Thanks for visiting Anime Rants! While I wasn’t overtly impressed with the ending episode, I still enjoyed it for the most part. It felt a little awkward and clunky, but it still managed to do what it wanted and give an ending that could lead well into a second season. (There is no confirmed second season yet, as of late December 2024. Let’s hope that changes soon.) Anyway, we shall now take a very brief look at the last installment of RekiAku.
Episode 13: The Villainess and the Prince
Episode Rating: 8/10
When we last left off, Alicia approached Duke at the academy and said hello. He responded by coldly asking who she was. Alicia and Gill are shocked by the change. Everyone else soon notices it too. It seems that someone tampered with Duke’s memories so he can’t remember Alicia. He suspects that Alicia herself cast the spell on him, so he makes her stand trial for bewitching the royal Prince. That’s a serious crime.
At the trial, Mel testifies against Alicia, saying that she is the only possible person with enough power to use dark magic on someone as magically skilled as Duke. Alicia is sentenced to exile. To add insult to injury, she will be banished on the same day as that Duke officially frees the town of Roana. Although this is not how she expected it to happen, this is actually what Alicia wants. The only way to investigate political schemes in Laval is to be exiled from her home kingdom.
Liz comes to offer her help to get Alicia out of trouble. She doesn’t want her rival banished, especially on the day of Roana’s freedom. Alicia thanks Liz but says she already knows who set this trap for her – it was Duke. Apparently, he knew ahead of time what Alicia would want to do, so he prepared the way for her. This huge theater act of forgetting and exiling Alicia was actually his weird way of declaring his love for her once again. Now that Alicia knows this, she’s ready to go.
To be honest, this seems like a poor writing choice in some ways. What about the King, Luke Seeker? He was always grateful to Alicia. Surely he would have let her go to Laval as reward for bringing him and his brother back together, right? Why did we need all the drama of exiling Alicia? I think it was supposed to show that events are still following the “script” of the otome fantasy game, in which the villainess does at some point get banished. Still, I feel like this could have been one so much better.
Alicia says her goodbyes to her family and to Gill. The parting with Gill was a bit emotional, but ended on a hopeful note. The young boy promised to prove that commoners can be as skilled as important as nobles. Gill is so adorable, so when I saw his puppy-dog eyes welling up with tears, I just wanted to hug him through the screen. But he’s a strong kid so I think he will be okay.
On the day of the ceremony at Roana, Liz arrives disguised as Prince Duke. She does the magic for him, removes the barrier, and officially sets Roana free. Meanwhile, Duke chases the carriage taking Alicia away. He makes the carriage pull over, enters, and immediately kisses Alicia – without even a greeting, let alone any consideration of consent. Duke sure hasn’t changed much.
Anyway, he says he hasn’t forgotten Alicia and will be waiting for her once she returns from Laval. It’s all very romantic and whatnot. Alicia and Duke then have their first consensual kiss and Alicia finally departs. She leaves her home country and enters Laval in a blindfold. Alicia is still determined to be a great “villainess” someday. The episode ends after that, but there’s something I nearly forgot to mention: the black rose.
Alicia’s mother randomly brought out a black rose and explained that it bloomed one day when Alicia was seven – in other words, when she became the Alicia we know, with her memories of the fantasy game. According to prophecy, the black rose blooms for the one whose choices will shape the kingdom, or something like that. It’s the same principle as the Saint’s yellow rose or the Prince’s blue rose. I found it annoying, personally, that the black rose was never mentioned in the narrative before, despite being visually depicted since the very beginning.
Anyway, the ending episode definitely had some ups and downs, but nothing that really left a bad taste. I have more thoughts on this series, but those will have to wait till I get around to writing a series review. If I had to give this anime a score off the top of my head, I would say it was a low to middle 7/10. That still qualifies as an enjoyable anime. I hope to see a second season down the line.
~Thanks for reading~
Written by 7Mononoke
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Anime Rants 
They got me. They got me good with that little fake amnesia thing. Somehow, the possibility of Duke feigning his memory loss in order to help Alicia get exiled into Laval so she can poke around there, with the reputation of one who is on the outs with the royal family helping her along, simply did not cross my mind. Of course, I doubt that would have occurred to anyone in the audience. Here I was all set for a confrontation with the Saint, and it went in a completely different direction.
I agree, the convoluted scheme and the black rose both indicate some fairly poor writing. In fact, the entire series hasn’t been written very well. Still, I suppose it gets the job done and has us watching it. I can think of any number of anime which have failed at that.
The interplay between Duke and Alicia seems especially unbalanced. One moment, he’s the predator, and the next, she’s the one in charge. Turns on a dime and doesn’t seem to have anything other than “just because” to explain it. The author wanted these scenes, so these scenes are there.
And, of course, they ended with teasing the various important characters she’ll meet in Laval. I wonder, without the game to guide her, how will she fare?
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