This is one of the dumbest fight scenes I’ve seen in anime. A bow is not a gun, son.
Hortensia Saga, which starts with a violent coup, had the misfortune to drop on the day of an actual real life coup attempt, as deranged Trumpists stormed the Capitol, egged on by the man himself. Course, in the anime, the coup was started by a werewolf murdering the king in front of his daughter, while the capital was overrun by actual monsters rather than elderly Mid Westerners prone to heart attacks. The chaos in both cases is the same, though in Hortensia Saga‘s case I blame the writers, as the whole coup makes even less sense than Donald’s failed putsch. You got a rebellious duke transforming in a werewolf and killing the king in front of his daughter. Fine. You got the duke’s soldiers attempting to storm and occupy the capital city. Understandable. Then dozens of monsters are also teleported in, as if the loyalists not have enough to deal with. Okay, so the rebels are evil, makes sense. The princess is rescued and taken to safety away from the capital. Which is what you would expect from this sort of story. A hidden princess leading the rebellion agains the tyrant that slew her father. But then, after the OP has kicked in, we get a recap of what we just saw and it turns out the rebels were driven away from the capital, with the younger brother of the princess crowned king.
Then there really is no reason why the princess should remain hidden, masquerading as a squire to Alfred, the son of the knight killed defending her, now is there? If things are safe enough her younger brother can be crowned king, doesn’t it make sense for her to return? This first episode never makes it clear why Mariel has to keep hiding as Marius, even as it skips ahead four years, with Marius and Alfred now teenagers. Mariel has to stay Marius because that’s what the plot says has to happen.
It’s emblemic of the sloppiness of Hortensia Saga as a whole. This is the most generic of generic medievaloid battle fantasy. Based on the battles shown in this first episode, don’t expect any sort of realism or proper tactics, just red shirts being hacked down by the heroes or villains respectively. Every named character will have their own personal super weapon, like bow guy in the video above and they will all be ridiculous. I don’t like any of the character designs, it all looks far too flat and shiny and I got a sneaky suspicion Mariel/Marius won’t actually be the protagonist. Especially because she spents most of the episode being rescued. I’m not really interested in yet another medievaloid generic fantasy series that just takes its setting from every other anime fantasy. Therefore, unless things improve in the next two episodes I won’t bother with this. A disappointment.
(An aside: in Dutch, a hortensia is a type of plant, usually associated with retirement. This does not help me with taking this seriously.)
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