The Royal Tutor

Episode 12

In its anime-original finale, The Royal Tutor pulls at everyone's heartstrings until there's not a single dry eye left. Unfortunately, it opts to throw most of its prior sensitivity out the window, employing brute force in such a textbook way that not many of the overwhelming emotions its sobbing, weeping, and screaming main characters experience come across as well as they should after such consistently solid build-up.

Apart from Eins' introduction, there weren't a lot of surprises to be found here. Of course Heine wouldn't depart without an uplifting speech. Of course this would temporarily reduce each prince to a bawling mess before finding the resolve to use everything Heine taught them to get him back, through what felt more like a screaming contest than the elaborate look-how-much-we've-grown plea it was presented to be. Of course the princes would barge in at the last minute, just when Rosenberg's choice of tutor was put to the vote.

True, the real schemer was always Viktor, reading his sons and council like an open book while effortlessly navigating between king and father to get everyone exactly where he wanted them to be. It's still a mystery to me why those ugly-looking counts should prioritize freedom of choice for commoners or feel inclined to reach out to the weak over ensuring the continued existence of their own noble privileges, especially after Viktor voiced concerns about his successor using his authority to protect these exact same privileges. Maybe years of working under Viktor have unconsciously rubbed off on their values. If not, then Eins' public approval did the trick.

Although approval is probably too strong a word. The first prince is simply sure enough of his supreme eligibility that he deems his steward's schemes unnecessary and inappropriate. We've seen too little of Eins to judge his aptitude as king, although dodging a hug from his dad like that immediately marks him as a cold fish more successfully than his scary appearance. On that note, the best part of our princes' appeal was hearing Kai speak in fully formed, well-articulated sentences (polite verbs and all). His unique moment of eloquent awesomeness almost bridged the gap between on-screen and off-screen emotion for me.

If only the compulsory need to give all princes equal screen time didn't have some unfortunate comical side effects. When we get the same reaction shot of all four boys at every crucial junction – four sighs at 4:40, four flashbacks of precious moments with Heine at 18:00 to find the resolve to step forward and form a perfect line, and four double pants at 20:35 – the scenes' rhythm becomes too artificial and predictable not to chuckle, which I'm not convinced was the intention given all the shouting and crying.

While the whole plot to bring Heine back left a bit to be desired in terms of nuance and creativity, this wasn't a bad episode. It was just the least interesting episode of The Royal Tutor, which is unfortunate for a finale. At least we end on a high note with the episode's last minute, when the new/old royal tutor attends his old/new students to the tune of the OP (because new beginnings), complete with the posing, magic wind, and feathers from episode one. Some things never change, but this time, the princes truly mean it when they welcome Heine, leaving us with his first real smile. Aww.

Rating: C+

The Royal Tutor is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Anne is a translator and fiction addict who writes about anime at Floating Words and on Twitter.