Hortensia Saga Review

We live in a time where isekais are running rampant to the point where as soon as I see the words “another world” in any show’s synopsis, I instantly skip it. How I have longed for just a simple fantasy story without Truck-kun showing up as the primary plot device. When I saw that Hortensia Saga was exactly that… a tried-and-true fantasy series… I got a bit excited! Did my yearning for the simpler times give me some quality entertainment or was I better off trying my luck on an isekai this season?

Let’s go!

The Story

Hortensia Saga is a by-the-numbers fantasy anime. The king gets killed, the princess goes missing, a knight sworn to protect the king dies and that knight’s brother goes on to mentor his son in order to fight a rebellion against the kingdom by a neighboring nation.

Alfred Albert is but a simple boy who is seen as a Lord of a piece of land within the Hortensia kingdom. He crosses swords with Roy Bachelot, one of the people staging the rebellion, and is, predictably, beaten. It is Alfred’s job to grow stronger so that he can confront Roy once and for all!

At least, that’s what the series wants you to think. Instead, it abandons that plotline almost immediately and focuses on the schemes of Pope Vall d’Hebron. Apparently, he is trying to harness all of the ancient Magonian power to kill the royal family and seize control of Hortensia all because his mother got knocked up by the King and was tossed aside. She confessed all of this to Vall on her deathbed and he swore revenge.

Of course, this plot isn’t made apparent immediately. It was a slow build as Alfred traveled around the land and began to piece things together. He also met a few traveling cohorts along the way who end up joining his party… those being a spear-wielder by the name of Deflotte Danowa, and Alfred’s own page, Marius. Together with his uncle, Maurice, they begin to investigate the origins of a petrification plague that, well, petrifies people! They see the involvement of the church which leads them to crossing swords with the strongest knight in the land, Didier. They then learn that a witch was responsible for the plague and that, for some reason, Marius is being targeted as the prime suspect.

Oh, I should spoil it and said that Marius is actually the missing Princess Marielle, if the similar looks, eye color, hair, same voice, and nearly identical name didn’t tip you off from the very first episode. It was probably the worst-kept secret in all of anime… no exaggeration is being had here.

Of course, Marielle is the witch… or so the evil, lying church claims! Turns out it was just Magonian power that turned people to stone and it was all an elaborate ruse by the Pope. Everyone was a pawn to him which should surprise absolutely no one.

Then, to top things off… we had one of the WORST endings I’ve seen in an anime in quite some time.

By the way, I would have labeled this review as SPOILERS but I believe I’m doing you a service by telling you everything that happens.

So, Rugis, the Duke who Roy serves, marched his army into Hortensia in order to find the relic… but even though Didier was gravely wounded in battle, he, somehow, came out unscathed and moved the relic somewhere. We don’t know where because with about 12 minutes remaining in the series, we decide to have Vall turn into a Final Fantasy-style final boss monster (and swap genders in the process) in order to fight everyone. So, we were a little busy handling that whole plot to even bother locating the relic.

Despite being stabbed right through the forehead, apparently, when you transform back into human form, mortal wounds such as that don’t matter. Vall is alive and well and it’s final battle round two!! Except Duke Rugis turns into a werewolf (again… which he did in Episode 1 as the person who killed the king) and ends up killing Vall in one swipe.

Ok.

Then he kills Alfred before jumping out of a window, never to be seen again. Almost as if the credits were about to roll and he needed to finish his job and get back to catering before the mahi-mahi ran out. So the main character’s dead, Marianne lost her love interest but the credits roll anyway into an epilogue where Marianne reassumes the throne and gives a riveting speech with Alfred standing behind her.

Oh… he actually lived without explanat—

Oh, they’re wrapping a show up with a flashback where right after Alfred died, Marianne awakened the power of Jesus and brought him back to life… except he has some sort of demonic eye.

Ok… so relic is missing, Rugis jumps through a window, Marianne is Jesus, and Alfred is her demon seed and there is no Episode 13 or second season to explain any of this.

Sure.

The Characters

Asstastic story aside, let’s look at the main cast of characters.

Alfred Albert

Alfred is about as vanilla as they come. He’s a Lord, he cares for his people, he wishes to protect the kingdom, has a strong sense of justice, isn’t naïve, and gets stronger by learning how to fight, thus being able to hold his own in battle. He has the personality of a doorknob but at least his fundamentals are there. As the main character for a fantasy series, he fit the mold a little too well. Nothing really stood out about him that made you care all that much aside from his own nobility and sense of pride. You would think someone like that would need to be kept in check by Maurice from time to time; however, he was mature enough to know when and when not to pick his battles. Even if they added a bit of conflict between the two of them, I don’t think it would have been enough to get him out of the vanilla MC category; however, he did serve his purpose and that’s all that really matters in the end.

Maurice Baudelaire

A Knight Templar of Hortensia who lost his right eye during the rebellion, but managed to escape the capital with Fernando’s sword and a boy named Marius. He spends a few years training both Alfred and Marius to defend themselves. Afterward, he simply becomes the voice of reason despite there not really being any reason to be had. Everyone kind of just falls in line and plays their part. You could actually take Maurice out of the equation and nothing would have really changed all that much. The only high point of this character was that he was voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda who just has a god-tier voice.

