I'm going to start with the first thing you see when you open this manga: It is gorgeous ! One of the most wonderful looking ongoing shoujos on the market, only 1 or 2 others look this good. Characters look good and very visually distinct from one another, outfits look extravagant and flow differently based on movement, jewelry is very detailed and shiny, the poses are all expressive and make it look like the characters are talking with their whole body, not just their faces while their hands are conveniently out of , even the backgrounds and action scenes are spectacular.
As for characters they establish 2 main couples very early on and whenever the focus is on them they are wonderful. They all have room to grow and bring out the best in eachother. It becomes very clear early on who will be with who.
Characters outside the 2 couples are a mixed bag ... pretty much all of them are men and the vast majority of them are VERY romantically interested in the protagonist. There's only 2 female characters I can outside of the 2 couples and they play very minor roles. I think I'd find all those guys a lot more likeable if they had some interests outside of the main girl and maybe she'd play matchmaker for them or something (I think they'll try to do that with the cousin at some point so that seems like it might be fun).
The plot makes it real clear from chapter 1 that it's not something to take too seriously. Like imagine doing chest compressions in front of some medieval peasants, getting tired of it and just telling the random people in the crowd who have no concept of R to "yeah, just keep doing what you saw me doing before while I take a breather 🙂) I'm not saying R is difficult to learn but seeing a random peasant being told to emulate it after seeing it for the first time in his life and it working out sends the message of "look, don't think about it too hard, I'm not a doctor, I just watched some grays anatomy and general hospital".
The setting is really weird in of what is and what is not available. And names for people and locations are also generally weird. To me it doesn't get in the way that much because I think it focuses much more on the characters but it is the sort of thing that takes me out of a lot of other series so I could easily imagine others being put off by it.
Reading some other reviews I see apparently there's also an age-gap thing going on and I'll just say that the 2 couples both look and act like they're teenagers to me. Apparently one of them was 30+ but neither look it and if it was mentioned in the story it definitely didn't focus on it because I just read it and I don't seeing that. I'm pretty sure that to the average reader the fact that it's almost never brought up and both of them look like teenagers will make whatever age gap there is pretty hard to stay upset about. At the same time if you're looking for an age-gap romance this won't have what you want cause both of the couples look and act like teenagers.
Overall I strongly recommend it. If you're looking for an ongoing historical shoujo with no magic spells but 2 very solid couples and some of the absolute best art in the genre you should keep an eye out on this one.
