After an epic battle against the demon king, the war is finally over. Prince Henri has decided that now is the perfect time to call off the engagement with Romelia, his fiancée. On top of that, he’s kicking her out of the party because she appears to have been sitting out all of the recent battles. Romelia doesn’t even flinch as all of this is said to her, and stays composed throughout all of the unpleasantness to follow. The king seems to be the only one to show his gratitude towards her as she takes her leave. Back at home, her mother refuses to be consoled after she hears about the broken betrothal, while her father is more concerned for Romelia herself. Romelia reassures him that she’s doing fine and that she wishes to go to Cashu. She doesn’t need long to prepare for her departure, and after saying goodbye to her parents, she leaves her home with a determined look on her face.

Banished from the hero’s party, as well as a broken betrothal! With that combination, it’s difficult to imagine anything other than a generic first episode. But surprisingly, this is a solid start. The formalities of these two formulas are dealt with efficiently, so that we can move on to focusing more on Romelia. We quickly get a decent idea of what her character is like, and there are hints of what will be revealed about her later. She’s constantly formal, humble, and stoic, which makes me wonder where her heart really is. From her actions, it’s clear she cares about and is dutiful to her parents, but she’s not particularly warm towards them. She clearly must have a plan for what she intends to achieve in the hinterlands, but we aren’t told anything about it yet. That’s something I appreciated in this episode: There was no inner monologue about her powers, how she’s not appreciated, how she’s actually the strongest, etc. Instead, we’re shown that she already provides value to the party with how wise and knowledgeable she is, and we’ll probably find out more about her powers in due time. I really like the art style and character design, and the soundtrack was good. For me, the most important thing this anime would need to get right is the continued characterization and development of Romelia, as well as interesting new characters, which we’ll hopefully see in the next episode. With those things in place, this anime will be very much worth watching, and based on this first episode, it already looks promising.

Romelia War Chronicle is streaming on Crunchyroll.