「Arcano Triangolo」
“Arcano Triangle”

The penultimate episode of La storia della Arcana Famiglia was such a tease with all its semi-romantic moments! While it’s very common that otome shows never have any solid romance or couples, there have been exceptions, so I actually did believe that we might see some sort of romance, or at least, some typical romantic cliché, but no. It’s all back to Nova and Libertá again. These two characters are likable, but they’re overexposed by now, however, with today’s episode, I think both of them have found their resolves concerning the upcoming duels, so hopefully, we won’t have to see them in their character development stage anymore.

Nova and Libertá took Felicitá on a boat trip, and to be honest, I think it was quite unfair that only those two went with her to celebrate her recovery. I know they saved her last week, but I definitely think the other guys would enjoy celebrating too. Anyway, the entire trip felt very semi-romantic and it had a lot of moments where I thought something would happen. Oh, the disappointment… But on the other hand, since Felicitá is so young, I doubt we’ll ever see her knowing what ‘love’ means. I found it quite hilarious to see Luca cry over the fact that Felicitá might be in love. Long live eccentric characters!

Aside from the semi-romantic moments, Nova and Libertá seem like they’ve improved their powers. Nova, without any success, tried to wish his parents back from their coma, which I believe will happen soon as long as Nova keeps his current motivation up. As for Libertá’s power, I still don’t understand it so well. I do know that he can control it by speaking, but I don’t understand if his power only can ignite things or if he can do anything he wants with it. The former seems more likely because the latter would technically make Libertá invincible.

Now that everything seems to have settled down, or been solved, we’ve finally come to what we’ve been waiting for since the pilot – the duels! I don’t think one episode is enough for all the duels, and next week’s episode is the finale for this anime. I still believe we’ll have a second season but I’m not completely sure. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Random thoughts:

  • When I heard the trio was going to the beach, I was expecting swimsuits…
  • I don’t think the hairpin suits Felicitá at all. It should’ve been green, like her eyes!
  • I have a feeling that we might not get to see how the duels end next week…
  • Everyone is gearing up with weapons for this duel, so I guess it’s all about physical fighting and no powers at all?
  • I want a hat similar to the one on Luca’s head!
  • Dat food!
  • We might have a virtuoso in the family!
  • Full-length shot: 4
  •  

    Preview

13 Comments

  1. I think Liberta’s power is whatever he wants it to be. The power of the word sounds very similar to Lelouch’s geass ability. Of course with different exceptions and abilities. When a pillar was about to drop on Felicita he said for that pillar to shatter. Causing it to do just that. From what I’ve seen and heard it wouldn’t really make sense if Liberta’s power can only ignite stuff if his power is in what he commands. The situations he encountered just allowed him to ignite stuff more often than other things.

    Although I still wish to know if he were to command someone to die, would it actually happen? This being said, if Liberta really had a handle in his powers he’d easily win this duel with just the word “forfeit”.

    And as for the finale. I’m alittle dissapointed that they’re deciding to cram the entire Duel in 1 episode. This duel could use at least 2 or 3 episodes, for everyone’s final development, including Liberta, Felicita and Nova.

    And realistically speaking, from what I remember in the previous episode, this one and the looks of next week’s, love can’t be understood in a span of about 3 days. But aside from that, I’m still enjoying this series. I hope they manage to deliver next week

    Swordhack4
  2. Oh joy…MORE Liberta and Nova…

    *sigh*

    I agree I would have wanted the rest of the group to get SOME development too, especially when the animators have done everything they could to shove Liberta and Nova everywhere whether those two were involved in the game’s event or not. It feels like the anime is going for a non-concrete pairing which makes me even more disappointed they didn’t try emphasizing Felicita’s bonds with the WHOLE family if they weren’t going for a set path or pairing. Even the normal path in the game does a better job at giving attention to all the characters.

    Acerbus
  3. I loved the game, and all the routes by themselves were wonderful.
    But what the anime is doing is just stuffing Liberta/Nova/both into scenes that they don’t belong to. I understand that the anime is focusing on Liberta/Nova as endgame pairings (the opening shows it), but then dedicating episodes to the other males doesn’t really make sense if they’re following that approach. Minus Dante because he never appears, really.
    Well, it’s pretty much definite that there’ll be a Liberta vs Nova match, but I’m curious as to how they’ll handle the rest of the Duello.

    shiroi
  4. I’m really curious to how they’ll handle the duello since they shouldn’t have crammed it one episode.
    And Btw, that cave incident should jus have been a LibertaxFel event and they pasted Nova there. The same with Nova waking up his parents which is a NovaxFel event..

    mistress_kisara
  5. wow I didn’t want to get to a point in wich I had to say this but now I have to…

    This anime is bad… and everyone who enjoys it should feel bad.(well you are free to disagree on the last part but the first one stands)

    Seriously… they WASTED a whole episode in nova’s and liberta’s problem that were over exposed already and ignored totally the chilhood friend trio problems, so what last week episode was their big moment in wich any horrible thing in their pasts is forgiven since it was for Mondo’s sake? talk about lazy story telling.

    Show Spoiler ▼

    If the anime is pairing Felicita to someone it’s obviously going to be liberta since even the direction in this episode gave it away just count how many times the camera took them together and how many shots nova had, this never was a triangle or any other geometric figure, it wasn’t fair to start with.

    lastly the boat scene so felicita who is suposed to be a good fighter and have lived in an islad all her life is somehow unable to catch the hairpin and stay in the boat or swim to prevent herself from drowning (no the weather is no excuse as Liberta and Nova both could swim in there)… that broke my suspension of disbelief(no wonder the anime took the first scene from the game and the manga away, they would be unable to make Felicita a usless distressed girl otherwise)

    I didn’t want to not like this anime but seriously all about it seems to be lacking a lot in almost every sense I could think of, the characters are not bland but the focus on them is awfully one sided (almost all of it is on Liberta… they even shove him into nova’s part of the focus, heck even Felicita could be considered a side character at this point and she was suposed to be the protagonist) whoever planned this anime was a BIG fan of Liberta and his/her bias show as clear as water in here.

    let’s see if the final chapter manages to save this anime but honestly my hopes aren’t up.

    teelaelmes
    1. I think saying “you should feel bad” is way, way too harsh and a little uncalled for. I’m not denying that the anime has definitely gone downhill and they’ve done a lot wrong- but there are things to enjoy about it. The other characters, when given the attention, really do shine. Luca practically steals the show every time he’s on screen and I’m still scratching my head at why they didn’t make him the end route. Out of all the characters, Luca is undoubtedly the most charismatic. Is there anyone who dislikes the guy? Not to mention the art and character designs themselves are pretty to even just look at. Felicita, even with her watered down character, is truly lovely.

      So I don’t agree with the direction that the anime took, but I don’t think all of it is as terrible as people are making it out to be. Maybe I’m just too devoted to the other characters, but they’re enough to keep me hanging in there! I’m so excited to see Luca and Jolly’s alchemy next week.

      What they should have done is to go down a similar path that the Hakuouki anime did. It had scenes from all the routes, but it never overexposed any particular character, developed the MC, and it always gave the overall plot the attention that it needed. It really is a shame that Famiglia took the direction it did because it has such solid source material.

      staticphrase
      1. Well as I already said, yes anyone is free to disagree to the “you should feel bad”.

        But now that I’m calm I can’t think of any redeeming thing in this anime to recomend to my friends or to anyone, I would jump and say don’t bother with it play the game instead.

        Charismatic characters: too bad that most likely your favourite will be shoved to the side unless is Liberta or Nova.
        Love triangle: OH SO HEAVILY BIASED towards Liberta.
        Strong heroine: only in the game, the anime took away as much badassery as they could get away with.
        Mafia: we barely see them doing anything remotely similar to mafia things once the first chapter ends.
        animation: probably the only thing that deserves mention as they have less derping around than Hiiro no kakera or starry sky.
        progression on the history: they beat a dead horse way too many times the first episodes and go back to doing it on the last ones… instead of you know giving all the characters a proper chance to shine.

        So yes, I dare to say that whoever translated this game into anime never took a proper course on story telling as this is just all over the place while other series have a clear idea of where they want to go (I never had this problem with neo angelique, hakuoki, utapri or what has come out of Hiiro no kakera, I don’t mention Starry sky since that had the omnibus format; all of those had the same thing in common they were otome games first, and they did a goodwork in telling their history, Hakuoki of course had it easier as it had real history to follow from.)

        teelaelmes
      2. Up to episode 9, they are actually animating the events that happened in the common route (events that happened in more than 1 character route).
        Episode 10 is event in Jolly route and this episode is event in Liberta and Nova route.

        To be honest, it’s actually better if the studio continue animating the common route till last episode since it’s the safest way to adapt the game considering the time constraints and too bad they overexposed Liberta and Nova more than other characters.

        Keven
  6. Having only 12 episodes instead of 24 like most otome game anime adaptations seems to make this series a mess. Aside from Liberta and Nova, other characters get little to no character development at all due to lack of screentime.

    Melina
  7. I’m not surprised that it will come down to Liberta and Nova being the candidates for Felicita’s love partner; even Jolly pointed it out to be obvious. What I had hope to not happen was that the Arcana Duels were going to be featured into one episode and in the finale at that. I’ll have to see the conclusion to this before I can move on from my unvalidated expectations.

    random viewer
  8. they shouldn’t have made a duels at all , they should have saved Mondo’s ass then everybody just lives happilly ever after , this way everything in the anime would have make since ! ( since no body will replace mondo , we can forgive the lack of character development since there will be no deullo -_-)
    I Oficially hate Liberta and Nova , I don’t care about their fights , i don’t care about their past , i don’t care about them ! the women with the cat is more interesting than them !
    i want to see the trio , at least they have some complication in their story !

    Aria-Stella

Leave a Reply to mistress_kisara Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *