Kisaki Kyouiku kara Nigetai Watashi

No means no.

Just because you give the Male love "interest" a nice face and smooth words doesn't change the fact that he is abusing his position of power to force the female lead into a relationship she has no desire to be in. The happy go lucky feel of the show implies the two will have a happy ending together but that doesn't make the story feel any less disgusting.

The animation side of things is perfectly acceptable, it's pretty, there's plenty of actual motion and not just panning frames all the time, the voice acting and all is good. They made a good anime, but ... the story is just complete hogwash.

I am recommending this show to every hobby writer out there... to see how hard you can fumble simple concepts. I am not even going into the whole "kidnapping" aspect which you should already know to avoid (at least if you are trying to build a romance and not a horror show). But this show is a perfect example in how to not write a story. From setups that have no payoff (like Clarke saying that he doesn't want to take Leitica away from the village she started a new life in that never results in anything), to thematic cohesion (there are several side stories ... where the moral is to give someone or something its freedom even if you dislike that which obviously clashes with the main idea of the show), right until bottled character arcs (in which Prince Clarke notices, his decisions are the reason for why something is not as he would like, but instead of changing, he is just waiting for it to get better... and it does at some point), this show breaks with every basic rule of story telling. So if you are an upcoming writer and you believe that you are able to go against established story telling rules, watch this show to see how fast this can create a mess of a show.

Oh and while we are at it, if you are an art student, maybe check out episode 7 to see which colours you should not combine, because they make it really hard to read the text (not that it matters, but it's fascinating that this show even fails this simple task).

Starting this show I had a feeling it was going to be bad, and I was damn well right.

This show is frustrating because, the animation reminds me of old cartoons, the charadesigns are quite nice and the female lead is really likeable. And all of this is ruined by the fact that the male lead is just a creep abusing his power to have what he wants and doesnt care about what the female lead wants for herself. This is romantacised manipulation and power abuse. Moreover I truly hate the fact all the other characters are finding the dynamic "normal" and that the scenario is ... pushing the female lead to start developping feelings for that creep of a ml.

Honestly, I will continue watching just to make a video about it since its so outrageous. I have been seeing romantacised abuse come up more and more in recent romance anime and manga, and that is not normal, we have to spread awareness that this is not sane at all.

Simply put, this was the worst show of Winter 2025. I don’t know who this series was made for, but it certainly wasn’t for me. An emotionally abusive story where no one respects the main character’s autonomy or allows her to make any choices, a weirdo prince who stalks her and a brother who enables the abuse. This is bad. The only reason it’s not getting a lower score is because Lettie was pretty, I found myself laughing at a few of her escape attempts and the art style was nice, but it’s one of the few shows where there’s nothing redeemable about it. ...

Arranged marriage series are usually ass, but at least they tend to have some redeemable qualities. Maybe some nice world building, character development, wholesome, SOMETHING where you could be like “yea, this wasn’t great, but it’s ok” Kisaki is actually impressive in that it has NOTHING good going for it besides the main character design. This show accomplishes nothing in 12 episodes other than making it seem like the way to get the girl of your dreams is to stalk her, lock her in a castle and force your way on her. Yes, I get the twist that happened 8 episodes in is supposed to make all of this go away and make me feel sympathetic for the prince and Lettie, it didn’t. If anything it made me angrier and resent the author more for not just starting the series with that instead of subjecting us to two months of what amounted to emotional and mental abuse. Like seriously, the “I’m going to marry you no matter what and you’ll want it too” gimmick is so uncomfortable and borderline rapey that each week this tested my no drop rule. I ended up sticking this out which is probably one of the greatest accomplishments in my seasonal anime watching career, up there with finishing Gibiate, but this is bad, and not in a generic tropey way. As a shoujosei fan I know a lot of authors like taboo stuff or “toxic” relationships but this was just horrible and not even cute or sexy in a forbidden sort of way.

As I said, the art style and character designs were the best part of the show. They look bright and aesthetically pleasing. Animation is horrible for most of the show, but there’s two episodes or so where it looks solid. Lettie’s seiyuu was great.

Don’t be like me and waste time watching this. There’s many better shows to watch from this past season and coming up next season, no need to burden yourself with this.

I want to escape Princess lessons gets 2, out of 10.

One of the worst romance male leads I've EVER seen in anime.
This story had an interesting premise. In episode one, we can immediately sympathize with the free-spirited young girl who was shipped off to become future queen. Her strict teacher, her carefree parents and unsympathetic brother all played a part in her misery. This is a great set-up for a story: A girl trapped by the expectations of others. We want to see how she breaks free, and finds a new life for herself! But unfortunately, that's not how it plays out.

Her prince charming treats her like a problematic child, and strips away any ... freedom she had because he "loves" her. She has refused him multiple times and is ignored. She has tried to escape and is physically carried back to her room. Everyone around her turns a blind eye or gaslights her. His behavior is not fun or endearing or entertaining to watch. I gave it the 3-episode-rule, but I can't anymore.

In a different context, this could be an interesting premise. There are plenty of villain romance stories that start in this way. However, the tone is all wrong, and they are trying to frame him as a flirty prince instead of the monster he is.

Rating: 3/10

Disclaimer: I did not read the source manga, this is based on my viewing of the show up to Episode 4

This show only gives me two emotions when watching it past Episode 2 - frustration and enraged.

I really couldn't find anything redeeming about it. Episode 2 already threw in a bunch of red flags, then it became full-blown in Episode 3 where the Prince literally kidnapped Leticia and locked her in a room, and then in Episode 4, hired someone to gaslight Leticia even further by telling her to appreciate that she gets to eat and have a place to live. This is NOT okay ... at all in any level, it is literally no different from wrongful imprisonment! To make matters worse, the Prince is a creep who clearly couldn't take NO for an answer, Leticia already told him countless times that she didn't want to be in a relationship with him but he couldn't even respect the boundaries at all!

It is a kind of show where everyone sucks, I really detest the prince, Brianna, Maria, and Leticia's family for enabling such behaviour. It's really painful to watch seeing Leticia getting constantly gaslighted by everyone. If that wasn't enough, the constant breaking the fourth wall by Leticia to the audience is getting on my nerves, while it is a minor issue as compared to the questionably bad writing, I wish that they just made it into a monologue instead of Leticia constantly facing the audience to "talk to us".

I truly question if the show is intentionally made to arouse people's anger from watching how the Prince and everyone else treated Leticia. The idea actually could've worked, but it beyond badly executed with so many detestable characters. I can see that the author is trying to go for an era where women didn't have freedom so they decided to escape from a toxic relationship as the theme for the show, but to make it a romcom is the wrong genre, they could've made it into a horror genre show and it would've been way more fitting and it would've sent a powerful message showcasing the unfortunate reality where in some places, women don't have much rights at all!

I really hope that Leticia doesn't get Stockholm Syndrome subsequently and get together with the Prince by the end of season, if that happens, this show is beyond redeemable.

I really couldn't think of a more fitting show that deserves a 1/10 from me than this disgusting mess!

This anime is about romanticized kidnapping, but I guess this kind of thing happened quite a bit in the past. The male character is honestly kind of creepy, but how bad could it really be if she decided to marry him? She’d probably be better off with him than with some of the other nobles...

That said, I want to make it clear that I don’t support this anime’s premise, and I definitely don’t think it’s about love. At most, she might develop Stockholm syndrome, but love? I highly doubt it. The animation is nice, the music is okay, and the characters' personalities aren’t bad—except for ... the prince. I kind of found Leticia’s kidnapping by the prince funny, though, so I think I’ll give this series about kidnapping a chance and watch it to the end, but not because I agree with its message.

Damn. I love when a romance anime is actually a psychological yandere horror and because it's made by a person so detached from reality, it's completely unaware of it and still considers itself a whimsical and funny fantasy, instead of a story of terror, sexual assault, victim blaming, gas lighting and manipulation.

Change the color palette. Desaturize the characters from the bright marshmallows they're shown as. Lengthen the shadows and switch up the lighting from the omnipresent bright lighting. Change the music appropriately to idk, an OST from "Jaws" and this actually becomes a competent anime, albeit in a different genre.

