Arcana Famiglia 05-10

It’s comforting to know that with all of the content they’ve taken out, J.C. kept Mondo’s random statue of his daughter in his room.

Geez, the number of episodes I needed to catch up with for Arcana reached a ridiculous length. If my internet didn’t suck so much, I probably could have gotten this out 2 episodes ago… Anyways, excuses aside, Arcana is still staying at the same level of mediocre for me.

Episode 5

…Shotacon …levels …rising

It was all within my set of predictions! This was definitely Nova’s episode and it followed the game events pretty accurately minus a few events that surprisingly made Fel a bit more likeable while still maintaining that softer image she has going on. Not only that, but she actually stopped the pickpocket without help from Nova AND used her powers. …I feel like I’ve been reduced to praising a child for being able to tie their own shoelaces.

This was one of the better episodes since Fel actually did something. Seriously. Nova might have stopped her from defending her mother, but I found that acceptable for a couple of reasons. For one, it happened in the game plus he was angry as well since Sumire is kind of like his surrogate mother. I think the anime has done a great job at establishing how close those two are without making it seem forced (…and I’m grateful that they’ve left out the cleavage jokes from Nova’s route thus far). What I didn’t like was how they brushed off how his own parents were. There’s just not the same impact in having him tell Fel that “yeah, my parents only treated me like a tool and tried to kill your parents” that the game had, so I feel that the reasoning behind him calling off the engagement doesn’t translate as well. In the game, there were flashbacks of his parents being horrible to him for small things like letting Fel get injured (since they were afraid the the engagement would be called off) and Mondo telling him not to cry over it since his daughter is a tomboy. Here, his parents actually seemed more caring and less likely to plan an assassination.

So not only is Nova Fel’s cousin, but he’s also her first cousin (the anime didn’t point this out directly, but I figured I should). Yay incest. …Though nobody really seems to care about incest in Arcana Famiglia (and I’m fairly sure that first cousins marrying is okay in Japan)

Episode 6

Well, this was the episode I thought episode 5 was going to be. …I also consider this event to be incredibly close to the beginning of the game. Hell, I thought this was going to be episode 3. I guess they can get away with doing things out of order though since they’ve covered up to near the end of the game for Liberta and Nova.

So the mystery behind Dante being the Kamen Ride- …uh, I mean, masked man was kind of ruined by Liberta’s episode. As if Jolly didn’t make it extremely obvious enough already with his line about them testing their powers. The fact that this entire thing was set up just makes their punishment game at the end seem even more pointless. They were obviously supposed to react to the crisis, but in the end, Fel and everyone else were reprimanded for disobeying orders. That has to suck. …At this point, I think Jolly was just looking for an excuse to test out his latest alchemy creation.

Anyways, Nova now looks like much less of a cold hearted bastard, his power has been revealed, Fel went back to being only slightly useful than lint and all is right with the world again. …In the end, I don’t know how much of a point this episode served as other then giving the show some much needed action. Sure, Nova and Liberta have progressed, but how many times did Fel fail/ almost get injured/ actually get injured this episode? Any progress from her that was shown last episode kind of disappeared.

Episode 7

…Dear lord, did they ever make Luca out to be a creep this episode. Did they finally realize that no one likes his character in the anime and said “screw the game completely, let’s make him look like an extreme pedophile. Bitches love creepy older men.” …Of course, it was all an elaborate setup in the end, but I don’t think anyone is going to be forgetting the first couple minutes of this episode when Luca’s episode comes around. (The people who are still watching this anyways.) As for Debito and Pace, there was actually a bit of their routes in here as well. …I haven’t actually played either of the routes yet (I have a general idea of what happens), but I assume what was revealed was close to the beginning of them.

On the other hand though, I like the added scenes between Sumire and Mondo. The game was so focused on the relationships between Fel and the rest of the family that Mondo hardly ever showed up. It’s nice to see them act outside of what’s happening with the main characters. They actually feel like characters with their own goals now as opposed to characters who are just there to help Felicita along as she becomes a badass.

SO. Nova and Liberta. I know I promised a rant and maybe flip a few tables, but I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. I’m tired of BL screwing up my otome games. The yaoi fangirls ruined Utapri Debut for me. The sheer amount of them actually interfered with the production staff’s decisions for the game’s script. If I wanted to play BL games, I would play BL games. Okay, that’s my rant. Besides, I just didn’t feel the ‘bromance’ between them since they were both relatively concerned with Fel’s wellbeing. …Or maybe I’m just so far in denial that every fibre of my being just refuses the thought of shipping the two together. I’m completely okay with that if such is the case.

Episode 8

So I assume the Dante, Luca, Pace and Debito aren’t getting their own unique episodes seeing how there are only 4 left, Mondo’s reasons behind the tournament still aren’t clear and Debito’s episode was also partially devoted to Jolly’s story. The whole story behind Elmo being artificially created seemed like it came out pretty easily, but I guess with 12 episodes, there’s only so much you can do.

As if the previous episodes weren’t enough, this episode was just further proof that no one likes Jolly (minus like, 2 people) and Fel likes everyone. It wasn’t exactly his best episode. The same goes for Debito too though since he just acted like an ass to Fel for no real reason and then it was explained away with “IT’S ALL JOLLY’S FAULT. THIS EXCUSES ALL OF MY ACTIONS”. I assume that this was just the abridged version due to the lack of time, but I don’t think the male population of viewers (if those even exist) will be very fond of his character anytime soon. This was a great episode for Pace though since he broke out of his lasagna fetish character for once and punched things this episode. Even better, he did it for  ☆*:.｡.friendship.｡.:*☆.

Episode 9

So Mondo is dying, he was actually fairly good looking in the past (but still had the voice of an ossan), Jolly is an asshat (but he’s an asshat with a decent cause), Fel has been hiding a second Tarocco the whole time, and she can now control her first power (kind of) out of nowhere. …The answers came out really easy in the anime considering that Fel had to beat the exact same explanation out of Dante and Jolly in the game.

They conveniently left out the part where Show ▼

, but they’re probably trying to avoid bringing that up since it doesn’t exactly do wonders for his character. They also left out the part where everyone died (minus Jolly) after Mondo first used his Tarocco in the flashback. Ah, details. I wonder if they’ll throw that last part of Liberta’s route in here. Though I’m guessing not since they’ve done a pretty thorough of removing all the questionable things from the anime thus far. Hell, Dante’s route seems to be completely skipped over.

So this should be the part where Felicita gets her act together and start acting like a badass, right…?

Episode 10:

…I see no difference

…Not quite. Not only do we miss Fel actually using her power, but in the end all of her effort was wasted. Heaven forbid Felicita actually accomplish anything. I’m actually surprised that they bothered showing this point at all since it’s pretty heavy into Jolly’s route. The only others who have gotten this kind of special treatment are Nova and Liberta. Though story wise, I guess it makes sense to put this in here since there aren’t really any other events with her using her second Tarocco. It does make sense that she used it, but Gli Amanti telling her that she lacks the strength afterwards seems… weird. From what I understand, the Tarocco have a close bond with their contractor, so why couldn’t it warn her beforehand? It might not have stopped Fel, but at least she would have known. It’s been a while since I did Jolly’s route (read: almost a full year ago), but I’m pretty sure there were a ton of minor details missed during this whole episode that might have made it seem less like wasted effort.

On the plus side though, Jolly (kind of sort of) redeemed himself here. It was bound to happen since bad guys don’t exist in Arcana Famiglia unless they’re small criminals, but J.C. could have just left it as it was. I guess they need to make it look like this show actually has a plot. For a show about a fighting tournament, the only people who actually seem to practice are Liberta and Nova. Felicita is the one who needs the most practice and her last fight was a couple of episodes ago. …I don’t know how she’s planning on winning this tournament, but she doesn’t seem to be doing anything productive about it.

Overall:

Take away Felicita’s ability to fight/use her power away from the anime and what do you get? A show about a tournament, magical powers and a bunch of men who fight in an organization. …Only there’s not really any fighting either since they also took away most of the events that involved action. There’s also minimal romance as well since Arcana didn’t really have much romance in the first place until the route specific events at the end. …So what do we have in the end? A bunch of characters with little to no development due to lack of time and a broken plot. Yeah, I’m not all that impressed. The only things I’ve really enjoyed seeing are the interactions with Mondo and Sumire. Especially Mondo since he announces the tournament in the game and then is never seen again until near the end of the game. The anime at least makes him seem like someone who’s part of the organization. After marathoning these episodes, I couldn’t even remember why I liked the game in the first place until I went back to it. There’s just so much they took out.

In any case, next episode should be… something. It will most likely be the harem gathering episode and probably go into who Liberta is in regards to Mondo.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.