of the show
and the majority of its DNA, is Romance. And the Romance of the
show, distractions from other girls aside, is the romance between its
main characters, Saito and Louise. I don’t just prefer another
pairing. I don’t just not feel the chemistry between the leads. I
honest-to-Haruhi hate Louise. And if you hate one of the romantic
leads in a Romance, I’m not sure there’s anything that can possibly
save it.
But, there is more to say about
Familiar of Zero. For one, Louise may be the worst downgrade from
season 1 to season 2 – by far, the mountain to the molehill of
other issues – but she’s not totally alone. Siesta, in season 1,
was a moderately developed character. She had a hero worship crush
on Saito, but honestly bonded with him as a friend and confidant in a
number of good scenes. Saito clearly found her attractive and liked
her well enough as a person, but never moved to form a romantic
relationship with her or take advantage of her because of any or all
of his morals, the circumstances of their existence, Saito not
desiring romance there, and/or Saito having his eyes on Louise
instead. Here in Season 2, Siesta is distilled down to two character
traits: her breasts… and the fact she likes Saito. When talking
about her personality and not her figure, she’s a flat character now,
and there aren’t the same genuine or heartfelt scenes between her and
Saito because of it. All the humanity has been sucked out of their
relationship.
That said, perhaps the fact that the
season has these bitterly critical core failings is more painful
because there is good material in the second season of Familiar of
Zero. The dramatic material is strong – I daresay it’s a good bit
stronger than the dramatic material in Season 1. One of the earlier
episodes, the sort of thing that gave me hope after the start of the
unfunny Yandere Louise train, was centered around Henrietta. In the
first season, she was an important character perhaps, but she didn’t
get all that much screen time so she wasn’t too developed past
clearly being a nice person. In the penultimate movement of the
season, she had to have recovered a love letter from her to Prince
Wales, whose kingdom was being overrun by the villain-led rebels,
since such a thing coming to light would badly damage her standing on
a world stage.
Aside here, Henrietta might be one of
my favorite princess/queen characters, because she actually has to
deal with affairs of state.
In any case, Wales was killed at the
time and, of course, Henrietta was heartbroken. So heartbroken, in
fact, that when Wales seemingly returns from the dead to spirit her
away, she goes with it at least enough that she’s on a horse bound
far away from home when Louise and Saito catch up to rescue her. The
reanimated Wales is under the control of the villains, who have a
magical artifact that permits them to raise/command the dead (though
this is the only time we see them use it to that end). Louise uses
her void magic to dispel the spell on Wales, returning his mind to
its former self… and also causing him to return to death after not
too long. Henrietta has to watch her beloved die a second death, and
you really feel the emotional turmoil she’s going through when she
does. She recovers from the trauma mostly between episodes, or
perhaps that ultimately gave her more of a sense of closure than a
sense of grief (enough that a few episodes later she seems to have an
interest in Saito. Better choices than Louise for a thousand,
Alex.), but her crying scene in that episode is hard to watch for all
the right reasons.
Later we get more dramatic stuff with
more secondary characters. Colbert is a professor at the magic
school. He was in season 1, but like a lot of other characters he
didn’t really bear mentioning in what was a fairly brief review. In
Season 1 he established himself as being a smart and level-headed
sort of man who didn’t much care for violence. He reminds Saito that
killing isn’t glorious in and of itself and counsels him to find
other routes if possible, but he doesn’t go to the point of being
preachy or annoying about it. Meanwhile, season 2 introduces Agnes,
the head of Henrietta’s musketeer guards and a tough, angry sort of
lady with a big chip on her shoulder. When she was a child, Agnes’
village was razed with a massive death toll by an army squad, led by
an incredibly powerful fire mage. An unknown figure carried the
young Agnes to safety, and since then she’s been seeking revenge on
the people responsible for the massacre.
Ultimately, their two stories are
connected, as is revealed when a powerful mercenary fire mage takes
the poorly-defended school hostage. Colbert and the mercenary were
both at Agnes’ village when it burned… and Colbert was the
commanding officer. He acted, essentially, in good faith, having
been given a fake story that meant “torch everything from a safe
distance” would have been justified if it were true. He
incinerated the town and ended up also fighting and blinding his
former lieutenant, now the mercenary. He was also the figure that
carried the young Agnes to safety; seeing the terrible results of his
actions and realizing he had been misled, Colbert sought to save
whatever he could, and changed his path in life, becoming the
pacifistic teacher we know because he understands more than almost
anyone how war can turn a normal person into a monster. All of this
comes out in the midst of a heated battle between Colbert (playing
total defense according to his pacifist ideals), the mercenary, and a
few of the main character students attempting to save the rest… all
with Agnes present.
Agnes is torn about what to do. In
those moments, she has before her the man responsible for reducing
everything she knew and loved to ash… but also the man responsible
for saving her life, who turned over a new leaf despite his crimes.
On the other hand, she has a clear and present danger to the people
she needs to protect right now. As with Henrietta’s grief over
Wales, we really feel the psychological strain in Agnes’ struggle.
Though she ultimately strikes down the attacking mercenary, her
business with Colbert isn’t finished.
Except, gravely wounded from the
conflict, Colbert dies.
Colbert, who we’d known for most of two
seasons as a good person, slips away before Agnes can make a final
decision to kill or spare him, having laid down his life at least in
part for a woman who hated him. The episode is called “The
Atonement of Flames” but Colbert dies with a guilty conscience, as
a letter he wrote for Saito before his demise reveals. Agnes,
meanwhile, is torn up. Her revenge is, essentially, complete… but
it wasn’t by her hand and she can’t work out anymore whether or not
she was right to want it, or whether she could have forgiven Colbert
for his terrible deeds and terrible mistake.
