I’ve watched a lot of truly irredeemable love-polygon anime over the years.  You know the sort – hapless nice guy sort of character finds himself surrounded by cute girls who are occasionally also mystical creatures or aliens but who are for some reason haplessly besotted with our resident male audience surrogate.

The Familiar of Zero isn’t ENTIRELY this, but it does have a definite love polygon thing going on in addition to all of the wars and politics and betrayal and stuff.

For the first two seasons, it’s pretty much just your garden-variety triangle, where the main character – Saito – is being fought over by two girls: Louise, a mage who can’t cast spells and whose personality is generally explosive and Siesta, a maid at the magic academy who often has to patch Saito up after he’s been whipped by Louise or give him food when she sends him to bed without supper as punishment for looking at other girls.

The third season introduces the Third Girl, which sets everything up beautifully for the One Beautiful Moment when Girls A and B suddenly realize that, while they certainly still have their differences, they now have Girl C to contend with and – for the moment – they should work together.

More below the “Read More” bit as it spoils the end of an episode in season 3:

(Insert screaming sounds)