Overview (Spoilers Below): It was Rose behind the flood of assassins. Beryl confronts her in an effort to find where her true intentions lie. Rose tells him, and the two draw their swords against each other. What will the outcome be in this battle between master and student?
Our Take: We all knew that Rose would be up to no good the minute we first saw her in action during the assassins’ attack. In fact, the series didn’t even try to hide her true intentions regarding Rose’s increasingly perky expressions, rendering the previous episode’s twist void of any shock value. That alone dampened my expectations for the season finale, which features Beryl confronting Rose in a master-versus-student showdown. However, to its credit, the series did provide a different direction for its harem storyline, which typically consists of female supporting characters serving as the protagonist’s allies, which was enough to pique my interest in its closure. This now leaves us with a question of how and why Rose would pull such a heinous stunt, especially in front of the teacher who had trusted her. The answer is that she seeks to end the power struggle by assassinating Prince Glenn and bringing power to the Palpists. In a way, both Beryl and Rose share a common goal of seeking justice, but Rose is unfortunately on the wrong side of that pursuit. However, it’s also revealed that she was forced by the pope to conduct this crime due to him holding the orphanage hostage, resulting in Beryl attempting to knock some sense into her into what true justice really means. Despite the low stakes caused by the show’s predictable twist, the duel between Beryl and Rose elevated the finale through the latter’s formidable handling of her shield and the animation style, which relied more on the 2D animation than the CGI. It’s certainly enough to excuse the show’s glaring issues, but not all of them. Besides the average English dub performances, the series still has the issue of the voices not matching the mouth movements from the original dub. Some cases have them speaking without opening their mouths and vice versa, which was pretty annoying to watch compared to the other English dubs. With the second season already announced for next year, I hoped they would use the opportunity to address this issue, especially since the show itself is tolerable enough to see where it’s going for Beryl and his former students. Other than that, it’s a fine conclusion to the show’s first season, which stumbled through the finish line in terms of its narrative.