Winter 2023 has a couple of isekai shows. I suppose that’s often the case these days. This is of course a preliminary take but I did find some of these shows to look pretty decent, which is atypical of me to say as I’m not a fan of the genre. For this season, I’ll be covering the one of these shows, The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady (Tenten Kakumei for short). I’ll admit that part of this decision stems from the fact this show is also CGDCT and yuri. Once again, I am sometimes that simple. That said, I do think this show is off to a pretty good start.
As you can tell by its extremely light novel title, Tenten Kakumei revolves around two characters. The first is Anisphia Wynn Palettia (Sayaka Senbogi), the titular reincarnated princess, who hails from the fantasy kingdom of Palettia. Opposite of her is the “genius young lady”, Euphyllia Magenta, a talented sorceress and a high-ranking noblewoman who is initially engaged to Anis’s younger brother, Algard (Shogo Sakata). Despite Euphie’s relation with the royal family, she and Anis have apparently only met a few times when they were children and they have not seen each other in years. This of course changes by the end of the first episode.
Unlike Euphyllia, Anisphia lacks any magical affinity. Instead, she studies in her interdisciplinary, “magicology”, where she finds ways to create magical items for her to use. In some cases, this entails recreating the modern-day technology she remembers from her past life in our world. The unorthodox nature of the project combined with her own passion makes Anisphia an eccentric figure within her kingdom’s nobility. Nevertheless, Anisphia is mostly free to do as she pleases because of her ingenuity and the fact that she abdicated her right to the throne over to Algard. She also has a couple allies in her endeavor such as her maid Ilia Coral (Ai Kakuma) and her best friend Tilty Claret (Yu Sasahara).
Honestly, this plot isn’t half-bad. With how often isekai revolves around an overpowered protagonist, it’s a change of pace to instead see someone who is denied access to the magic and has to instead to work with they can do. There’s also a bit of charm to be had here such as the part where Anisphia tries to create a flying broom. No one else has ever heard of the concept so they think Anisphia is going crazy. Anisphia meanwhile could do the more sensible of inventing a glider or plane but she feels more compelled to make a broom because it’s a preconception she had in her past life. All in all, it’s a pretty cute bit. I do have one concern with the magicology plot and that’s the potential amount of exposition that can be had here. This show could very easily run the danger of filling its scripts with mumbo jumbo that “explains” how Anisphia’s inventions work. Conversely, it could instead get very lazy and simply chalk up everything to the mere concept of magic.
Something that amuses me is how quickly the isekai aspect of the show gets brushed aside in this episode. Maybe Anis’s past life will be elaborated more in later episodes but there’s practically no information shared here, just glimpses of the technology that Anis remembers and inevitably recreates with magicology. The past life of an isekai protagonist is almost always extremely weak but even by that standard, this feels like a huge afterthought.
Parallel to Anisphia’s situation, Euphyllia struggles in connecting with Algard. The prince is apparently more interested in a commoner named Lainie Cyan (Hina Yomiya) and is quick to shrug his fiancée off when she brings this up to him. Euphyllia’s world is then turned upside down when Algard proceeds to cancel her like the main villainess of an otome game, calling off their engagement and accusing Euphyllia of harassing Lainie during a public gathering. While Euphyllia does admit to requesting to Lainie to sever ties with the prince, it appears that most of the accusations are false and Euphyllia is largely innocent. Before Euphyllia’s reputation can be destroyed any further, Anisphia crashes the party (literally). Realizing what’s going on (I assume she’s played some visual novels in her past life), Anisphia takes Euphyllia and flies away with her. With that, the two titular characters’ paths have crossed. While Anisphia is a bit vague here, you can easily infer what lies ahead for Euphyllia, given the magicology plot.
Watch The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady on Crunchyroll.
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