Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu

The king of Natra has fallen ill, leaving the only hope for his kingdom to his son, Prince Wein Salema Arbalest. Known to be capable and wise, he is the perfect candidate to become the prince regent. However, if the prince has anything to say about the matter, he would rather sell off the Kingdom of Natra to the highest bidder!

Since he wields the authority of the throne, no one can stop Wein from auctioning off the country and using the profits to retire in comfort. All he needs to do is raise the value of the small kingdom to maximize his gains. But whether Wein's grand plan will succeed remains to be seen, as his wit often surpasses even his own expectations—much to the benefit of the oblivious citizens of Natra.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ralei, Ninym Main

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Arbalest, Wein Salema Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Earthwold, Lowellmina Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Zeno Supporting

Nakashima, Yuki Japanese

Arbalest, Falanya Elk Supporting

Senbongi, Sayaka Japanese

Ralei, Nanaki Supporting

Sakakihara, Yuuki Japanese

Brandel, Fisch Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Solgest, Tolcheila Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Solgest, Gruyere Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Caldmellia Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Fukaya, Naruki Producer

Akita, Tadayuki Producer

Reviews

May 8, 2024

hexashadow13

Recommended

tl;dr: The hilarious story of a prince whose plans turn out surprisingly successful, though without much substance beyond that.

This anime is centered around Wein Salema Arbalest, crown prince of the nation of Natra, who upon his father falling ill comes to lead the nation. This anime chronicles the various problems that Natra is faced with and how Wein uses them as stepping stones to grow Natra. The world this anime takes place in is a fantasy world. However, there’s no magic, dragons, demons or anything like that. It’s going for something more grounded, and while the result certainly isn’t a realistic medieval society, it’s still ... a setting that’s pretty rare when it comes to anime. This results in things playing out very differently from other similarly premised anime like Realistic Hero or MaoYuu.

The original title of the novels was “The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt (Hey, How About Treason?).” The first arc fits that full title pretty well. In it, Natra says that he doesn’t want to deal with the difficulty of leading a nation so he plans to sell it out and live an easy and comfortable life with his ill gained earnings. Though he needs to make Natra worth selling out in order to do so, and thus he tries to lead it well but not too well as that would mean more work for him. However, the fates conspire both for and against him and his plans go much better than he expected and though Natra makes major gains, he’s forced to do a lot more work which he hates. Now to be clear, Wein isn’t dumb. He does come up with plans that are good, albeit simple, and implements them effectively. But them being overtly successful comes down purely to luck, which is hilarious.

The title of the anime drops “Hey, How About Treason” because past the first arc it really doesn’t come up much. Past that point, Wein whines about how things are annoying and how he doesn’t want to deal with them, but it’s basically just stress relief. The show makes clear that he works very hard for his nation, constantly pulling all-nighters and such, to the point it harms his health. Now at this point he ends up dealing with much more complicated problems. The first arc had a pretty heavy focus on military tactics, but afterwards the main focus of each arc was primarily politics and diplomacy. There’s a lot of careful wording, mind games, and bluffing. Military action was still a part of things, but in a much more overarching way rather in the nitty gritty tactics and such. Other things like religion and economics also similarly played a part.

The plots of these arcs were also pretty good to a degree. They’re certainly very interesting because Wein is a master bullshitter. He comes with all sorts of wild plans with all sorts of crazy aspects to them. Instead of solid but simple plans that work better than they should due to luck, Wein comes up with crazy plans that seem incredibly unlikely to be successful. That they manage to actually work is amazing and really amusing. A lot of the time they have some really stupid parts to them, but other than that they’re reasonably intelligent so they’re pretty satisfying to watch unfold. I will say that the writing is often straddling a very fine line between lunacy that can be overlooked and lunacy so extreme it just makes everything look nonsensical. And at times it crosses over into the overtly nonsensical side, which makes it hard to take seriously. Unfortunately, the final arc fell pretty heavily into the nonsensical side with the last episode being full of things that are hard to suspend your disbelief enough to take seriously, which ends up giving the season a pretty weak final impression.

