Italy’s brother from another mother…
Well, finally gotten around to catching up on Arcana Famiglia! Things have settled down a touch in my life, so I’m happily catching up on the shows I’ve been following (which is no, apparently, down to Hyouka and Arcana Famiglia. L. O. L.), and I’m sure every last one of you is thrilled as you’ve been anticipating the return of my AF posts with bated breath, heaving bosoms (man-bosoms, too, bros; I am equal opportunity bosom-heaving), and an unsteady heart-rate. I am delighted to be able to finally return you to your regular state of health!
Its another episode that I think is “make it or break it” from a viewer’s perspective – if you like the show, you’ll like the episode, but if you’ve been wavering away on it or leaning toward disliking it, episode seven will likely just make you roll your eyes, throw your hands up, and walk away. There is still no sign of the tournament, and a lot of what happens involves silly narrative acrobatics. While I may truly enjoy the show, I can absolutely understand why most people will dismiss it based on its tendency to apparently have gotten nowhere at all so far. People don’t watch reverse harem shows for slice-of-life antics. That the romance angle has been thin at best to this point only counts against it for most of its potential viewership. Prince-sama may’ve frustrated with its non-solution to the harem aspect, but at least it made it obvious that there was a harem in play. We’ve had obvious hints that a few of the guys are interested in Felicita, but the only one we see it consistently with Liberta; the others are limited to some brief blushes and some spoken sentiment that could be easily written off as teasing or nonserious flirting. For a reverse harem, there just doesn’t seem to be much in the way of romance afoot.
This episode is yet another about the young’uns of the Arcana Famiglia having forced bonding time. Its hardly a secret that the letter delivery mission that Nova and Liberta are sent on is another effort to elicit some camaraderie betwixt the two. Its kind of silly, but their “quest” is entertaining enough; as I’ve said before, I like watching Nova, Liberta, and Felicita interact in general, even if the circumstances end up being stupid. Felicita spent the episode being dragged around the woods in the company of Luca et al., so we didn’t see her with the boys much, but I still enjoyed the interplay with Liberta and Nova, who continue to slowly warm to each other in spite of themselves.
Luca comes off as varying shades of creepy and lame in this episode. His previous habit of getting fussy about Felicita is dialed up to eleven here, as he freaks out and runs off screaming when Pace wipes some ricotta off of Felicita’s nose (by the way, how it got there is a mystery, as it was physically impossible for it to have done so…). The creepiness is walked back slightly when we realize he hasn’t been working at a love potion, but his desire that Felicita doesn’t ever change is unsettling, since its clear he’s got some romantic affection for her. If they limited his feelings to the realm of, well, a caretaker who feels sadness at how quickly time passes, this wouldn’t be as squicky; it’d still be a problematic attitude for him to have, but executed as AF executes it, there are shades of pedophilia and incest, quite frankly. Luca practically raised her, we are lead to believe, after all.
At the beginning of the episode, Debito departs company from a couple of women who have asked him to spend the night with them. He promises to make it up by going on until noon at another time. Ahhhh, so that’s how it is! Debito’s the casino gigolo, not just its overseer! Of course!
I’ve warmed to Debito, by the way; he rubbed me the wrong way at the start, but, I don’t know, maybe his voice is so sexy I can’t help myself or something. Better that than me admitting that the fairly shallow characterizations so far have somehow managed to endear me in any way…
GAR GAR Stegosaurus 