I have so many feels right now, but I will go over the summary of this manga to start out this review before we get into my detailed hatred of this shit.
Fia, the youngest daughter of a family of knights, has always dreamed of following in her father and siblings’ footsteps in becoming a knight herself. She has just one problem, she is nowhere near as skilled as her siblings. In order to prove herself during her coming-of-age ceremony, she must go out and defeat a monstrous beast to bring back its magic stone as proof of her skills. Things don’t go as planned, and as she’s on the brink of death, Fia remembers her past life as a great saint and her downfall from said life.
I usually start my reviews out with something I liked about the manga. I… don’t know that there was anything I liked. I didn’t hate the artwork for the most part, but there were moments that the angles felt a bit off. Someone would be holding a sword, but the angle they were holding it felt like they were stabbing themselves in the neck. It didn’t occur enough for me to hate the artwork, I just noticed it from time to time. I, also, didn’t like the decision to just not draw eyes sometimes. I don’t know why they did that. I get that sometimes it’s easier or for artistic purposes, such as glasses sometimes missing parts to show the full eyes of characters or something but this didn’t feel like that. And that concludes the things that I liked about this manga. Oh, and I almost forgot, one of the swords changes shapes in between panels. Like… I wasn’t trying to check the sword. It literally has a different guard one panel down. How did that get past everyone it had to get past in order to be published?
I’m going to put the rest of this review under a spoiler. There are bound to be some non-spoiler things under here, but because I’m going to go full rant mode I’m going to be too lazy to differentiate them. If you don’t want spoilers, don’t read this. If you want to know why you shouldn’t buy this, accept spoilers into your life.
Where do I even begin? Let’s start at the beginning. I’ll try to keep this in chronological order but no promises.
To begin, there is not nearly enough explanation of how the magic works in this world. Oria gives Fia a healing potion that she can drink if she’s been injured. She gives the potion to the black dragon. Then we get this sudden… you used saint magic on me to heal me. Wasn’t the potion supposed to heal the dragon? Why did they also need to use saint magic for healing? Was it because the dragon was so close to dying? If that’s true, they needed to say that. I also don’t think it is seeing as Fabian also drank a potion and then had a saint heal him after the entrance exam thing. So what is this magic? How does it work? I don’t need a super detailed explanation. I just want the basic knowledge so I’m not super fucking confused every five seconds. Also, are saints the only ones who have magic? We’re never told. I feel like that’s kind of important to the story. They also seem to only use it for healing, but Fia suddenly can use attack magic and time magic. With no boundaries set up, it just feels like she gets to fully pull shit out of her ass whenever she wants. I also just realized that they def aren’t the only ones with magic because there is a mage brigade. So what makes mages different from saints?
We’re shown a little bit about her past life as a saint when she first remembers it. It’s there to make us feel bad and understand why she wants to keep things hidden. But then, we just hear that she remembers things from her past, and we are never shown another real played out scene. So we have no feeling for how Fia feels about her past life. I’m jumping ahead for this, but when she’s upset about how worthless saints are now, it’s like… why do you even care? We have no way of knowing how you really feel about your work as a saint because you just say every now and again oh I did lots of great deeds, but we have no feel for these deeds or moments. Were you great? Were you horrible? We don’t know. We just know you did great things. That’s all that’s important, right? NO!!!! It’s also clear that she had a different personality in her life as a saint vs now, but it’s not looked at at all. It feels like a real failure of the storytelling because I just picture worthless Fia as the saint, and I’m like I would leave her for dead too.
This is small, but they claim that only 100 people participating in the entrance exam will get it, but then there are 200 new recruits being inducted. Is it 100 or 200? Also, in the oath, he claims they must follow the knight’s 10 commandments, but then they don’t say what those are. Fia is shown to be dumb as shit, so she clearly doesn’t know what they are. I’m pretty sure you’re going to have a knight breaking all those 10 commandments because you didn’t clarify that shit to them when they joined. This is small, I know. But if you didn’t want to clarify them either in the oath or in narration, then why did you say 10? Just say, we swear to uphold the knights commandments. There is no need for saying 10. Is this like… a translation error? Did the English translators just say 10 like the bible? It’s just another dumb thing about this manga.
They needed to come up with a better name for the knights brigade thing. It’s far too confusing. Are all 20 brigades called the Knights Brigade? But then when they mention one in particular, sometimes they call it the First Brigade, but then sometimes they claim just like that knights brigade. It’s hard to tell which brigade they are talking about, the whole thing or just one or two. They also should have clarified how many knights on average are in each brigade. The first is something big and important, you would think there would only be a select few, but then the commander of the knights brigade doesn’t know that a new recruit is being placed into it? Does he not oversee everything? Why didn’t he hand pick the new recruits going into the first brigade. Also, we are told it’s a big deal that Fia got into the first brigade right from the exam, but then what about Fabian? It can’t be a huge deal for her to get into it but not him, or rather, it can’t be without a reason for why it’s one way for one of them but not the other. It’s just dumb.
