From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!

Episode 10

Last week we were promised a cross-dressing episode, and this installment's title is indeed “Dad Cross-dresses” – yet most of the potential gender non-conforming fun looks to be postponed to next time, when it seems the Student Council will perform in a play for the school festival. That Grace's so-far absent mother, Jacqueline Auvergne, was apparently the one who instituted a “cross-dressing rule” for council members, years back when she was Student Council President, suggests she may be less of a rigid tyrant than we might expect.

While we're merely teased with the eventual return of Jacqueline (whom Kenzaburo rightly worries might recognize her daughter Grace's recent personality change), this episode is more concerned with exploring pink-haired protagonist Anna Doll's family background. As a commoner, Anna has held onto a persistent inferiority complex, forever comparing herself unfavorably to her noblility-originating student peers. When Kenzaburo/Grace meets Anna's mother, Grace instantly recognizes that she knows how to react to nobles without overt deference or fear. Does this mean that perhaps Anna's mother is a secret noble? Did she run away from a privileged life to marry her baker husband (who we never directly see this time)?

Perhaps in the original game's story, the reason Anna could potentially marry Prince Virgile was because of her secretly noble heritage? Kenzaburo battles between his innate curiosity about Anna's family and his wish to respect their privacy, while conversely Anna gushes to all and sundry about how wonderful her friend Grace is. Anna's family already knows all about Grace because she's pretty much the main recurring theme of all her letters home… And after a brief adventure where Grace and Anna combine their magic to rescue a cat-boy stuck in a tree(!), suddenly the entire town is glowing with purple sparkly affection points for their “future queen” (as Anna prematurely dubs her).

Most of the promised cross-dressing is confined merely to the characters' fevered imaginations, with Anna particularly excited by the thought of her beloved Grace in men's attire. We do get some amusing shots of what most of the male characters might look like if placed in elaborate dresses. In general, this episode is mostly setup for future events, though. Even Bureaucrat to Villainess' transitional episodes are entertaining, however, filled with daft humor and deep cut cultural references – in particular Kenzaburo's lament about PTA members (in our world) banning kids from watching shows like Crayon Shin- chan: “Whenever novel ideas crop up in our society, they most always appear to be indecent or undignified because we can't help but judge them by current standards.”

Kenzaburo's innate decency and profound geekiness continue to propel him through the story with apparent ease – even his daughter, watching his progress, wonder if he is also perhaps a member of the nobility… No, his wife explains, it's merely his many years of experience in a managerial role. I wonder how much more difficult life may become for him once Grace's mother appears, and am I the only one who thinks the show may be building her up as the creator of this strange game-adjacent world? With only a couple of episodes left, I worry that this season could end without resolving these disparate plot threads. I won't complain if we get a second season of equally consistent quality, however.

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