手札が多めのビクトリア

What a delightfully old-fashioned feeling romantic adventure story. Sometimes "old-fashioned" can be a very good thing -- as it was here. Direct, sincere, thoughtful, wholesome. Anna and Nonna and Jeff have had hard times separately -- but now they are together -- and off on their way to Not-China. It is lovely how Nonna delights in calling Anna and Jeff "mother" and "father" -- and it is pretty clear that this "found family" should be rock-solid.

Nonna had been calling Vicky (now Anna) Mum the whole time. It’s lovely to see her embracing her new family. To add icing to the cake, she’s now got a dad in Jeffrey. It’s also great that both Anna & Jeffrey spilled all their secrets before they became a couple so that as newlyweds they no longer had anything to hide from each other. The finale sounded like it would wrap everything up and it’d be the end of this series but turned out a second season has immediately been greenlit. We’ll get more of this sweet trio, this time as an official family. Can’t wait for that!

Season 2 already confirmed makes watching this episode so much happier, knowing I'll get more of these characters. Victoria telling Jeff her real name, Anna Dale, is so beautiful. Both because she can utter it to someone again, but because he can know how much she trusts him despite fleeing. Oh wow Jeff's dad was a real piece of shit. And such abuse can easily lead to either a cycle of abuse across generations or turning one into the most gentle person, Jeff is the latter. I'm so glad I gave this show a chance.

This was a cute show. It wasn't anything super special, but it was a nice, enjoyable story about found family. I'm guessing that the source material probably goes farther and has Victoria (or rather, Anna) face more troubles due to her past life, but since I assume we're not getting another season, I think we got a perfectly fine ending with Jeff, Anna, and Nonna living together happily ever after. I also appreciate that the studio picked the exact right amount of episodes to cover the material instead of trying to stretch the story into a standard 12-episode cour. Overall, I'll give this show a 7.5/10.

Well, would ya look at that. The guy finally found her. And now they’re getting married and one big happy family with Nonna. I hope life in Shen’s gonna be a good one. I was thinking to myself this ep is kind of a good end for the series. Lo and behold, it’s the finale. It was a short series, but an enjoyable one. Just a simple story of a woman with a checkered past trying to escape her demons. This honestly could have worked just as well as a movie I think.

Anna had nothing but elite super spy skills and a desire to find everything that was taken from her when she was recruited. She was battling a feeling of emptiness, of loneliness, of loss. And she managed to find a true family that she could invest all her love and devotion towards and finally feel truly happy and belonging. And I can't wait to see what cool super spy stuff she gets into as a badass wife/mom in Shen.

Quotes from this episode: I left special ops to be free, yet I feel so lonely and distressed No, stop consoling yourself by looking for reasons he cannot find you It's ok, Mom can cry, you know? I was gonna come to the festival every year until I could find you. Give me a chance to show off too As long as you're happy, that's what matters Maria. But if I answer that question, I will lose my job Mom...thank you for becoming my mom It'll be fine, because I have many faces (hands) at my disposal

Plus it also would have been a serviceable series finale had they decided not to continue the anime. The transition from volume 1 to volume 2 would have been very awkward anywhere outside a cour/season break, so it was truly for the best that they didn't try to squeeze the second volume into this season. That said, there is no narrative reason why you can't have all the following volumes ordered as one big block, just the production/economic questions of "How many episodes will it take the studio to intelligbly cover these events" and "How many episodes are our sponsors willing to fund in one go", so we'll have to see if they want to keep at the current pace or see if they can fit more story into the next season.

For real. Exiled Knight is worst than that. It's about 12 minutes of NEW content per episode, not counting the repeated cityscapes and other filler content. It's at best a 13 episode season stretched to 24. I stopped watching it and will wait for an abridged version, but only because I enjoyed the manga and the anime quality isn't too bad... it's just too much packed with useless fillers. I, too, rather a great 9-10 episodes that doesn't stretch forever than something with fillers.