LogFAQs > #964805333

Today I watched the other anime on Funimation that'd caught my eye, Taisho Otome Fairy Tale. Sadly, I really didn't like it. When I read the premise there were two ways I could see it going and both of them sounded neat. It's about a girl who was sold off to repay her family's debts, and now she needs to look after and eventually marry an exiled/depressed rich boy. On the one hand it could've been a good romantic drama, one where two broken characters overcome their circumstances and form a satisfying bond. On the other hand, it also could've been nothing more than a cute anime where a manic pixie dream girl livens up a depressed guy's life in increasingly zany ways. I was ready for either! TOFT just wound up falling into the worst of both worlds.

Yuzu was the cute half. The problem was that the dark half was still there, it just wasn't explored at all because she wasn't allowed to not be cute. Sold off to pay debts and forced to marry a depressed edgelord? That's fine! Before leaving, she told her parents to pretend she's dead because she'll never see them again. Except... why not? It's the 1920s, take a train. It's not like the main guy wouldn't let her, she just doesn't want to for some reason because apparently she met this dude and now she's good, she doesn't need anything else. She was such a perfect and dutiful girl who existed only to support her man, and frankly the situation didn't warrant it. I wanted her to be a little bitter at the very least. I wanted these two to fall in love with each other because they connected and formed an actual bond, not because one half waltzed in determined to fall in love no matter what. Every cute moment between the main two felt tainted because Yuzu was all fidgety and blushy right from the get-go when he was still a grumbly loser. I don't know why he felt like he needed to try so hard, she clearly didn't need it.

Then there was the dramatic half, best personified by one of the worst characters ever, Ryo. Robbery, parental abuse, prostitution, causing drama for the sake of drama, this girl had every dark idea possible swirling around her. And none of them were explored! She was just there to cause a bit of chaos and then be forgiven in an instant because Yuzu is a saint. Ugh. You'd think regularly getting the shit beaten out of her by her drunken father would be a problem someone wants to solve, but, nope! Ryo doesn't even have any bruises. There was other pointless dark stuff towards the end but I don't want to whine about this show too much longer.

The best part of TOFT was the voice actress of Arisa from BanG Dream playing an old-timey idol. That was the only unequivocally good part.