Marius Casteledo aka Marianne

I already explained her in the story section; however, her personality was a bit odd. She was afraid of everyone finding out that she was the princess, yet, she didn’t really shy away from fighting or going to places where people might recognize her (as was the case when she was captured by Didier). Once her true identity is outed, she simply ignores the fact that everyone now knows who she is and becomes a bit more brash and straightforward. Kind of like a “welp, the jig is up, might as well starting throwing my weight around. I mean, I am the princess, right?” type of shift. Nobody really acted super surprised by it either. Alfred kind of did which was kind of odd. You would think that he would have had some sort of clue that someone serving as his page for four years was actually a girl instead of a boy… and was the missing princess, but I digress.

Deflotte Danowa

Probably the most interesting character of the main group. He came from a town that suffered from the petrification plague and swore to avenge them all… especially his father who was a priest in the town. Once he sees that Alfred is not with the church, he befriends him and joins him on his journey. Deflotte has a bit of a hotshot persona about him and loves to just trail off and go drinking and skirt-chasing… but then that all just suddenly disappears and he becomes just another fly on the wall amongst the main characters. This remains the norm until the very end when we get a reminder that he hates zombies. The character had potential but didn’t really go anywhere.

Roy Bachelot

He was set up to be the series’ main villain or at least one of the main antagonists but, in the end, he was just the servant of the Duke Rugis and neither one of them was actually evil. He ends up helping Alfred in a way akin to the Green Ranger showing up and summoning the Dragonzord then taking all of the credit after the other five rangers got their asses handed to them. Then he disappears until he’s needed again… except he’s not needed again and just disappears with no epilogue or explanation. At least Rugis jumped through a window.

Nonnoria and Kuu

Nonnoria is a simple maid (and I do mean SIMPLE) serving the Albert household and Kuu is a floating talking cat that says “moru” at the end of every sentence. Their only job is to tag along on Alfred’s adventures, annoyingly get in the way, get herself into trouble and needs to get rescued. She’s one of those “BUT I CAN HELP!!” characters and then goes off to fetch a pail of water while zombies and holy knights are murdering people left and right.

Didier Vialdo

I really hate trying to type this word so I’ll just say it once here. Didier is the top-ranking member of the Ecclesiastical Knights… or the holy knights of the church (that’s much easier to type). He’s the elite of the elite and, without much explanation, can use Magonian power… which he never uses in battle? I guess it’s more convenient to teleport yourself everywhere and not just use it to decidedly annihilate your opponents. Despite this, he has a very devout side to him as he swears absolute loyalty to Vall, the Pope, but yet, despite his devious and evil deeds, has some sense of honor about him. It’s a really weird mixture but, for some reason, it works. Plus, you can see by his armor where most of the show’s budget went.

Vall d’Hebron

Our main antagonist of the series. The Pope of Hortensia and someone with some severe daddy issues. Killing the king wasn’t enough. He has to wipe out the entire royal family and claim the land for himself! He uses Marianne’s little brother Charlot as a puppet while he weaves his plans from the shadows. It’s about the most vanilla fantasy villain tactic in the book. Of course, his plans are all unraveled in about 8 minutes of air time with one of the most anticlimactic deaths I’ve seen in a very long time. He had pretty solid reasoning for his actions but if you’ve seen one evil priest who uses the light of justice for nefarious deeds, you’ve seen them all.

There are more characters; however, all of which were minor… some had a story that lasted an episode before they didn’t even matter anymore. I might be forgetting a few of the important side characters but… my god… there were a TON of characters for a 12-episode anime.

Art, Animation, and Sound

LIDENFILMS was at the helm for this show and… well… it wasn’t the best art and animation I’ve seen but it certainly wasn’t the worst. All of it was rather average at best. A lot of the characters just came off as generic fantasy character right down to Alfred who looked like he came right out of Tears to Tiara. I will say… when Marianne was masquerading as Marius, they did do a pretty good job with his/her hairstyle. It was pretty consistent throughout… almost as if they wanted to draw attention to it for some odd reason!

Some of the fights were okay but a lot of them just felt like they didn’t care… especially the final battle where you could tell that there wasn’t much budget left and they needed to wrap things up in a hurry. Even the much-anticipated penultimate showdown between Didier and Alfred felt more like a whimper than a massive titanic clash. Needless to say, there was a lot that was left to be desired.

As for sound, typically a fantasy series will have a memorable soundtrack that gets in your face and forces you to remember certain scenes. Hortensia Saga had none of that. It was pretty forgettable which was a bit sad considering fantasy music in anime is usually one of the highlights of a show. Just look at Fairy Tail, for example. At least MY FIRST STORY came through with a pretty banger opening theme and if there is anything that you absolutely need to have from this show, it’s that opening!

Overall Thoughts

I think it’s pretty obvious by now that I did not enjoy this show. In fact, I skipped watching it for five weeks until it ended. I ended up marathoning the back half of the season and found myself checking my phone, email, and other things which the show seemingly sat there at a standstill. I only paid attention mostly towards the end since things were wrapping up and then everything just ended in an unfulfilling way.

There are much better fantasy series out there for you to choose from if you need an escape from the isekai invasion but if you REALLY want to escape it and you just want a very basic fantasy story… Hortensia Saga will fill that void but you’ll probably come out of it wishing you had done some research first before diving in.

Oh well, at least I can say that this show became series #480 on my completion list!