If you’ve been reading along, you might
recall that in my review of the first season, I bemoaned that there
was a great opportunity the show missed to display a complex and
two-sided conflict, between factions that have every reason to be at
odds, where both sides have legitimate points and grievances and
there isn’t an easy super-evil baddie to defeat in order to resolve
the conflict. The material with Colbert and Agnes in Knight of the
Twin Moons essentially is that deep, complex, two-sided conflict in a
microcosm, being a conflict between two people rather than a conflict
on the scale of society as a whole. It’s dynamite material, and
Familiar of Zero: Knight of the Twin Moons gets a lot of points for
it.
Unfortunately, Louise dug a deep enough
hole that filling it with all the points from Agnes, Colbert, and
Henrietta doesn’t bring the show back around to positive. The core
is just too broken. Having great dramatic material with these
secondary characters when the romance and comedy in this comedic,
adventurous Romance are overwhelmingly terrible is like having a
great custom paint job on a car with its engine on fire: it’s not
worth it.
And… I’ve saved the ending of the
season for last. Not just because it’s the ending, and that kind of
naturally goes at the end, but because it kind of shows off
everything that’s wrong with Familiar of Zero by this point.
The last arc of the show involves a
counter-invasion against the kingdom controlled by the
villain-manipulated populist rebels from season 1, which is on a
flying island in the sky. Henrietta’s forces make significant gains,
and the war seems to actually have something of a dramatic flow to
it. Through struggle and sacrifice, the folks we’re rooting for
accomplished something. The villains turn the tide, though, using a
magic item to drive a good chunk of the invading soldiers into
berserk insanity, attacking their friends wildly. Henrietta’s forces
are driven into a full retreat, and the final conflict is a scenario
a bit like the British retreat from Dunkirk in World War II –
everybody had better get out, and fast before the enemy is on top of
them.
Louise, because of her ‘devotion’ to
Henrietta, wants to act as a rear guard for the retreat, a mission
that’s tantamount to suicide. Even though that’s not something
Henrietta would want, she’s resolved to her course (it’s unclear if
she’d be dragging Saito along, but the point is rather moot). After
Louise pressures Saito into a sham marriage ceremony, he gives her a
sleeping potion and sees her own one of the escaping ships, while
staying behind to act as rear guard himself. Allow me to reiterate
if I didn’t say it strongly enough: Saito doesn’t make perfect
choices. That doesn’t forgive Louise. In any case, Saito stays
behind on the flying island and seemingly dies, as we see him make a
heroic last stand (in a pretty good dramatic sequence) and a magic
flower that should accurately report the status of the person it’s
bonded to (Saito in this case) wilts to indicate his death.
Cut to some significant time later. We
see a montage of Louise grieving, unable to get over her loss, when
one day the wilted flower revives, and we find Saito, miraculously
alive, returned home at last. His reunion with Louise is sweet and
touching and cathartic… for maybe thirty seconds. You see, Saito
was resurrected by a mysterious elf or faerie or what have you
(something similar allegedly happened to Guiche earlier in the war
campaign, so it’s not totally out of left field). And he has the
misfortune of mentioning that she was a beautiful busty life saving
elf faerie.
Cue the savage violence from Louise. The boy she supposedly loves doesn’t even get done explaining how he’s still alive before she’s trying to correct that mistake. In rapid succession he runs into Siesta and Kirche, who are happy to see him as friends should be. This further infuriates Louise, and the attack is well and truly on. That’s where we cut.
You know, when you frame it like that,
it’s almost like nothing happened. This whole season, I mean.
Nothing happened. An entire war was fought, but there was no regime
change, no peace treaty, and not one inch of territory lost or ceded
so that’s back to where it was at the end of season one. Louise is
still angrily attacking Saito for so much as saying ‘hi’ to another
girl just like she was doing in episode one, so all the declarations
of love, up to and including a marriage ceremony that she chose in
order to forge a meaningful connection are all without any purpose.
All of the characters are back at school now, just like before the
draft hit in the early episodes of the season, so that’s the same.
Mostly. The one meaningful change this whole season is that Colbert
is dead, that really is it.
I understand that Status Quo has its
appeal, but you can only circle back to status quo this badly in
disconnected, episodic material. Doing it in something with a
narrative, something that should be moving forward, is downright
insulting.
All twelve episodes, and for what?
Just to kill off Colbert? I feel like you could skip the whole
season and you probably wouldn’t lose very much for what comes
after… but then I suspect from this shameful display that what
comes after probably won’t go anywhere either.
And I suspect (rather than know) that because… I haven’t gone forward with Familiar of Zero. There are two more seasons after Knight of the Twin Moons – Familiar of Zero F and Familiar of Zero: Rondo of Princess. But with how bad Knight of the Twin Moons was, how hollow I felt finishing it, how useless everything that happened seemed? I have no desire to go on. I’m happy leaving those books unopened. Heck, I wish I’d stopped with season 1 because that would have been a more satisfying ending than anything I could expect out of this show anymore.
I still love Rie Kugimiya’s work, but
this was just painful.
Because of all of, well, this, don’t
look for two more Familiar of Zero reviews in the coming weeks. I
don’t have them and won’t have them and currently have no intention
of watching anything else connected to Familiar of Zero. Anything
could happen, I guess, but it would take a lot to convince me to put
myself through another season of Familiar of Zero, much less two.
I’m giving Louise her F for this assignment and I’m not looking back.