The Holy Grail of Eris

Episodes 1-2

What makes someone a villainess? The word has lost most of its meaning in the anime sphere thanks to an oversaturation of villainess isekai. Typically, in those stories, a person is reincarnated into an otome game-like world as the purported antagonist and must rise above the tropes to find a happy ending. Sometimes they're forced to loop through time to circumvent bad ends. But Scarlett Castiel isn't this sort of villainess. She lived in a world similar to Georgian England, she ran in the highest social circles, and she was executed for the attempted poisoning of a woman named Cecelia. On the surface, she looks like an actual criminal, a true villain…but what about beneath the surface?

Although we do meet the old Scarlett in two flashbacks, the young woman who is more often onscreen is her ghost – and she claims she was framed. Now she's haunting Constance Grail, determined to have the living help find out what actually happened ten years ago, and the question viewers have to ask ourselves is whether or not Connie is being led astray by a wicked woman or if maybe Scarlett is telling the truth…and if she was framed, who did it, and why? Rather than a pat villainess narrative, The Holy Grail of Eris' first two episodes set it up as a mystery.

What's immediately apparent is that Scarlett Castiel still casts a long shadow over society. When she steps in to help Connie during the classic denunciation scene (which naturally occurs in a ballroom), people immediately know it's her, even if they can't bring themselves to acknowledge it. Connie is a quiet young woman, mired in her family's vaunted “sincerity,” and she's out of her depth when a higher-ranking woman named Pamela seeks to humiliate her by stealing her fiancé and accusing Connie of a different sort of theft. Scarlett, possessing Connie's body, is immediately noticeable to those who knew the dead girl, to the point where Connie gets an invitation to a much fancier ball at Emilia Godwin's home. However, she can't quite verbalize why, Emilia knows that Connie and Scarlett are connected. And that so many people are immediately put in mind of Scarlett tells us a lot about how haunted they all still are by her death.

I'll be the first to admit that these episodes are moving a bit too fast. The novels the series is based on are very dense, filled with worldbuilding, characters, and diverse political motivations. Although episode two jumps too quickly into the story of Lily Orlamunde, one of Scarlett's old friends, it has its feet back under itself by the end. Lily's history – both as known to Connie and to Scarlett – highlights the hidden details the historical narrative has left out. To Connie, Lily was a selfless woman who repented of the mischief she caused at Scarlett's side and devoted herself to orphans. To Scarlett, Lily is the acquaintance who casually betrayed her, smarmily telling her that she wouldn't help figure out who framed her supposed friend because she valued her own neck more than Scarlett's. She was the opposite of selfless, and that history has nicely erased that bit is telling. If Lily was gilded with one brush, who's to say Scarlett wasn't tarred with another?

Given the outsize punishment Scarlett was given, it's not hard to believe that there was a lot more going on than most people in society were aware of. She mentions that she used to disguise herself and use an alias to go slumming, and if Lily was such a close associate, she may have done the same. Scarlett's genuine surprise that Lily married stick-in-the-mud Randolph Ulster likely stems from that. Still, she doesn't consider that Lily may have married him for the same reason she pretended devotion to the church and ostensibly killed herself: she was trying to hide. She may have thought that marrying Randolph was the best way to protect herself from suffering the same fate as Scarlett or to distance herself from a sordid past – and that may not make Randolph's interest in Connie a good thing.

Despite some of its pacing issues, I think this is off to a good start. I love how we can easily see that Scarlett's dress is ten years out of date by its color, cut, and embellishments, and that Connie isn't from a wealthy family by her simpler dresses. The mystery aspects are beginning to take shape well, and Connie and Scarlett's link, coming from Connie being splattered with Scarlett's blood after accidentally witnessing her execution, is nicely understated. And now that Randolph has come in and we've seen the mysterious tattoo and vial carried by one of Emilia's guests, I think the pacing should settle down.

The Holy Grail of Eris isn't a typical villainess story, if it's one at all. Please keep the ending theme's imagery in mind as you continue.

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The Holy Grail of Eris is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.