Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!

Episode 12

Unfortunately, I think it suits this series to end on such an underwhelming note. Last week, I mentioned how I didn't know how it was going to find time for Melphiera to do something—anything—with the screamwood fruit, let alone the royal moodle that's hopefully been refrigerated well. And, yeah, my worries were well found. Some royal moodle dishes were made… completely off-screen. And they don't even come up until we're well into the episode.

I guess you could argue that the snake wine is our monster food item of the episode, but like. 1. Why hang onto the royal moodle this long only to not do hardly a thing to it—in fact, for dishes for it to be made totally off-screen, and even when they're finally here, it feels like they're been speedran through? 2. C'mon. We all knew the snake wine wouldn't intimidate Melphiera. We've established time and time again that she's very adventurous with her food and this is nothing compared to what we normally see. The dynamic of trying to scare Melphiera with monster food just doesn't work. What a silly thing to try to do in the last episode, of all the possible episodes.

This series tried really hard to paint Melphiera as a villainess—even calling her that a few times—but I just don't see it. Or, more specifically, I don't know why that attempt was made in the first place. Villainesses are having A Moment right now in the realm of anime, so the word “villainess” evokes a very particular kind of image that I'm just not sure Melphiera has. I realize that in the narrative that's the point—that she's very kind and un-villainess-y—but I mean from a writing perspective, there just feels like there was no point to this. As though to demonstrate that, her being called a villainess is something we've only barely seen mentioned, and it never really feels necessary. In fact, you could probably replace “villainess” with any other word you'd hear a playground bully call someone and not only would the point still get across, but it actually might even come across stronger. Being a social outcast isn't comparable to being a villainess—quite the opposite, a social outcast is someone the audience is likely to associate with being a social victim, whereas a villainess is someone the audience is likely to associate with being, in effect, a glorified bully. The roles are totally backwards here. The more I think about it, the more I find myself thinking that this half-hearted, utterly uncommitted attempt at branding Melphiera as a villainess was something done purely for marketing, and nothing else.

Still, monster food aside, this was another trudge. The overwhelming majority of it is spent introducing Melphiera to no-name jobbers, which hardly needs nearly as much time as it got. The only thing of note was Melphiera meeting the blacksmith, but even that didn't feel like an effective scene since, again, there's no way anyone was left in the suspense the series was obviously trying (and failing) to create over how Melphiera would react to the snake wine. Nothing about it works, and we're left with yet another nothing episode. The only difference is, this is the finale, so it holds a lot more gravity that this episode felt so hollow, and 75% of it feels like it could've been cut all together, or at least condensed to less than two minutes.

Overall thoughts? This series either didn't realize what its biggest strengths were or didn't care about leveraging them. Namely, the romance and adorable dynamic between Melphiera and Aristide, and the backdrop of their bonding over a shared interest in monster meat. We saw both of these things in the spotlight more toward the beginning of the series, but not so much as it continued. Worse, the further in the series got, the more beige and boring Aristide, especially, became. At first the series makes it look like he was just quick to become a wifeguy, but as the series goes on, it becomes more clear that they just didn't know what to do with him after it's established that he's in love with Melphiera.

Worse, MM's biggest weakness was highlighted more and more as the series continued. I am, of course, referring to the sloppy writing. As the series progressed, it seemed increasingly less interested in Melphiera and Aristide, and more in creating a cool world to put them in. But from the many thorns of animism—which was ultimately wholly irrelevant, no less—to overdeveloped justifications for things that don't even need them, everything about the writing of this series just feels like it's missing the mark and trying way too hard.

And oh, the visuals. This episode looked marginally better than the other recent ones, but still had more than a few times where things looked really off—eyes spaced farther apart than they should be, larger or smaller faces, things being misaligned, stuff like that. Sloppy visuals to mirror sloppy writing. Not that I think better visuals would've done much to save this series—its problems are deeper than that—but still, these didn't help.

In a word, this series is mid. It's certainly not the worst thing that aired this season—and thanks to One Punch Man season three I can't even settle for calling it the most disappointing. It's not the most anything, really. There's a weird smallness to this series that makes even its best moments feel a bit muted—as though they're being muffled out by the noise of the (lack of) writing quality and so on. Even so, those moments are still there, and I can't deny the charm this series had toward its beginning. In the hands of a better writer—or at least one more focused on the romance and the characters than halfhearted worldbuilding—this could've been something really cute and fun. But alas, by the end, all I can really think to say is… please hold the monster meat, milady.

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Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.