This week the spotlight was on Victor and unfortunately it didn’t click with me. I don’t know if I was frustrated from the cheesiness (I can only handle so much of it) or it was because something didn’t feel right about it.
For instance, this whole thing about Victor being the freaking chef of Souvenir– I’m sorry, and I’m probably in the minority fraction of this opinion, but it really feels like an overkill. I recognize that he isn’t open seven-days a week, but I still have a hard time wrapping my head around him being both the financial group’s CEO and the head chef and owner of a restaurant. (Hilariously everyone loves his food, but hates him because of his personality, go figure). I also understand he is doing this in hopes to find someone coughheroinecough, but honestly I think it might have been better to be one or the other. If cooking is such an important part to his character, then he should have only been a chef. Perhaps there’s also a bigger purpose for why he is the CEO of the Financial Group, and if there is, it better be a darn good reason for it.
Of course it would be a welcomed surprise if the one Victor is looking for is not the heroine. I do have a cringe-worthy crack theory about who he is looking for. (Disclaimer: do not take this seriously) Victor is looking for his father, and his father who was a chef is actually the head of the Black Swan organization and kidnapped the heroine after identifying she is Queen when she had eaten pudding at his restaurant. – End of Crack-Theory. But if it is her, then I am not really sure how I’m going to feel about this. It’s really too soon to say, but as it stands I am not particularly optimistic about the direction this particular development between the two seem to be going.
Other than my personal pet-peeve about that, it was nice to see Victor’s softer side for an exchange. He has been quite savage when he is doing his job as the CEO, mercilessly shooting down her blueprint for a successful future. So it was a sweet surprise to see how he went through the trouble to switch out the Heroine’s pudding with his own for Kiro after hers was ruined when they bumped into each other. It was a kind gesture that he didn’t have to do.
(It was also quite funny how he said it was disgusting, and ate it anyways!)
But while Victor was the focus on the episode (though I would say it was more of a balanced mix today), it wasn’t nearly enough for his character to grow on me. Contrary to his cooking kills, I find him quite stale at the moment. As result, Victor remains at the bottom of my list of interests.
The other thing that kind of bothered me today was not understanding the rules of Victor’s powers. I hope they will take care to explain this in time, otherwise I am left to assume the reason why Kiro and the Heroine are able to move around within his space of frozen time is because they too are Evolvers. If not (at least for the heroine, it’s been confirmed Kiro is an Evolver too this episode when Victor pointed it out Kiro may not be aware of his own powers), then I am going to be left to assume it’s because Kiro was outside of the area of influence, and the heroine was given “permission” to move about.
What was interesting however was the end of the episode with the confrontation between Gavin and Lucien, where he revealed he too is an Evolver who has the power to create protective barriers. Earlier in the episode, the Heroine had another vision in her dreams. While it wasn’t the full picture and it was to some degree more hazy than the last given the lack of detail to her surroundings, but it was obvious then that it was Gavin pointing the gun. When I first saw it, I hoped he wasn’t pointing at her, so I suspected he was most likely pointing to someone else. Now that we are seeing the scene unfold, unless there’s another individual (perhaps invisible) among them, then Gavin is pointing the gun at Lucien, who if I may add, I have been suspicious of from the get-go. Of course another reason for that conclusion is having faith Gavin meant it when he said he would never hurt her. He said it so earnestly that it actually made me embarrassed. But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a plot-twist where Gavin is affiliated with Black Swan. I think I left this out last week, but I do have concerns that the Black Swan organization has infiltrated various areas of influence, such as having members within the police force. One of the first things that came to mind was actually when Gavin mentioned how the police would grant the Evolvers protection. At that moment, I thought to myself, “But what if they are being sent to where they fled from? Or exploited by another group?” Aside from that, there is also the possibility it is not Gavin, but someone from Black Swan who is impersonating him.
…Well it seems I underestimated how much I actually cared about Gavin. (I guess this means he is currently my bias…)
As for Lucien, he is that type of character who is shrouded in mystery and because of that, is hard to read. However there are a couple of things we do know about him, one of them being his monochrome vision. It was subtly pointed out in the first episode, and then reaffirmed in this episode that Lucien’s world is grey, but for whatever reason, the Heroine is the only one who is blooming with color. There are already a couple of ideas running through my head so I’ll list the two that seem the most probable at the moment.
A) Lucien can identity Evolvers because he can set them apart from the rest by their color. (This is something that will likely be proven or debunked within the next episode, so as long as they don’t cut off this confrontation).
B) She is the Queen, so it makes her a special exception (for what reason, I don’t know)
He has also commented how he is interested in her, as a lab-animal of a sorts. While he brushed it off that he was kidding, I do believe there is some truth in his words. That doesn’t mean he isn’t necessarily romantically curious about her at the moment, in fact the way he looks at her gives me the impression he already has developed some strong feelings (and I must admit, the softness made me swoon). But I did scoff he said it was an “Incredible coincidence” or “fate” how they are now live next door to each other. Heck even the Heroine looked creeped out (and understandably so!). Besides the fact he definitely wants to observe her and see how things unfold, it is also possible he moved in next door as a means to be close by to protect her. But compared to Gavin, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucien is the one who is affiliated with Black Swan. I guess you could say I am already half-expecting it to happen.
That being said, I do find it it funny most of the time with these type of series (otome games genre), I am drawn to these types of characters very early on, (Saint-Germain (Code Realize), Shirashi (Collar x Malice, Ukyou (Amnesia), Akira (Nil Admirai), you see the pattern), but strangely I am not sold on Lucien just yet. So I would say he’s in the middle of the pack at the moment, with Gavin and Kiro in the lead, more time is needed, but I am curious to see whether that will change over the course of the show.
Next week, it’s finally Kiro’s turn! It appears Black Swan may be making their move, which sounds about right given the Heroine has finally secured the sponsorship from LFG. (I must say, it was a bit of a shame that they didn’t show us the details considering we saw all of her blunders and critiques she had received from Victor). I’m looking forward to learning more about Kiro’s powers and whether or not he’s aware of them! Until then, see you next week!
