Bibliophile Princess

An average romantic fairy tale - 5/10. Are you saying that's not enough, and you want to find out more? Well let's just say that for this to be a nice enjoyable fairy tale, there were several things that annoyed me quite a lot. I'll start with the fact that the protagonist acts like a confused puppy most of the time, wandering through the story, too often without any idea what's going on around her. She has such lousy self-esteem that she just keeps questioning everything, mostly herself, so she can be thrown off and put down even by a spoiled little girl whom any normal person would tell to shove it after a few sentences, or at least ignore... The first few episodes are spent on getting to know our heroine, finding out that she likes books, but also suddenly realizing that she probably likes princes too. And then there's a big plot twist that happens largely off-screen, of which we only see the pathetic conclusion, so we stare blankly in disbelief just like the protagonist, wondering what it was we've missed out on off-screen. And that brings me to the biggest problem I have with this show - almost all of the successes, discoveries, etc. - things that will later affect the story happen off-screen. We only find out that Elianna actually did anything other than read the books all the time or just fumbled through the story from the characters' explanations, in the form of sentences like "Remember how you were researching XY back then? And remember how you told me about XX? Well, it turns out that...". The series simply doesn't show the essential things, it just explains them (later). Instead of "show not tell" it's the exact opposite. It makes everything incredibly heavy on dialogue. The viewer has to trust that the main character is actually useful and not just a confused puppy that stumbles from problem to problem, shedding streams of tears and drowning in self-doubt, which someone else (usually our prince) has to dispel. At least the chemistry between the main couple and romance in general work quite well, otherwise I would probably lower my rating by one point. Of course, maybe I’m to blame for expecting the main heroine of a series/fairy tale to show some inner strength more often than just twice in twelve episodes... The issues that arise from this logically follow, I don't trust the main heroine and I don't root for her like the characters around her. They, unlike me, remember how Elianna read about XX off-screen and then helped them with... The rest is just a pure fairy tale with nice animation, where everything is solved like clockwork, the villains are always punished, all misunderstandings are resolved, and everyone is happy ever after. Actually, the story is ideal and necessary at this time of the year. Just switch off your brain, pour yourself some cocoa, and look at the tree decorated with beautifully lit-up ornaments, which I'm sure Elianna came up with – off-screen of course! (22/12/2022)