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「最高だね」 (Saikou da ne)
“It’s Awesome”
Although I doubt anyone was in doubt over how this episode would turn out, still got to give Mobseka some credit: it knows how to tease and by hell do I enjoy the experience. From just being your run of the mill asshole to legitimately offering up life lessons in the process, Leon is doing everything you could want and more. And the best part? It only gets worse for him (and better for us) from here.
Much as could be expected following the prince’s party’s showing last time, the prince himself proved little more than a speedbump on Leon’s way to total and flawless victory. In of itself too the process of winning wasn’t the key point of this fight – it was to reinforce just how screwed the thinking is of the nobility in question. Leon, for all his arrogance, is right in this regard: Julius is not thinking, he’s jumping at the first person who shows an interest (honest or not) in what he really feels, and never once considers that his actions affect more than just him. This is a very common issue among both the rich/famous and nobility, their kids often feel helpless among the expectations placed on them and want nothing more than to get away from it all. Yet it’s also something many learn to accept and live with, because as Angelica represents their position often requires making concessions for the sake of others. I seriously doubt anyone in the prince’s party (including Angelica) would’ve had an issue if he decided to have Marie on the side, it’s part in parcel of the upper-class experience. The problem is that the prince chose to abandon everything in favour of the pint sized pipsqueak, and with it threw everything into question. Remember, wars have been fought for less.
On a less serious note, however, the choices made by Julius at least mean than Leon is in for more fun than he ever bargained for. Besides the hilarity of abandoning all the fixings to emphasize survival and getting rewarded with promotion instead, we also get the continual comedy train of Julius and company coming back again and again to fight Leon over their bruised egos. It’s still somewhat unclear for me just where specifically Mobseka intends on going after this, but switching track into harem country certainly seems the likely option considering Angelica is now a proud member of the club and the talk of love has already been brought up. How Leon deals with the obvious marriage choice before him will be interesting to see play out, because for all his lamenting over it I seriously doubt he’ll remain ignorant of the potential for too long. Mobseka has proven quite adept at threading the needle thus far after all, I seriously doubt it’s going to stumble now.
We’ll just have to see what big event comes around to once again shuffle the board.
The problem is that while Julius is right that no one understands him but how are they going to understand if he acts like a Grade-A asshole.
Not thinking is also a common trait of the nobility unfortunately 😛
Love is blind to the extreme,
I doubt Julius would open his heart to other in the palace including Angie from the start so the entire issue is partly his fault and innocence Angie took the consequence of it as she have devoted her entire kid self to study and train to be his queen.
He denied Angie when he said “if he told her what food he like she will got in his way” seem to confirmed it and the fact that his in game route have him slapped by the heroine before he start to listen to her.
So with how he end up blame everyone else for not understand him because of his own personality, the princeling deserve every punch and IMPACT on his face.
He is a trash compare to how much of an angel Angie is for having to endure his antic regards with Marie all this entire time.
Honestly, Angie really did nothing wrong.
Oh he did, he was incredibly narcissistic from the beginning as well, he never once considered asking Angelica what she liked or what they could together. Like hell, maybe take her with you when sneaking out? Julius only ever considered himself and as a result wound up effectively losing everything.
This is truly a fun series, where part of the charm is that very few characters can see obvious long term consequences of their short term gains and very few see outside of their designated role in the game. Making their constant comeuppances funny is part of the fun.
Unfortunately, for many people, the fact that Leon is subject to his own prejudices of his role as a “mob” when the Duke himself is clearly setting him up to marry his daughter gets very frustrating as the story goes on. To me, this is part of the fun, as Leon underestimates himself just as much as the nobles overestimate themselves.
I find Leon lack of self-aware and hypocrisy to be his charm and is the most enjoyable aspect of his and Luxion dynamic. Luxion (and other characters in the future) oftenpoint out that Leon is the embodiment of everything he claim to dislike and it seem like he is the only one not realizing that.
Agreed, the lack of self-awareness also helps in keeping Leon honest. If he was fully cognizant of what he was doing many of the scenes here would come across as highly manufactured and a good bit of the humour would be lost. These sorts of characters are always at their best when the writer is effectively ad-libbing their responses.
