I had heard good things about Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion, but I think I just wasn't in the mood for yet another girl/woman from our world reborn in another one story, so when it came out last spring, I didn't watch it in favor of my must-see weekly viewing of My Home Hero, in which a middle-aged married couple try to cover up the murder of their daughter's abusive boyfriend.
While I still liked My Home Hero, I suppose the fact I'm now writing about Raeliana shows which of the two I ultimately liked better. But that said, it never crossed my mind to write about My Home Hero (probably because I don't write contemporary crime dramas). I probably would have not written about Raeliana either if it had been a run-of-the-mill isekai anime, even if it was good, but it was more than good.
It was great, and I can see why people were talking about the manhwa (Korean comic) well before the anime was announced. There are slight name changes because the anime is a Japanese production and so the protagonist Eunha became Rinko for the Japanese audience, but for the most part this doesn't matter since Eunha/Rinko is pushed off a building, presumably falling to her death, in the opening minutes of the first episode. When she awakens, she is Raeliana, a minor character in a book she read, whose murder at the start of the book sparks the heroine's return to her home country from abroad.
Those aren't great circumstances to be reborn in! After dying already in one life, she's not ready to die again in the coming weeks/months, so in a fashion similar to other isekai where the destination world has a predetermined plot, the new Raeliana is determined to stave off death by any means possible by using the knowledge she has of the days to come.
This part is a little rote, but buoyed by excellent execution. Raeliana knows her murderer is her fiancé, who will kill her post-marriage and take advantage of her grieving parents' wealth, so she does everything she can to be as incompetent a fiancée as possible (including accidentally on purpose almost shooting him in the head) so as to break their engagement. She feels a little bad about it because her fiancé is old nobility who will add legitimacy and provide important connections for her "new money" family, the kind that became rich enough to just buy their noble title, but she's not willing to die just to keep the plot intact. And when her fiancé, who is not that stupid, cottons on to the fact she wants to break the engagement, he is furious with her.
Raeliana realizes that the only way she can successfully break the engagement without endangering herself and her family is to come under the protection of an even more powerful noble, which is… why Raeliana ended up at the duke's mansion.
She attends a party at which Duke Noah Wynknight will be and she knows he is the male lead of the book and the eventual love interest of the heroine, Beatrice. But more importantly to her, Noah is secretly the keeper of the royal seal that is preventing the passing of a law the royal family does not want enacted. Publicly the seal is supposed to be missing, so few know its true whereabouts, and someone like Raeliana shouldn't know at all. But because she knows it's critical to the royal family to keep its location secret, she blackmails Noah in exchange for her own protection, and her fiancé is truly outclassed since not only is Noah a duke, but he's also the king's younger brother.
Though on the surface why Raeliana ended up at the duke's mansion is answered by the second episode, there is a much bigger mystery going on that results in the better question being: "Why did Raeliana end up in a position to go to the duke's mansion in the first place?"
The interesting thing about Eunha/Rinko's death in our world is that she was intentionally pushed off by someone, and though she saw her attacker's face as she fell, she can't remember who it was. Unlike most isekai which sees a protagonist run over by trucks so much the truck even has a nickname (Truck-kun), it seems Raeliana was purposefully sent to the book world by someone and their identity was hidden from her for a reason.
Also, Raeliana's ability to deal with her situation varies wildly the further her actions push away the story from the original book. When she tries to blackmail Noah he pretends to have no idea what she's talking about, and no matter how much she tells him (even where the seal is actually buried), he blows her off, and it's not until she begins to think on her feet and puts together clues about the royal family's situation that she's able to come up with something more valuable to him than simply keeping her mouth shut.
She often finds herself in scenarios that neither Beatrice nor the original Raeliana had to deal with, and eventually, unlike many other isekai protagonists who appear in fully grown bodies, our Raeliana can't help wondering if she is somehow ruining or taking away from the original's life. Especially when it comes to Noah, and she begins to fall for him, she can't help feeling that it's wrong, because in the book he's supposed to fall in love with Beatrice.
Speaking of Noah, he's a remarkably fun character. He can come off as a bit of a sadistic jerk, but it works well when he and Raeliana are snarking at each other. She refuses to sit there and take it. They enter what is an engagement of convenience, which protects her from her old fiancé, and expect it to dissolve once neither of them need the other to hold up their part of the bargain. But because they aren't actually in a relationship, Noah gets a lot of entertainment value out of making her parade around as his fiancée at public events, to remind her that even though he is the one being blackmailed, she's going to pay dearly for the protection their engagement is offering.
Since the two of them have remarkably good chemistry and share the secret of their engagement being completely false, they are often able to be frank with each other in a way they aren't with other characters, while also choosing to completely ignore or misinterpret any actual affection for each other. After all, if everything's going to end and the feeling isn't mutual, why fall in love?
As the story progresses though, new mysteries emerge. Raeliana begins to wonder if Beatrice will ever return without her dying, or if she even exists in this world. A character she doesn't know appears at a grave on the day that Noah would otherwise meet Beatrice there in the book.
The anime is really good up until the halfway mark of what will hopefully be the first season out of two, but doesn't quite come to an adequate close by the end of its final episode, which appears to be slightly past the halfway point of the manhwa, which left me feeling a little disappointing since it was more of a stopping point rather than a clear break between story arcs.
I was hoping to read the original novels, since my preference is to read the source material rather than the comic adaptation, but it seems it's only available in English on Tappytoon and the thought of going through a micropayment app to buy chapter by chapter what I'd prefer in print or an ebook that I won't lose if the publisher goes belly up, just makes me all kinds of irritated. Since the manga escaped Tappytoon to Yen Press I'm hoping they'll eventually get the novels as well.
Until then, I'll keep hoping for a Season 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment