Alas for the Fantasy genre. As a branch of speculative fiction, it’s meant to be a wild playground for the imagination. The genre of myth, magic, monsters, and all sorts of unreal things… has been concentrated, codified, and reprocessed into focus-group friendly form, so that finding something creative and different when the only limit is the creator’s imagination is just as hard as finding it in more grounded genres, if not harder.
In the land of Anime, when the word “fantasy” is uttered these days the first of these ultraprocessed bricks of content to come to mind is no doubt the Shounen Power Fantasy Harem Video Game Isekai Fantasy, and while at times I have defended that good things can come out of even such an overplayed formula, I’ve also dredged up enough of the dreck of the genre combination for the time being.
But there is another repeatable demographic that I’m sure marketing teams love that also exists within the Fantasy space of the Anime sphere: the shoujo fantasy romance. It still takes place in what’s usually a quasi-period setting almost but not quite entirely unlike Europe, but rather than the ages of knights and heroes, it’s more the ages of ball gowns and courtly intrigue, a world in the style of Louis XIV’s Versailles rather than the Dragon Quest series. The stories, rather than being about “the strongest” trouncing monsters, demons, or anyone whose face he doesn’t like with some ultimate cheat power, will instead usually focus on the leading lady in some troubled relationship (whether it has trouble forming or trouble maintaining), with high rank and prestige on one side if not both, ranging from Cinderella stories to the sordid polygons of the Otome Games that call this particular portion of Fantasy home.
Much like their marketed-to-males counterparts, these stories are a dime a dozen… though perhaps somewhat less in Anime rather than its feeder spheres, at least until recently. Unlike said counterparts, I don’t think I need to protest too much that some good can come of them despite their endless repetition, because a number of entries that have gotten as far as the small screen are generally regarded as being pretty good, without too much controversy in that regard. I’ve even tackled one on this blog before: The World Is Still Beautiful is honestly closer to the mold than you’d think at first glance.
Perhaps it’s because these stories, focused on emotional relationships, naturally have more connectable writing because of that… or perhaps cream simply rises to the top, and the examples that have succeed, especially prior to a market boon, were drawing on the best sources. If that’s the case, there can be no guarantees for I Want to Escape From Princess Lessons; releasing in 2025 and based on a manga that started publishing in 2020, it’s significantly newer than the point where this sort of thing started to get general recognition and bean counters realized that there was a profitable demographic other than teen boys to exploit. So does this show stand tall, or has the Fantasy magic been smothered here too? Let’s find out.
The premise of I Want to Escape From Princess Lessons is somewhat promising: main character Leticia has been undergoing pretty harsh training to live up to her position as the betrothed of Prince Clarke, an experience that’s been draining on her since she was fairly young, to the point where she kind of hopes the arrangement gets broken off. Well, Clarke shows up at a major event with another woman on his arm and Leticia wastes no time assuming she’s gotten her wish, moving out to the countryside.
Clarke, however, pursues Leticia and tries to win her over, resulting in a tension between romantic feelings and, well, the title of the show.
This information gets out more or less over the first two episodes, and you’ll find it in any ad copy for the show. It’s a pitch that sounds like it could be a lot of fun, perhaps even something similar to Kaguya-sama: Love is War with secondary motivations helping to maintain tension between a main couple, with some comedic dealings aside.
I wish that were the case, but no.
The first warning sign is something I’ve mentioned already. Did you catch it? This premise took essentially two episodes to get on the road. And there’s pretty much nothing but premise delivered in that time. In one episode The World Is Still Beautiful established the stakes, did a ton of work with Nike’s personality, and had her do some cool stuff.
Here, we begin with a very extended version of her early childhood taking princess lessons for the first time. I think what they’re going for is convincing the audience to empathize with her desire to escape but… her tutor is pretty strict and cold, and makes her redo things when she gets them wrong which may scare a little child a little, but it’s not as though she’s going through any real abusive treatment or anything so bad that we’d actually think, “yeah, I’d crack too if I were there. Being a monarch in the future isn’t worth this.”
As she grows, she learns things like etiquette and geopolitics that would actually be important in the life of nobility, and some of the close-ups of her eyes are clearly meant to convey that this is crushing her free spirit or something like that but again, your audience probably went to school and had to learn way more worthless stuff for oppressive hours. You could probably make something of Leticia’s isolation, how she’s apart from the nuclear family she was close to and how we don’t see her interact with many if any peers in this sequence, but the shots, framing, and scenes never really communicate loneliness, just that in her heart of hearts she’d rather be rolling around in grass playing with her dog or something.
