Review of Hortensia SAGA

BIG SPOILERS AHEAD: For the first 11 episodes I thoroughly enjoyed watching this anime, I even held it in relative hig regard. I've always known that it wasn't a good anime, it had a lot of fundamental problems, but I still liked it. I liked the characters, I liked the story and probably above all, I liked how it felt a lot like a Fire Emblem anime. But the 12th episode kind of killed the guilty pleasure enjoyment I had from this. Like I said before, I like this anime's characters and, to an extent, the plot. I also really like the OP and ED themes. Withthat out of the way, let's talk about what went wrong here.

Hortensia Saga is a very generic anime. Not that it necessarily means it is bad, but unfortunately it felt like it never tried to do anything unique, and when it actually tried (at the very end), it didn't go well. The story is the cliche "the kingdom has been betrayed by an ally turned enemy and the princess is the last hope it has to regain prosperity". The story goes on from there in a very predictable way, and probably the worst about it is how this anime only has 12 episodes but it feels like for the most part it didn't even try to move the plot forward. There were multiple filler episodes where the cast was there only to recruit a certain ally (only for that ally to in most cases be immediately shafted to the sidelines in the following episode) and this left the last 4/5 episodes the only ones where the plot unveils. This obviously left the narrative feeling extremely rushed. There were multiple villains that showed up out of nowhere only to get killed without them even getting any proper explanation about their goals/motivation. The last episode in particular is crazy in how fast it moves. The entire backstory of the antagonist alongisde the exposition surrounding the aforementioned betrayal events took place in 5 minutes or so.

And let's talk about that, how bad the plot and the villain are. Apparently the main antagonist decided to betray the kingdom, orchestrate the assassination of the king and multiple other people just because (apparently) the king is his father. When he was a kid his mother was in her deathbed and just casually said "hey, your father is the king, did you know that?" and then in his tiny little brain he connects eveyting and comes to the conclusion that the king must be a prick. This plot point is already very forced imo but then he proceeds to want to kill everyone. Ok, you want to kill the king because supposedly, even though there is not really any evidence or confirmation of it, he disposed of your mother, but then why would you want to kill multiple other people, not involved in any way or form with that event, just because you're feeling like it? That's something I truly hate. Coming up with a boring and dumb plot device in order to try giving the villain any motivation and then using it in order to attempt justifying all the other stuff he's doing. And I honestly chuckled at how bad the beginning events took place. The villain convinced the king to enrage one of his subordinates (because for some reason that powers up a relic) and he proceeded to taunt him and insult him for like 2 minutes, waiting for him to snap.

Aside from these bigger complaints, I also want to mention how many characters got absolutely no development/backstory even when they felt like they mattered. I understand that this is a video game adaptation and that the story actually continues from here, but I really doubt that there will be another season, with how unsuccessful this one was. This leaves many characters to be introduced, feel like they're important, only to have absolutely nothing to do with the plot.

The finale also felt super forced and unecessary. The MC dies but then he gets revived as an undead or something? That didn't really fit in with the feel of the anime up until then, but since we're probably not going to see a second season, that will be an ending that will make the anime even worse than it already was.