La Storia seems harmless and amusing enough, if lacking in serious quality, that I've continued to watch it. Unfortunately, the loose, baggy plot and some serious issues with animation quality have started to become a serious distraction from a story that had a decent amount of potential.
Summary: Felicita's attempt to help Mondo with her Arcana power results in her amnesia and, as it turns out, doesn't help Mondo all that much either. The rest of the family members fret over how to save her until Jolly, aided with Mondo's remaining strength, uses his Arcana powers to enter her memories and save them. The effort almost overwhelms him, but Luca and Nova come to the rescue. In the end, Felicita finds out that her attempt to rescue Papa has failed, and that to utilize the full power of Gli Amanti, she must find another (lover) to help her establish the contract fully.
Thoughts: ...I don't know. This show has so much potential, but keeps dropping the ball in major, disconcerting ways. Is there any reason why Felicita's amnesia would also make her an emotionless zombie? The show says she lost her memories, but the crippling effects of that seemed...odd, to me. And Jolly just so happened to forget he had a power - the power - that might help Felicita until the homunculus reminds him? (I can see that happening with another character, maybe, but Jolly strikes me as the type to think things through). The references to Nova and Liberte's possible relation to Felicita only makes their position as the seeming "love rivals" of the anime seem...strange. And is it weird that I'm having trouble buying all this love and concern for Mondo? He's been on the periphery this entire time and now, suddenly, he's the beating heart of everything that happens? This isn't helped by the fact that the animation has taken a significant hit in quality; there are times when everybody's eyes look crooked, figures are out of proportion, faces seem weird and/or there's over-reliance on the same few shots.
To me, the strengths of this show rest in the relationships between the other, apparently less-significant characters: the familial bond between Pace, Luca, and Dante, the similarities between Jolly and Luca, Liberte's conflicted feelings about his own past. The show offers tantalizing hints at these things, but never seems to go into significant depth about any of them. In fact, the setup has so far focused on Felicita, Liberte, and Nova, which is going to get really weird if all of them are related and Felicita has to choose one of them as a lover. (Or not so weird. This is anime).
I'm too invested now to back out, but I hate watching an anime that I really, really want to like and simultaneously feeling compelled to make fun of it. Complicating all of this for me is the fact that Jolly's seiyuu also voiced Bleach's Ichimaru Gin, of all freaking people, and I laugh every time "Papa" emotes since his seiyuu also voices Kenpachi.
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