Now, like most people these days, I did at least read the pitch that the show gives for itself, so I knew from the start that she would, you know, want to escape per the title and why she thinks she can, but the fateful ball comes without us getting any internal narration or emotional scenes when she’s with her maid or her brother rather than the strict proctor, so we know she’s getting along well and as far as the fact that she’s downtrodden enough to take any excuse to get out of that arrangement, we have only the somewhat sad eyes of a visage we have every reason to believe is practiced to go by.
It would help if we had any other major cues. During the “Leticia grows up taking princess lessons” sequence, we see various environs in and around a royal palace, which is well-lit and reasonably colorful, and even get some outside scenes like her having tea with her future husband in the garden.
Now, the animation in this show is… pretty cheap. It’s a modern kind of cheap, not the spastic sketchy frames of yesteryear, but you still notice when it doesn’t take that long a shot for even major characters to become blank-faced. But, setting that aside, what would you have to do if you wanted this sequence to land?
You could speed up the opening. Have a much shorter montage where she expresses, perhaps by writing in her diary, that she wants to get away, that she wants to go home, and with a little repetition we can see that desire to flee sustain itself or even grow over the years. As it is we know she’s not exactly happy, but we don’t know that a fire burns in her to bail.
Or, if you want to drag it out, you have to use visual storytelling to make the environment much more oppressive. I get it, it’s a royal palace, on an objective scale it can be a nice place. But if we only saw indoor environments with a lot of gray, if we had deep shadows because, hey, we presumably don’t have electric lights in this world of horse-drawn carriages and functional kings and queens, and used dutch angles in a few key places, if we left out the maid being basically cordial and her brother being there as a retainer, left out the scenes that include other staff or random young ladies of the palace… you could make even a wonderful palace feel monstrously oppressive, either tight and close in when she’s being scolded (actually scolded. “That’s not correct. Do it again.” isn’t scolding. Surely we can trade merely stern for someone able to apply a little invective, or at least who can really attack her self-esteem without breaking required politeness and allowing back talk) or cavernous and empty when she’s alone, we would feel the pressure and the threat more.
Further, you’d want to really express how this is breaking her, continually. In the show as-is, after we age Leticia up a bit, we see the strict tutor looking on with some pride or admiration at how Leticia is able to handle her later lessons. It may be smaller and more subtle than one would prefer, but she’s getting positive feedback and fitting into her mold. It would be more poignant, more traumatizing, and more incentive for her to run if her struggles never ended, if she was always a square peg being jammed into each new round hole. If we got to the point where Leticia as a teen and not a tiny kid, as someone who has tried to live this life, have a real crying breakdown in a darkened room when no one is there to comfort her… then we might go along with the premise we’re given, even if the camera’s lens is being deeply colored by her biased perception.
I actually think not having Leticia speak through a lot of this sequence is the one choice that’s notable and could work. I said earlier, let her say something or get a crying scene, but you don’t strictly have to if you can tell enough of her mood and her story through visual means alone. But I Want To Escape From Princess Lessons doesn’t have that ambition or that skill. This is where Texnolyze actually gets to become the star student. The first episode there is basically silent, but communicates worlds through its artistry alone.
I guess part of the problem may be that this advice is approaching the topic as a drama. This show is a comedy. But it still needs its premise to be solid ground. You can have a dramatic or even dark premise turn to comedy. In fact, it could be a really funny moment when the audience learns by seeing another perspective later that things were not, in fact, as doomy and gloomy as Leticia’s perspective, told through the cinematography of what could still have been a fairly concise segment, might have led them to believe.
Where was I? Oh, right, the fateful ball. Leticia finds Clarke there, who has a different woman, who he introduces, hanging off his arm. She asks some leading questions, including an ambiguous one about their engagement, and takes an answer she believes means that it’s off. She then completely drops the persona that’s been beaten into her for years, leaps for joy, and departs. It’s only at this point that we get flashbacks to times when she talked to her brother about calling off the engagement, or leaving if Clarke did. Thus, she fast talks her way out of the palace, not letting Clarke get a word in edgewise, pretty much as you’d expect from the pitch and the fact this is a comedy, in the most paint-by-numbers execution of the moment you could expect.
Her departure stuns the crowd into a faceless state. Or maybe that’s just the animation budget giving out again.
And I’m sorry to harp on this, especially seeing as other shows (even good ones) will dispense with faces in long shots, if generally only at longer distances than this… but I feel like for this moment in particular, it has to be addressed. This is a comedy, and Leticia’s departure is supposed to be a comedic moment. But comedy hits in large part because of the reactions. And when you give a whole crowd, that should be making some very funny expressions, giving literal blank stares it kind of kills the moment.
