A young duke whose name we don’t know gets placed with an awful curse at the age of five, where everything he touches dies. He will never be loved by anyone, and he cannot love others. And yet with such a terrible curse, he can’t help but love and be loved by his maid Alice.
This premiere was kind of a mixed bag, but mostly pretty good. It was pretty much what I had expected and followed the tone that we saw from the PVs with the teasing and such, but it also got serious and reflected the Duke’s emotions about his curse. The ending was also extremely sweet so that got me too.
The episode itself was pretty simple, with the first half being pretty repetitive with Alice teasing the Duke with sexual comments and her body. Which…yeah, it kinda is sexual harrassment. He does love her but he keeps asking her to stop. So…ehhh I’m not really a big fan of the humor here. It’s weird. Like I said in the preview, I’m REALLY not into the “female character teasing/annoying the male character” type of shows like that one Nagatoro one and Takagi-san. Didn’t bother watching the former, only watched one episode of the latter and didn’t care for it. I’m not sure about the other shows if the characters were malicious or something, but with Alice it seems like she does the teasing for two reasons: Reason A, she loves him and is trying to show him (and this is basically confirmed), and Reason B, we know that the Duke is really down on himself and his situation. He’s been through a lot and her teasing may be a way to alleviate him of his dark thoughts and to cheer him up. Making him blush and be embarrassed is better than him wallowing in despair, I guess. The problem is that just in the first half of the episode alone, the joke already got kind of boring with the same thing happening over and over again. So something sexual, Duke gets embarrassed, rinse and repeat. I feel like this is something that can get old really quickly and I’m worried about that because I did enjoy the rest of what we got from this episode.
Alice does a great job in living things up in the mansion, and the Duke admits he feels best when he’s with her and not by himself. I’m glad we did get some serious moments with the Duke and how his curse affected his life because it added way more to the show than if it were simple a comedy. The Duke was sent away from his family to live alone in a separate family mansion, with only Alice (and a butler) to care for him. Everything the Duke had such as his family, friends, and home are all gone. I really liked the detail of why the Duke doesn’t really enjoy eating. The short flashback of him eating alone on the other side of the long table while his family sat far away from him painted a very clear picture of the emotion in that scene, it was very well done. It was a traumatic experience for him that followed him as he grew up, but thankfully with Alice by his side his appetite has only gotten better and honestly that is just adorable and made me smile. But the Duke still faces hardships as he possibly will seriously lose everything if his brother inherits all the family’s belongings, and puts an even bigger strain that he has with his family. His mother sent him away but it did come as a surprise that she sent Phillip to check on him. Whether she’s worried for him or not, we don’t know. Still, the Duke has dark moments and feels helpless with his curse, worse so when he doesn’t even know WHY he was cursed in the first place. It really is a weird situation, and very cruel, so I’m really excited to see if we’ll ever find out why he was cursed as a child and if he and Alice will be able to break the curse.
And speaking of Phillip, MAN did that whole visit hurt to watch. The Duke was so excited to see an old friend, the second we saw how nervous he and his entourage looked when greeting him just broke my heart. The Duke is a very lonely person and has lost many things in his life, so to see that hope and happiness disappear from his face during the visit was so painful. Ugh…
While I’m not a fan of the humor, I do like Alice. She genuinely seems to care for the Duke so much that she has romantic feelings for him. And vice versa, the Duke has romantic feelings for Alice too. Unfortunately he just can’t act on those feelings at all because he can’t touch her. Him having the goal to put a ring on her finger with his own hands one day was so cute I hope it comes true one day. With a premise like this, this romance can easily turn into a tragedy but I don’t think it will. It looks like these two will definitely have some bumps along their journey but I don’t think this story will truly become a tragic one. I’d be surprised if it does honestly. Still, the two have fun chemistry with each other and they do have some adorable moments together. I just like that our two leads already have feelings for each other so we don’t have to bother with the ambiguity.
The one last thing I want to mention, that everyone seems to be talking about, is the fact that the show is fully CG. Which, I don’t really mind all that much because it’s reminiscent of High Score Girl. In fact, it’s probably the same studio that handled High Score Girl since the 3D models look pretty similar. I thought the CG in High Score Girl, maybe not the best at times, was still pretty charming. Maybe it’s just me, but the 3D models look a bit more stiff here. It was way more obvious with Phillip and those generic men. That…was kind of rough. Still, the CG doesn’t really bother me at all, though I do wonder why this show in particular went this route.
So, not bad! I’m really intrigued with the story, the romance, and the other characters that we’ll meet later on. I’m not a fan of the humor and I hope it doesn’t take up too much time in the story, but I like pretty much everything else. I also hope they kind of explain the “rules” of the Duke’s curse, as it surprised me that even with gloves he still killed the flowers and tree. I assumed it was directly skin contact so that just makes the Duke’s curse even more frightening. Still, that makes the mystery aspect of the story all the more interesting. So I’m gonna stick with this one and hope for the best!
Possibility of watching: High if the humor doesn’t take over
Possibility of blogging: Same as above
I saw someone come up with a theory that Alice is the witch, and the reason she cast the curse is that so nobody else could have the Duke. That’d be shocking if true, but I find that scenario to be very unplausible.