A major side effect of dropping the ‘treason’ aspect of the show, is that it results in Wein becoming a pretty boring character. Now he puts on quite a lot of airs, but that’s all it. Just a facade. And beneath that all he seems to be is a pretty competent but somewhat generic leader of a nation. It isn’t really clear what’s driving him or who he really is at all beyond that. The only times we see him genuinely emotional are when they involve racism against his beloved aid, Ninym. These are the moments when he’s most interesting, but not enough to make him interesting overall. The final arc brings this topic up itself, wherein it has another royal question what his ‘beast’ is, what inner desires he has that keep him going. And apparently he does have quite the interesting answer to that question, but the viewer is left in the dark. This does achieve the desired effect of making me curious enough to be more interested in Wein to the point I want to know more of his story. But it doesn’t yet make him any better of a character. Thankfully he’s a pretty funny guy so he’s still likable, but I can’t help but find him somewhat disappointing.

The rest of the cast also wasn’t very well developed. Ninym seems to suffer from the same issues as Wein in that she’s basically just helping Wein and doesn’t really seem to have much more to her. She can be really cool and how well she works with Wein is pretty awesome, but there isn’t much depth to her character. Lowa, Zeno, and Falanya all have more complicated circumstances and motivations and even get some character growth. However, it wasn’t all that well written for any of them and didn’t really leave all that strong of an impression. They’re all still pretty likable due to how they fit into the story and play into the comedy, but they don’t seem like all that interesting in and of themselves. Beyond that, characters are incredibly flat and one note, with the antagonist especially being cartoon villains for the most part.

The art and animation were pretty solid. The character designs were pretty good, but I don’t think the anime really used them all that well for the most part. The OP and ED were decent enough in terms of the song and visuals. The soundtrack was also decent but not particularly memorable.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 23, 2024

nalist

Mixed Feelings

Premise sounds lame, because if being a genius is the only thing going for him and it is used as justification for all plot resolutions, as it is the case, then story become stale pretty fast for my taste. Still, this is much better than to see the use of "modern knowledge" which is the case in some trash isekais, when author own knowledge of subject is based on reading 5 minute wikipedia article on it. Anyway, amount of ass pulls and "smart" moves is pretty high here.

Poor premise aside, politics portrayed here are main plot line and good enough to capture attention. Second ... most used tool is banter between MC and his right hand. Which is, conveniently, a girl, but for some magical reason he shown to have zero physical interest in her. This is more unbelievable thing than him being a genius. Sorry, if a beautiful young woman sits on your lap and you have zero reaction, then she is either your sister (or some close relative) or you have impotency. None of this things seems to be true, so it must be just a bad excuse for future romance shenanigans. I dont know if brozone exist in real life, but she seems to be stuck in this state.

No fanservice. Boo. Well, there was some boob shot for 1 or 2 seconds, but there is more food porn screen time than this.

Combat/battles depiction is abhorrent. Not in good way, it is just lame af. This is often the case for anime adapted from LN, so nothing new here.

Animation is average, as everything else. Overall it is not great, but good enough to not be complete waste of time. I guess reading source material would be more engaging, but protagonist and his story in my eyes look too generic to care about it to try it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 1, 2024

Kcmichalson

Not Recommended

This show has a lot of trouble letting the main character fail, but it also never lets him succeed as a character.

The show has a decent premise, the ruler of a kingdom who isn't really the most enthusiastic about being said ruler, and would rather use the new position to enrich himself, possibly to the realm's detriment. I thought this was a pretty decent plot, fantasy is a very saturated genre and having a non-altruistic protagonist is usually a fresh breath of air.

Unfortunately, the show doesn't seem to care much for this plot, and focuses much more on the interpersonal politics between members of the ... various kingdoms' courts, picking up and dropping arcs with little actual change in the story. The characters are very simple and often only have very shallow motives which are either easily seen through or are obfuscated by the show jumping around everywhere.

The main character doesn't have the most developed character either, and that 'character' just tends to be whatever the story needs at that very moment. He can be a complete basket case regarding a situation at one moment, and completely calm and serene in the next. He can make some of the most baffling tactical decisions only for the enemy to fall for his ruse and for him to be hailed as a tactical genius. The characters around him aren't capable of being intelligent because then they'd have the capability of outplaying him, and this show doesn't tolerate lasting consequences for the main character.

The world building is fine, though it appears everyone is either morally good or evil with little in between. The animation is done well and it has some decent action scenes, though they're hampered by the show's hesitation to offer resistance to the main character.

It certainly has its good moments, but they're a bit sparse and muddled by the mediocrity of the scenes around them. The core plot is rarely progressed and the ending puts him barely (if at all) closer to his goal than when he began. I cannot in good faith recommend this to anyone who wishes to see the progression of a selfish prince.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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