Out of curiosity, what are we defining as self-aware? In this episode, Leon was knowingly playing the arrogant bad guy, enjoying the act to the fullest, and navigating through the negative consequences. I personally found this series refreshing because Leon wants to be a mob and defines himself as one. However, both Marie’s and Leon’s meddling with the “story” prevents Leon from being a mob. Hence the title of the series.
As a manga reader, I do agree that Leon underestimates himself on occasion, but his conversations with Luxion seems to imply he knows himself much more than he shows. Perhaps it’s light novel specific in terms lack of self-awareness?
For me it would be full expectations of what’s going to happen and then having it play out exactly as intended. Leon isn’t that self-aware because he may have a plan in mind but he lacks a good deal of the info needed to truly be some sort of mastermind – e.g. he never saw the knighthood coming or being stuck with Angelica for the duration.
Might be light novel specific, if Leon knows more he’s not showing it off right now, but a lot of it could just be down to him and Luxion not really chatting a lot in the anime. That could easily change in the future.
When I said Leon lack of self-aware, I mean he lack self-aware when it come to romance and the fact that other girls might have feeling for him. The best part is that Leon hates dense harem protagonist while himself is one.
This is quite an interesting conversation. I’m playing more of a devil’s advocate in that I personally find Leon to be much more self-aware than other (harem) protagonists, which is why I’m enjoying the series. It’s all relative at the end of the day.
As I mentioned, I’m a manga reader, but not a light novel reader (yet). The manga did include additional conversations and slightly different versions of events. For example, there were extra conversations both inner dialogue and between Leon’s and Olivia’s first meeting that were cut from the anime. I think that’s probably why I think Leon is more self-aware both from a story progression and romance perspective. The more I think about it, I can see why Leon can be seem more “dense” and less self-aware if you are an anime-only watcher. I’m not going to mention any of those details for anime-only watchers as they could be seen as spoilerish material. Regardless, the anime is setup to go in those directions and I’m enjoying the anime version as much as the manga so far, which is a rarity in my book. I’d be interested in any light novel reader perspectives. Some series have slightly different versions of LN, manga, and anime while other stay true to the original source material.
Enjoyed seeing the prince getting taken down hard, both physically and verbally, by Leon. Nobles with their pompous self-entitlement, hypocrisy, and selfish thinking and behaviours deserve getting hit with verbal trashing. They didn’t even live up to the deal that they made with regards to the duel. They lost the duel and yet went running to Marie. What trash they are. They love to talk about living up to promises and yet they can’t do so. What hypocritical pompous trash.
To be fair to them the deal’s terms were reflective of their positions. They abandoned their titles and claims in order to keep Marie, which in of itself shows them to be pathetic in another way. No teenage relationship of this sort is worth throwing away everything for, particularly when your position is critical to keep society stable.
Since the the place setting for this story is monarchy and aristocrats, I was surprised to see that Julius Rapha Holfort and his boy band didn’t get disowned for embarrassing the family name with their commotion. Especially getting involved with a no name girl and going so far as fighting in Marie’s honor. Most aristocrats don’t want their children to affiliate with the common rabble. In fact the story gives Julius and his idol group a lot of autonomy and the adults only get involved when they fail. (Which they did.)
Leon is also lucky, typically characters like Leon still get the guillotine even though the main character succeed in his mission. It’s not about who’s right or the moral high ground it’s usually about saving face. So Leon should be glad that he didn’t get Will Smith’d
*** Correction, I was surprised that Julius and his boys didn’t get disowned BEFORE the scrimmage started. ***
Well it not an uncommon thing for nobles to have mistress so there nothing wrong with the adult when it come to the prince fawn over a girl like Marie. The reason they got disowned was mainly because they PUBLICLY humiliate their families because of Marie. The adult didn’t think the prince would foolish enough to do something so stupid while the alternative exist (making Marie his mistress). Same thing happen to Angie in the original story, she got send o the countryside mainly because she act rashly and publicly humiliate her family despite she could use other method to deal with the heroine.
As Archaon says, the nobility flirting with average citizens is pretty common throughout history, it’s just usually kept very hush hush. You’re a prince and want to screw the chambermaid? That’s fine, just don’t get any delusions about marrying her and by hell don’t publicize it to the world.
Julius and his party got smacked after precisely because he broke this rule. If he had simply treated Marie as a mistress and kept up appearances with Angelica nothing would’ve happened.
I´ve just found this anime and I love it! This and Ya Boy Kongming! are the hidden gems of this season.