It’s not hard to pinpoint Grancrest Senki‘s appeal:
How good this series will turn out to be depends on how long she’ll be wearing that uniform, considering she herself lampshaded it as something awful she had to wear for her future employer.
The story begins as our heroine, Siluca Meletes, fails to stop a demon wreaking havoc at the wedding of the heirs to the two warring factions that divide the Atlantan continent, as a result of which the continent continues to be divided. She’s on the road to her new employer with the questionable tastes in mage uniforms when she’s stopped by the troops of a neighbouring lord, who wants her to break her contract or kill her. She’s about to show them a thing or two when a young knight interferes. After he dispatches the ruffians ans she puts him to the test by summoning a demon for him to slay, she sort of forces him into contracting with her as his mage. All because she likes Theo’s ambitions to the point that she ‘helps’ him overthrow the local lord that had sent his troops after her.
What I liked in this first episode is that Siluca is the driving force, with Theo being forced to go along at her pace. Hopefully this dynamic will continue for the rest of the series, rather than it devolving into the usual male hero / female sidekick relationship. Siluca and Theo have a decent rapport going and it all reminded me a bit of Maoyu. It’s not often you get the heroine in charge with the hero content to follow her lead, so you have to cherish it when a series does have it.
Apart from that, the setting feels like the usual medievaloid fantasyland mixed with Georgian elements where needed nonsense — I had to laugh at the faction names: “factory Federation” and Fantasy Alliance”. It’s unclear whether the whole continent is supposed to be one or more countries, how the whole system of lords having magic given to them which can be recalled if they’re back rulers actually works and what is the deal with the Chaos demons. For now this was a decent first episode and I’m interested to see how Siluca’s scheming will work out in the rest of the series.