I had previously tried to figure out how many episodes were in this season, and all it said was that it hadn’t been announced. This episode made it obvious that there are more than 12 because it seems like an episode where they just shoved various plot-related leftovers, and it would be weird if they did that in episode 11 of 12. AniDB has release dates for episodes up to 16 for this season, but I don’t know whether that means there are only 16 episodes.

It seemed like they really wanted to exposition dump in this episode, and they made a lot of strange changes from the source material, many of which don’t make sense, and where doing them the right way would have been no harder. I’ll mention a couple of things that are not, in any way, spoilers.

Like, we’re supposed to believe that there was a huge locked cabinet in the book room, and Rozemyne wasn’t interested in it until she found a key that she didn’t know what it did? No, she obviously knew from the beginning that there were locked shelves, and that the High Bishop had the key. Well, technically, her attendants have the key. When she needs a key, she asks her attendants to bring it to her. I don’t remember exactly when in the story she read them, but any delay before she got to the locked shelves was simply because she hadn’t gotten to that part of the book room yet.

And we’re supposed to believe that Ingo got in the High Bishop’s face like that? I think in that same scene, Ingo said he paid for etiquette lessons just to be able to meet the High Bishop. Rozemyne had a guard knight in the room. There was some leeway given because they were in her hidden room, but Ingo now believes her to be a noble. After his lessons, he should at least know that if he physically approached her like that, he’d probably be executed on the spot. The lessons weren’t an excuse for Benno to make money like they said in that scene. They were to keep Ingo from making mistakes that would lead to severe punishment or execution.

And although it looked less offensive than what Ingo did, Zack would never run up to Rozemyne after the meeting like that. Zack running up to her was far worse than what Ingo did. That wasn’t in her hidden room. Zack is a commoner. He’s not her attendant. He’s not even an orphan. That was outside the temple where there is no leeway to treat Rozemyne as anything but a noble and the High Bishop. All commoners know that any mistakes dealing with the nobility will likely lead to their execution, and maybe the execution of their family. In this same episode, they made sure to tell Ingo that he could speak without as much fear because he was in her hidden room. And now a couple of scenes later, they have Zack do this outside the temple.

How was this animated like this? If the animators just read the script for this very episode, they shouldn’t have made these mistakes. Why did they spend all of that time in the earlier seasons showing how much commoners cower before nobles?