In any case, Leticia collects her maid and, as we roll into episode two, departs for the boondocks of her family’s duchy.
Wait, she was ducal rank this whole time? How did she not get started with courtly expectations? Oh, forget it, the show will be over faster if I don’t pick apart little things like the prestige of various noble titles.
In any case, we do see that the new girl doesn’t last very long in Leticia’s shoes, taking lessons; despite her supposedly being classy enough nobility to be escorted by the prince at a ball she’s utterly broken to screaming by the good ol’ “walk with a book on your head”. It is at least a little funny because someone is suffering but it would be funnier if it weren’t at the hands of something so seemingly mild. Can’t we make her play croquet with a flamingo or something?
Right, trying to not pick every nit, let’s continue with getting the most basic of setups for this show out at least a little faster than the show itself.
In any case, we see Leticia has completed her move from royal palace to… gorgeous countryside manor of no limited means. Yeah, really slumming it and getting back to nature, aren’t you? But this one has nobody to tell her to not roll around the lawn, so sure, fine, girl is happy. She talks directly to the camera in a really weird way then goes fishing in her only slightly less frilly pretty dress, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Clarke!
Finally something in this show doesn’t take long, and it’s one of the few things I could have been okay with taking longer. This is the first scene with Leticia away from the palace, we never got a good sense of her escape.
For coming from a place that evidently enforces draconian codes of etiquette and conduct to the point of generating the “dreaded” princess lessons, Clarke seems like… a bit of a goober, with little composure and no particular attention to the graceful conduct that might be expected. She tacitly shows him around town, talks directly to the camera some more completely throwing the mood off, admits that the prince may be somewhat charming, that good stuff.
The prince reminisces, dropping an extremely unsubtle “hint” that he probably knew and liked Leticia before she started her princess lessons, and then finally gets out that the engagement is not, in fact, off. The other woman is even there (separately) to clear things up.
She makes it very clear what Clarke’s stance is. She also complains about the tutor, so at this point I’m assuming that the tutor is supposed to be Lady Tremain levels of spine-chilling and the anime is just not good at depicting that. Leticia’s parents also drop by, with mom having a lot to say that really says nothing other than “how did this woman raise Leticia?”, and Leticia tries to slip off in the night only to literally run into Clarke’s arms, which has at least a little humor.
There, finally, the setup. Except winning Leticia back is more along the lines of taking her back, so we actually know less than we thought we did. I guess we learned that the purple-haired mistaken-for-interloper, Brianna, may have a thing for Leticia’s brother.
Thus, Leticia is forcibly returned to the castle, with everyone but her smiling, waving, and treating this as a nice and funny time. Once there, Leticia learns that there will be some new conditions – no more lessons, and Clarke has even gone and prepared a space on the grounds just like her idyllic little retreat, with everything she enjoys.
The only problem is that now Leticia says that marrying into royalty? That’s a dealbreaker. Yeah, apparently the girl who had been groomed for ten years to be a princess and who previously expressed that it was the soul-crushing lessons and not any bigger scope fact she wanted to escape from, absolutely does not want to be a monarch.
Clarke, whose emotive range is “Pleasant smile” politely informs her that if she’s not going to cooperate, she’ll have to stay in her room until the wedding.
Once again, this is played off as being… funny and charming, with even Leticia’s distress being minor at best, but it’s clear that for all the lessons she supposedly went through, Clarke has had no education in the fine arts of interpersonal interactions.
What’s more, this isn’t funny. Again, reactions are a big thing in comedy. Clarke almost always speaks in a level, calm, pleasant voice, whether he’s gushing about how much he loves Leticia or insisting that it’s time she return to her fluffy prison of being pampered.
Leticia has a little more range, going from… mildly irritated when being returned to her room by Clarke’s unerring ability to find her when she escapes, to enjoying herself when being presented with fancy breakfasts and pretty dresses, but that’s still not a lot. Their interactions, when they actually interact rather than Leticia drowning out anything with an aside to the camera (I despise those asides), aren’t very funny. At their basic level they involve Clarke doing a lot of talking and neither Clarke nor Leticia (who admits she might be being a wee bit unreasonable about this whole thing… whether or not that’s true) listening or thinking at all. Clarke is 100% an NPC, with just a few more lines of stock dialogue than you’d expect. A Planescape: Torment NPC if you will. And Leticia interacts like you interact with an NPC.
And then there’s the level at which we’re watching a girl be both fairly unreasonable about the facts of her situation and her life, facts which the majority of her time on this world should have made her deeply accustomed to, and unreasonably chill about the fact that she’s essentially been kidnapped and held against her will. I guess we give some leeway because this is royalty with some preexisting binding deals, but this would normally be shady as all get out. And it’s almost more offputting that it’s downplayed to the degree that it is.
Seriously, girl, either get with the program and realize that you are as much of a spoiled rich brat as the rest, just with hobbies that were not previously accessible and now are at which point you don’t really have a reason to rebel, or stop getting distracted from your plight by croissants and rebel in earnest!
Haruhi preserve us, it only gets worse. After pulling a window-smashing bed sheet rope escape (effortlessly foiled by Clarke just… being there where she lands. This was funny once, not every time), Leticia is moved into new (still palatial and pampering) accommodations with bars on the windows. There, we learn that her new quarters have a secret passage. To Clarke’s bedroom. Which gets Leticia made a snuggle-buddy against her will. Which she reacts to with petulant frustration and her maid considers a positive thing while her brother sees it as no big deal.
Brother does at least hand Leticia a trump card in convincing Clarke that no means no, but unfortunately for her, she misuses it and rather than asking that he not trespass into her room she instead requests that he not enter her room without informing her first, which after a little hangtime gets her served with a formal schedule of nightly visitations. This is supposed to be funny.
Now, when it comes to comedy, a lot of things are subjective. Especially when it comes to comedy around topics that are uncomfortable, or topics that could be construed as uncomfortable, everybody’s going to have their own limits. Some people can’t abide slapstick because they see it as real injuries, others find it hilarious. And I, personally, really hate the idea of being the guy who says “don’t enjoy this humor because it would be really messed up in real life.” Fiction isn’t real life. And it’s normally not a danger, because compared to other people I know, I think I’m more able to separate a comedy scenario from what it would be if literally played out in our universe than the average. But to do that, to get this blank check of being written off as a comedy scenario, the scenario must actually be funny. This show is not funny. It does not tell good jokes. Ironically, I think it may be too harmless. Just like the tutor couldn’t be really evil, Leticia can’t really suffer in her captivity which means there’s not so much absurdity with the maid or Brianna (brought in as paid company for Leticia) not getting worked up about what Leticia gets worked up about that it’s funny.
When you do these scenarios, and they are on their own not funny, and whatever joke was attempted bombs, you’re just left with a disappointing, uncomfortable, somewhat troubling mush. And that makes it even more unfunny than it would have been bombing a joke with a less red-flag-shaped subject matter.
Anyway, it seems Leticia’s imprisonment and abuse doesn’t get in the way of her attending balls. Or keep her from getting jealous of Clarke even talks to someone else. Not that she likes him or anything.
But soon enough the not-precisely-willing princess is kidnapped by a short fellow and his put upon hired help, who begin to speed their way towards a national border, reminding me of how much I’d rather be watching something actually funny, like The Princess Bride.
Sadly, these goons are not planning to murder Leticia to start a war. In fact, kidnapping her rather than some other lady (actually, her new maid) is a case of unreasonably mistaken identity. Leticia now wants to be taken back to the castle right away because… um… it’s raining? And rain sucks? For someone so spontaneously eager to escape if given half a second alone she sure doesn’t catch on to being in a carriage in the dark woods bound for a different country.
We learn that the short kidnapping mastermind is not a Sicilian pro, but rather a foreign prince who wanted to have his beloved nabbed for him. I guess abductions are just how young royal men in this setting secure their brides. Wouldn’t be that strange in history, sadly.
Leticia does manage to at least bring up the idea of “escaping”, but Clarke shows up pretty much exactly then. We slowly, tortuously dispense with this as a plot (retaining the twerp prince as a secondary character), only to follow up with a thread that seems to come back like a bad penny with Clarke being mistaken for cheating because he’s talking amicably with some woman. It’s not Brianna this time, and in fact Brianna is one to notice, but it does waste more of our time having the idiot squad investigate and finding out that the “woman” is a narcissistic crossdressing foreign duke.
After this she pretty much owns up to liking Clarke and being okay going through with the future laid out for her, despite a crazy compulsion to keep making zany escapes. Unfortunately, the show does not decide that its work here is done at that.
