Emperor Arnold Hein storms a castle, killing the knights who defend it, including Rishe…who reverts back to five years earlier, on the night when her fiancé Prince Dietrich dumped her. But this isn’t the first time she’s died—it’s the sixth! Each loop begins when Prince Dietrich annuls their engagement and her parents disown her. She lives for about five years, then inevitably dies in one way or another. In brief flashbacks, we learn she became a merchant in her first life, an herbalist in her second, a scholar in her third, a maid in her fourth, and of course she disguised herself as a man and became a knight in her sixth. Faced once again with that classic scene of the villainess genre, where a noble young lady is denounced by her princely fiancé, Rishe wastes no time making a hasty exit. But this time she takes a different route to depart the palace—and consequently bumps into Arnold (currently only a prince), before jumping off a second-story balcony. But Arnold, that warmongering emperor who personally killed her in her last life, follows her home and…proposes to her?!
Oof, this episode was packed to the gills, thanks to the multiple lives’ worth of backstory Rishe has. The people she met and the skills she learned in those lives will all be relevant in the future, so I understand why the episode took the time to introduce them, but it made for an episode that blazed along at a breathtaking pace before ending abruptly on a cliffhanger. I think it would have been better to put off some of the flashbacks until later episodes and focus more on the present-day story. As a fan of the light novels, I’m hopeful this adaptation will slow down now that it has established the premise. What makes Rishe so interesting in the books is that her story really sells the idea that she has an extra thirty years of life experience, with all the knowledge and skills that entails. It comes through a couple of times even in this episode, when we see she’s retained her skill with a blade acquired in her most recent life, and also when she calmly imparts some words of wisdom to the prince’s new girlfriend, sounding much more mature than her physical age. So while I don’t think this was the best way to open the series, this episode does give hints of what makes the story so great. I recommend giving it at least another episode or two, because I think it’s going to get better.
7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! is streaming on Crunchyroll.
[…] Read More […]