After failing the final exam for his dream job at the royal court, promising young sorcerer Allen wants nothing more than to retreat to a simple life in the countryside. Unfortunately for him, he can't even afford the train fare. His only solution is to get a job, but his one lead is anything but modest: Duke Howard, one of the kingdom's most powerful nobles, needs a private tutor for his daughter Tina. Despite her academic brilliance, Tina is incapable of casting even the simplest of spells. To make matters worse, the entrance exams for the prestigious Royal Academy are fast approaching, and magical aptitude is mandatory.

I'll be the first to admit that Private Tutor to the Duke's Daughter is average on many levels. It's got animation that doesn't look bad nor fantastic, music that's largely forgettable but does its job, a fantasy world similar to many others (but it doesn't work like a video game taken literally, which is a plus), and characters that fit into the same classic archetypes we've seen before. Even the plot, a magic teacher helping students overcome their issues, both in magic and in their greater lives, is hardly anything new. But while it's average, it's also my kind of average.

What hooks me with the premiere is the subtle background mystery. It's introduced in the first scene of the anime and we constantly get new clues to fuel our speculation over the course of the episode. This mystery, of course, is why Allen failed the court sorcerer's exam. It's established right away that Allen is a talented magic user--after all, his teacher is not only also baffled by his failure, but has no problem recommending Allen for a job with one of the five most powerful people in the kingdom. In fact, the whole situation seems like a setup, like the professor caused Allen to fail specifically so he could take this job.

But as the episode goes on, this appears to be a red herring. Allen seems perfectly content teaching Duke Howard's daughter magic. He's respectful and kind, seemingly unbothered by his failure on the test. He's also proficient at magic that seems impressively difficult even to those knowledgeable about the subject. All of this implies that he failed the test on purpose.

From there, we're left with the next logical question: Why would Allen purposely fail the test to get one of the best jobs in the kingdom? The answer, as it turns out, is Lydia Leinstar. He refers to her as "the albatross across my neck", and from his other comments, we see that he's been forcibly tied to her for years. This isn't because of any personal affection, mind you, but because he alone seems to be able to put up with her rotten personality. The trick, however, is that she has graduated while he hasn't. Thus, by keeping himself from graduating (by purposely failing the test), he's able to stay away from her. Going to the north of the country for this job until spring is simply a bonus.

While it is the job of a first episode to set up the story to come, this one takes that job a bit too literally. Much of this is simply an introduction to Allen and his two students, along with some background information about the kingdom and its magic system. A large part of the problem is that none of these are all that exciting. Allen has a very bland personality, Tina is defined by her jealousy and lack of magic, and Ellie (the maid Allen is also supposed to teach, in a surprise announcement) is characterized by a squeaky voice and the preternatural clumsiness that seems to be required of anime maids for some reason. The setting, while it has a few interesting bits and pieces, isn't much better.

Still, credit where it's due, there are some very nice uses of speaking glances and other nonverbal communication. The look Allen exchanges with Tina's father when she tells him to call her by her first name is well done, and it shows that Allen is taking his job seriously. He seems to have come by it honestly, as he spent a lot of time with another ducal heir, Lydia, as the only person who could handle her, which is decent enough worldbuilding.

Then we have the second episode. I appreciate the realism on display in this episode. Sure, this is a fantastical world, but when I speak of realism, I mean in how the central problem is being tackled. Despite seemingly doing everything right, Tina just can't cast magic. There has to be a problem somewhere, so how do you find it? The answer is both simple and monotonous: Change every possible variable one by one and see what happens.

This means that first Allen cycles through the various types of magic and then through different spells in each element. After that, he looks back at older spells and techniques, testing them day by day, one after the other. What we learn from all this is that while the spells still refuse to activate, Tina is getting better at casting them. So what's her block? Even by the end of the episode, we still have no answer.

On one level, I get it. We're supposed to be just as frustrated as Tina is by her lack of progress. But that doesn't change the fact that the plot has been in a holding pattern for two full episodes now. We've spent an hour with the girl and she's no closer to using magic than when she started--in fact, she may be even further from it, given her emotional mana explosion in the episode's closing moments. Adding to this frustration is the fact that we're given a specific piece of information halfway through the episode: Allen knows a way to get her to cast magic, he's just been banned from using it. However, that makes it a Chekhov's Gun of sorts. It's now just a matter of waiting til he uses that path anyway. It makes the story feel like more of a slog because we know what's eventually going to happen.

The episode tries to keep things interesting by having Allen interact with Ellie (the maid Allen is also supposed to teach, in a surprise announcement, characterized by a squeaky voice and preternatural clumsiness) and her family, but her story is far from captivating. The most important thing this episode shows is that emotional state and self-confidence have a large effect on one's ability to cast magic, which in turn leads to the aforementioned mana explosion that serves as the episode's cliffhanger.

Overall, I feel like there's just not enough here to keep me watching weekly, it's just burning a bit too slow for me. That said, I won't be opposed to watching and possibly reviewing the show in full once the season's over and I can marathon it.