My first crossover review with Isis. Doing a crossover was something I always wanted to try with my characters to see if it could work and I figured Arcana Familgia would be the perfect anime to try it out. Based off a game under the same name, the anime focuses on this mafia group where some members have powers given to them by the major arcana. The head of mafia announces that he’s going to the retire and the next head of the family will get to marry his daughter. Not wanting to be treated as some trophy Felicita enters the tournament to crown the new head of the family and her two friends Nova and Liberta also decide to join the tournament to keep her safe where they both soon develop feelings for her and everything.
You would think a series like this would dive into the philosophies of the major arcana or show the dealings and work of the mafia but no, the whole series pretty much plays out like soap opera. Nothing really happens in this series. We don’t get to learn much about our female lead or who the mafia boys who seem to have a crush on her. All we see them do is sit around and talk with each other and that’s it. We get a few instances where we see their powers at work but other than that there’s not much that happens. The biggest disappointment is near the end where the tournament takes place and instead of turning into a two-part ending and showing the fights we instead fast forward through all of them and get a cliché ending. Knowing that this anime was going to quite uneventful, I knew the most entertaining aspect of this review would be the banter between me and Isis. At first it was a little difficult writing for two people who were the complete opposite of each other. With Nitsuj I’m more of myself and try to maintain an air of professionalism while also giving my personal insight. With Isis, I want her to come across as the casual female fan who has a little knowledge of anime but is someone who can keep up with Nitsuj and be his comedic foil and vice-versa. I went through quite a number of rewrites in their banter in the first few episodes but as time went on their banter started to become natural in my head and began to play out more naturally in the review. I guess you could say I stopped viewing Isis as just a fictional character and instead began viewing her as an actual person who I would be talking to. I started off stiff and unsure of what to do but then my nerves calm down and I become a lot more relax and in control. The final score for this anime was a 3.5/10 and yeah I think that score still holds up to this day. I know an OVA came out sometime after the anime in the hopes of getting people excited for the game and a possible 2nd season but it wasn’t really all that interesting and nobody was really interested in another season. This is just one series that’s sleeping with the fishes.