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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:4909#628] | ||||||
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(Two episodes watched): So, this show has a Cinderella-like plot: Marie is treated like crap by her own parents (her mother even blames her for Anastasia's accident) and has come to see herself as ugly and even blames herself for her situation ("Being born as lowly as me, that was my mistake"). To a large extent, I was reminded of last season's The Too-Perfect Saint. But I found Marie's personality to be kind of disturbing; there's no way I can believe that somebody who is as fucked-up as her will just snap out of it eventually. Kyros' mother diagnoses her as critically lacking in confidence, which is correct, but the message I am getting is that this show is nowhere near sophisticated enough for her to retrain herself convincingly. She is so simple-minded that I can't care much about her, and Kyros effectively remains a stranger. She thinks the abuse she has been subjected to for years was a form of training intended for her benefit and any failure on her part is her own fault. She basically has a child's mind. Her problem would probably be better described as low self-esteem. But I can't help thinking that for the most part it looks like she will just get lucky and that will fix all her problems. The message I was getting was that a little makeup and some nice clothes were all Marie needed--that is, if she looks good enough to catch a guy's eye she'll be OK. When Marie and Kyros met for the second time I was slightly surprised that he didn't know he'd met her before and very much surprised that she didn't. The show seemed to be attempting a discordant mix of comedy and cruelty. Nevertheless, I may watch episode two to see if there is any complexity to this show or if my initial conclusions were correct. Episode two clarifies Kyros' misunderstandings. He always thought that Marie was the girl he was getting engaged to, he just mixed up her name with that of her sister (for a time he thought she was the one who had gotten killed in the carriage accident). OK, but that means he never wanted to get engaged to Anastasia so the whole notion of Marie sort of 'stealing' her sister's fiancee never really happened to begin with. Much too easy. And Marie's dim-wittedness frustrates me. I see no sign of her ever really figuring out in a convincing manner what she has gotten wrong--namely, that she can decide for herself whether she has virtue, and it doesn't have to depend on her being attractive to others. As a result, I decided to drop this show. Last updated Wednesday, July 23 2025. Created Thursday, July 10 2025. | ||||||||
