The animation is great, and the story has bits that could be interesting, but there’s too much to hate here.

The obvious is, of course, the adult women lusting after a 10yo boy, which is not great but I did expect (based on the promo images). What I was not expecting was the camera constantly focusing on said 10yo’s hips and thighs, nor the blushy come-hither-style faces the animators keep zooming in on. For me, that sort of thing goes beyond uncomfortable and into gross.

All of that aside, we also start out with the canonical and provable fact that nobles are inherently better than commoners, as we see a newborn royal baby perform magic orders of magnitude stronger than a grown peasant man who had been studying for presumably years. A better anime would look at the murder of a commoner for daring to try to learn magic and say “wow, that’s messed up. the nobles seem evil.” and maybe the story will get there, but for now it seem to just accept that yes, commoners are a lesser people and they deserve less, and doesn’t telegraph any future change. It might get better, but I’m not willing to stomach any more prepubescant thigh shots to find out.

I think Lloyd’s characterization is very strong, as I’m a big fan of weird little guys. The comparisons I’ve seen to Maomao from Apothecary Diaries are definitely on point and that’s very much a good thing. The animation is also fantastic and I expect the fight scenes will be great.

However, the strong points are not enough to get this any more than a 2/5 from me.