Tearmoon Empire

Episode 12

So far as finales go, “To Keep What Was Preciously Grown from Withering” is a perfectly okay way to cap off the first season of Tearmoon Empire. Despite what its long and somewhat dramatic title might imply, this isn't the kind of storyline capper that is filled with subversive twists or earth-shattering cliffhangers—which is just fine, since that's not the sort of capital-D “Drama” that you'd expect from a sitcom like this. All we can really expect is to spend some more time with our favorite characters before we say goodbye for the foreseeable future, and hopefully get some yuks in along the way.

It's the “spending time with characters” part that makes this finale merely okay, instead of one of the best episodes that Tearmoon Empire has had to offer. To be frank, I just haven't been head over heels with this Remno Rebellion story—and a lot of that is because Sion and Abel are hardly the most entertaining or compelling characters to stick Mia with for so long. Nothing much comes of those revolutionary siblings. And while the villain guy of the story gets a mildly funny joke as a sendoff, he's hardly a force of nature himself. So, what that leaves us with is more of Mia being goofy and awkward around the two blandly nice princes in her life—which is usually my least favorite flavor of Tearmoon Empire.

At the very least, the jokes this week were funnier than in the last couple of episodes. The show has been squeezing as much blood as it can from the “Mia does something selfish but it gets misinterpreted as benevolent” stone but I did laugh when this week's instance involved her sucking so hard at literally kicking Sion's ass that it ended up inspiring a life changing epiphany in him instead of, you know, hurting at all. The fakeout peepants joke at the bad guy's hideout was a bit iffy at first, but I couldn't complain when it ended with Mia slipping in a puddle of horse shampoo and crushing the evil dude's nards.

Still, it's a shame that the season had to end on an arc that placed so much focus on action and political intrigue, when neither of those things are elements that Tearmoon Empire is especially skillful at. Heck, one of the jokes about Mia being oblivious to standing in the middle of a “battlefield” doesn't even land because the whole “battle” is literally just a few still shots arranged slideshow style—so it even brings down the series trademark humor. It wasn't until the very final coda of the episode that we got back to the more cozy vibes that I prefer from Tearmoon. If we ever get a Season 2, I hope there's more time spent on Mia dealing with the less Machiavellian aspects of reforming her empire and more screentime given to the show's actually interesting side-characters. Until then, au revoir, Princess Mia! May Madame Guillotine never be too far from your thoughts.

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Tearmoon Empire is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.