Why doesn’t Fia know anything about how the knights work? I get that her brothers don’t seem to like her, but why doesn’t her sister tell her anything about the knights? Why not her father? Would her father not tell his children about the knights and what it’s like to be a knight? Also, why are all the men in her family worthless in one way or another? I don’t get why she’s clueless. It’s a fantasy manga, we don’t need someone to tell us how to play a sport because they’ve never seen someone play it before. We don’t need someone who needs everything explained to them. The main character could easily do it in their narration. Why does the main character know nothing? If not for her father telling them about what it’s like to be a knight, why would all of her siblings want to be knights? I get that they come from a line of knights, but if your father legit never says anything about what it’s like and you live in the boonies, then why are all of her siblings interested in being knights. It just doesn’t make sense. I shouldn’t have to stretch for this manga to explain something like the basics of how this world works.
So the first brigade knights learn culture class things. Sure. I mean kind of dumb but sure I can’t buy it enough. What I don’t get is why the second brigade captain is teaching the first brigade recruit how to play chess? What? Why is he the teacher of everyone who could teach her? This is dumb. Also, I think it’s just the new recruits learning these culture classes for a few weeks before they go into training with everyone else. Why the fuck aren’t Fabian and Fia in a class together then? There are two of them? They need to pull two people apart to teach them separately?
And finally, this last paragraph is just my “Why I Hate Fia” monologue. Fia is a piece of shit character. She’s horrible. Now. I don’t mean in the typical sense of saying a character is horrible. She’s not some evil villain. She is a Mary Sue. She’s like the epitome of Mary Sues. She is the worst Mary Sue I have seen perhaps in all of my life. I don’t even know where to begin with this because it’s all linked together, but I’ll try my best. Fia gets a dragon. She bonds with a dragon. She’s a nobody who saves a dragon and bonds with it. Sure. Fine. She bonds with the KING OF ALL DRAGONS. Sure. I guess. It’s fine. She needs to get a magic stone. She could go get one from a weak little monster. No. Her dragon kills things, and she gets to claim the magic stone from some big monster. So, she’s not putting effort into anything. She didn’t even fight a monster to get her magic stone. She slept and her dragon protected her. She just used this fucking king of dragons to bypass her test. This doesn’t help me like her. I don’t feel like cheering her on. She just got the basics of all basics handed over to her. But sure. She is bad with a sword. Yup. Get it. She needs that in order to become a knight. Her dad gives her a sword. She uses magic to boost the sword because she has that power because she used to be a saint. Sure. I mean… I would have liked to know how the magic works. I feel like we could have seen her slowly get the magic back. Is it OP that she remembers her past life and then just can literally do all of the magic she could back then? Yup. But sure. She has a sword that helps her now. But also, she can use magic to boost her body and slow down others' bodies. Without explanation on how this works. Without anyone feeling or realizing she’s using this magic. She can just use it. So… is she great or is everyone just worthless? It really starts feeling like it’s the latter. The worst part of her character is during the exams when we’re reminded at least three times that she doesn’t want to stand out and that she has horrid brothers. She then gets to go up and disarm one brother. Oh look, our queen. She’s suddenly so good at everything! She didn’t even flinch when taking on her brother. There wasn’t even any tension on whether or not she might pass against Leon. That’s what we want in a protag! Oh, no I didn’t mean to stand out! Oh wait, let me go stand out again right away instantly. Also, the magic stone we didn’t explain at all, let me pull it out and use it suddenly! We talked about that stone tons before, but let’s not explain it until I’m legit about to use it to paralyze my brother. That’s good storytelling, right? Oh god I stood out soooooo much!!! What am I going to do?? Fuck off. This is the smallest of things, but I hate that every guy she meets her first thought is how hot they are. Other than her brothers. I guess we can be thankful for that. It’s like… if you didn’t know we’re going for reverse harem, let me tell you that we’re going for reverse harem. I hate that they try to play her up as like can’t talk when she’s excited, but then also can talk like a full on tactician badass a second later. I think that’s them trying to bring her past life self into it, but we never addressed that so it’s just disconnected and weird as shit. It’s not quirky. It’s annoying and makes for a character no one should want to relate to. Fia gets everything handed to her. She stumbles into shit. She doesn’t have to work for anything. She gets her powers back. She can use them without a second thought. Why? What makes this a good character? Who let this character be made? Why????
In conclusion, this is worse than bad. It’s awful. It’s a terrible storyline. It has terrible characters. There is no reason to read this manga. I don’t know. Maybe the second or third volume just blows everything away. I doubt it. I think this series is cursed. I don’t think anyone should ever like the main character. If you relate to the main character in some way, I’m sorry. You are better than that. You should have better characters to look up to. You deserve better.
Early on in this volume, I thought I’d end up giving this manga a 2 or so for rating. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t the worst thing ever. By the end, I was like, 1.25. But then I realized that would be giving it too much credit. This is maybe the worst manga I have ever read. It’s one redeeming quality is the art, and that isn’t anything to write home about either. 1 star. Don't read.