Yarinaoshi Reijou wa Ryuutei Heika wo Kouryaku-chuu, episode 2
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I’m liking this one so far, but it does take some willful ignoring of the age stuff. Knowing what I know about why the emperor’s wife’s age is important, I can see that they’re trying to build it up into a mystery that we will slowly unravel, but without that knowledge it definitely seems like just a running gag that one of our main protagonists is (or at least appears to be) a literal pedophile, which is not a great look. And like, they wouldn’t even have this problem if they’d picked a better age numbers all around…
When putting the age stuff out of mind, though, I’m really able to get invested in our main couple. Hadis is so affection starved and eager to please that it makes sense he’d latch himself onto someone willing to protect his happiness. Meanwhile, Jill seems to have the strength of will (and strength of strength, lol) to face down whatever the curse brings, and her characterization seems locked in on being written as her mental age, rather than falling back into treating her like a child like most of these “redo” stories do. I’m enjoying their dynamic so far and I look forward to them growing closer as they face their challenges together. (They also end up treating each other pretty much as equals, which is the most important piece of trying to ignore the age stuff)
Also, for those who don’t know, “thieving cat” is the Japanese equivalent of “homewrecker” (which Sphere added “-chan” onto). The translators were in a bit of a bind because the visuals were so literal, so I don’t think it came across quite the way it would to a Japanese audience.
I have no knowledge outside what’s been shown in the episodes, but I think it’s fairly obvious that the age is some specific condition from his curse (or similar thing). At the same time, the age gap is definitely pandering to a specific audience. The author knows exactly what they’re doing, it doesn’t matter if there is some in-story pretense. For better or worse, this is the story they wanted to tell.
Jill did establish that their relationship should be platonic, which is nice. Hopefully that’s not just a front. The fact that the Jill is mentally older does help make it a little less gross (but at the same time, it feels like the author is trying to make an excuse for degeneracy).
It’s weird because it seems to me like they’re not doing the normal pandering stuff associated with the creepy age gap genre - she seems specifically dressed to make her appear a bit older, she never even attempts to act her age, and while Hadis remarks on her being young, he never treats her like a child. It almost feels to me like the adaptation is aware of how weird it is but for whatever reason are unable or unwilling to change the lore of the source material.
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking…