Tearmoon Empire

Episodes 7-8

Don't you love it when your single-minded pursuit of a fundamentally selfish (yet ultimately community-minded) long-term goal of “Not Getting Your Head Chopped Off in a Public Display of Violent Revolution” leads you to bumble your way into accidentally establishing a system of government-subsidized disaster relief and affordable public education for the masses? I know I do. Princess Mia and I are very similar. She is just like me, for real.

If there's one takeaway from these last two episodes of Tearmoon Empire—it would have to be that warm, fuzzy feeling from getting a story that reminds you how the world could be if the world leaders could be convinced that looking out for *their* best interests and looking out for *our* best interests need not be mutually exclusive goals. And what better tool for learning than an adorable little Japanese cartoon about a girl who just wants to keep her head on her shoulders if not Tearmoon Empire? Then there's always the real Madame Guillotine to turn to in times of crisis…

(Before I get any pedantic history buffs coming in here to “Well, actually…” me about real-world history, I am well aware that the actual guillotines of the French Revolution were used against poor and disenfranchised people more than justly deserving targets of the public's ire. I'm just saying that it's never too late to take the symbol back.)

If these two episodes of Tearmoon Empire have anything else in common, it's that they're a bit lacking when it comes to any laughs or big surprises. Episode 7 in particular feels stuck wading through a lot of exposition to set up the new characters (Viscount Berman and Commander Dion of the Tearmoon army), the conflict in The Forest of Stillness and the role that the brewing conflict with the Lulu people play in the Empire's increasingly volatile political state. While it eventually lead to some important developments in the story—including Mia's founding of an entire freaking city on the Viscount's territory on the border of The Forest of Stillness—I wish that the road to all of these developments had been more entertaining.

That said, I did enjoy the final sequence, which sees Mia recruiting Tiona's wunderkind little brother Cyril to her new public school, while also appointing their family as the official managers of the Empire's new food distribution program. Even if Mia herself is too dense to realize just how radically she is changing the lives of the people in her kingdom by simply treating them as human beings worthy of safety and dignity, it is obvious that her followers and citizens will remember what she's done for a very long time to come. She's the perfect monarch. She's got all of the power and innate selfishness that comes part and parcel with the job, but her intimate understanding of the consequences of failure ensures that even her most Machiavellian schemes are rooted firmly in how to keep the teeming masses as happy and healthy as possible.

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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.