After an episode so pointless I refuse to summarize anything except that it brought Leticia’s original maid back into the show, we spend some time on flashbacks. First, we spend an episode in Clarke’s flashback (in which Leticia’s brother talks to the camera despite it being Clarke’s memories and most of the show fairly clear that these weird asides aren’t canon, which is at least abstractly approaching humor. It happens so rarely, I have to call it out when it does), where we find out that the whole “make her jealous” plan that kicked off the show came from her brother. As was everything that came after. Her brother may actually be Tzeentch.
Okay? I guess Clarke is a wee bit sad because now that he more or less has everything he ever wanted he’s actually starting to consider if he may have been in the wrong a tad. Buddy, I think the boat has sort of sailed on that topic, just be glad the Stockholm kicked in just as planned. To be fair, he mostly does.
After another pointless filler episode, Leticia gets her own trip down memory lane, courtesy of the queen, who recalls when she and Clarke fell for each other as tiny little kids, before the engagement. Less flashback, but it does lead to Leticia questioning what love actually is or means, which I guess is progress.
And I wanted to slow down here, even though I overkilled the criticism right at the start, to highlight one genuine good moment out of this morass of a show. Late at night, Leticia finds she can’t sleep because that whole love question is nagging at her. She opens up a music box Clarke gave her as part of their initial making up after the confusion with the duke, closes her eyes, and dances to the tune, at one moment finding her mind’s eye sees the partner she’d be dancing with, Clarke. He’s not actually there being a weird creeper, and she doesn’t do a massive out of place cutaway to exposit about her feelings like has been done before. It’s just a sweet, mostly silent moment where visual storytelling, obvious though it may be, tells us what she’s thinking and feeling. This approximately one minute of screen time, I am convinced, had more care, effort, and talent applied to it than the rest of the show combined.
After that, Leticia actually gets her flashbacks as she seemingly unlocks early memories. As is the case in fiction, remembering that you promised to get married as kindergarteners solves all relationship woes, so a royal marriage is on with a very willing bride. Despite an entire episode on a misunderstanding turning into a game of telephone, it goes off cleanly.
Thus, we’re brought to our final episode. Our leads are married and the episode… mostly just putters around the topic of the fact that Leticia isn’t quite ready to perform the acts necessary to secure royal heirs. That’s… pretty much it, our leads in love but still awkward, letting the show end.
My verdict on the show? As the tutor is fond of saying, “This will not do.”
I Want To Escape From Princess Lessons is, in fact, the slop of the shoujo fantasy romance. It looks bright and sparkly when it bothers to look like anything at all, but it doesn’t put any real effort into its designs. The show gets Leticia into quite a few fancy dresses, but none of them are striking, the kind of thing that you’d remember; they’re generic platonic ideals of royal opulence with none of the charm.
The comedy falls utterly flat. It’s not surreal enough nor really savage enough to be funny. One of the biggest sources of comedy is, as has been said before and will be said again, pain. We find things funny when someone is suffering somewhere along the line but we’re emotionally disconnected enough that excess empathy doesn’t cause us to share their pain or frustration. I Want To Escape From Princess Lessons is too harmless, presumably because it wants its core audience to project onto Leticia so if she goes through anything too bad the creators are afraid that audience will feel bad. That’s why the tutor can’t be really frightening, why Clarke’s more psychotic behaviors are laughed off, and why Leticia always gets away with nothing worse than moderate embarrassment, if that, from her zany schemes.
The characters are cardboard puppets, dancing on the all-too-obvious strings of the script. They have their flat descriptors, but even those can get shoved aside when the author decides that something needs to change, usually without much in the way of proper growth displayed.
The plot is nothing, if the nature of my summary couldn’t tell you that. Because the characters have no clear progress and just jump levels partway through, there’s no real sense of progression or anything we’re working towards. Leticia’s escapes never become less half-baked, Clarke’s love is never really tested, and the show resorts to throwing new characters or pointless unfunny vignettes when it spins its wheels unsure of how to fill all the dead air in this kingdom.
I’m going to get personal here for a moment: I have a massive weakness for feisty redheaded princesses. Specific, I know; I blame a childhood spent reading Lloyd Alexander novels. Leticia should fit exactly to critical hit, but… no, she’s nothing. She’s not worth my time or effort. And when I can say that despite how much of a bullseye she should be, I can’t imagine how much of a dull nothing she is to everybody else.
I really did think about giving this show something in the D-ranks, but… it’s not worth it. Typically I use D grades for shows that are bad, but that still have some redeeming feature. The closest thing to a redeeming feature in this show is its harmlessness, which when that’s also one of its cardinal sins I can’t really hold in the show’s favor. I Want To Escape From Princess Lessons gets a Fail. Class Dismissed.