The main character is weird. As ... in, she is at the same time strong and has her full agency and yet, she is constantly being made into this powerless girl that changes into a willing r**e bunny whenever the main male love interest appears on screen. I sometimes feel like this is an anime about him and the power fantasy of chasing her down, than about the current main character. This I feel could work actually. Heck. It would get so much bad press that it could surf on it, but just the hate watchers would make this show almost as popular as the ones from Redo of Healer.

It's bad. It's very, very bad. I'm an isekai trash gobbler. There, the women that form the MCs harem circle are sometimes being made into friggin slaves, pets, or at the very least, they will fall head over heels with the MC over completely NOTHING. The point I'm making here is "I've seen some sh*t" when it comes to bad romance. AND YET!!!
This is by far the worst I've ever seen.*
I cannot unrecommend it enough. I will however come back to it, should it ever get a horror remake. Because the potential is there. As in, I give it a 2/10. This could be an 8 or a 9 if only they went ahead and focused on the creepiness factor and just stopped the comedy romance charade. This is currently neither comedy or a romance.

*I might have repressed some memories of awful romance plots, so maaaaybe not the worst after all, but then again I will probably repress this anime as well, so...

It's so hard to watch this because it's an anime with 0 consent but it's playing like everything is OK and it's not right. The prince is an idiot with a "pretty" face, a child that doesn't understand that no means no and outright creepy in the affection area.

I have 0 idea how lettie can be happy with anybody considering nobody listens to her wants. And everyone is fine selling this kid to a future she didn't ask for nor want. You can't help but feel frustrated watching this.

The 4th wall breaking is... A bit cringe but I'll give it to them in ... that it's a bit unique, i can go without but I suppose it's one way for a character to do inner thoughts.

I think the worst part is that despite its many flaws it's gonna last long for it's infamy. A bad review still means people are talking about it right? 🤦
This anime definitely aired in the wrong era of anime.

This my sound like a hate review but anime shouldn't be this disturbingly uncomfortable with such a dreamy aspect. Is the story unique? Yes, it's a psychological horror trap disguised as a cutesy romantic anime. Which is what I would use to describe this anime. The art style works like a filter to keep viewers focused as terrible things are happening in front of them. Similar to writing heroes being magically summoned to another world and not flat-out kidnapped and erased from existence in the their original world.

Were the characters well-rounded? The female lead is to accepting of the situation and should have fought harder ... for her freedom. The characters aside from her are no different than puppets in some twisted nightmare created by the prince's obsessive infatuation with the female lead.

Did the characters react to situations and events in a realistic way? If the entire world aside from the main character revolved around the kidnapping prince then yes. That's what makes this disturbing. The main character is the only one speaking sense and everyone is either ignoring her words or gaslighting her into thinking she's wrong.

Do you think others will enjoy/dislike this series, even if you didn't? Why? Everyone is entitled to like whatever they want but the age rating and genre needs to be changed regarding this anime. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, especially if they're young or impressionable. Psychological would be better define this anime.

This series should be tagged as horror.

The main character is forced to waste her childhood for a guy she barely knows. As soon as she gets an ounce of freedom, he uses his position of authority to take it away from her. Whenever she protests, every singe character tells her to consider HIS feelings.

The series seems like it wants the audience to think the prince's relentless behavior is endearing, but if you think about it for more than a second, it's horrifying. He had such a long time to try to convince her to like him and only chooses put in any effort when she ... starts telling him no.

No means no.

Anime really seems to love making possessive, obsessive, manipulative tendencies likeable, doesn't it?
If this is not being presented as "Comedy", this would just simply be a glorified romanticization of kidnapping, with a forcefully applied 'Stockholm Syndrome'.

If there's a girl who's forced into a life she didn't want and future marriage she didn't choose for herself, you'd think that the man who she is forced to marry, who seem to really like her a lot for her free spirit nature, would be the very first person to help her get that freedom, right?
Well, in this story, the prince likes the FMC so much that he would ... be so persistent in making her marry him, promising to make her happy and giving her everything she wants... by forcefully taking the freedom she's been wanting to regain for a looong while, which make her veeery happy, imprisoning her in the royal mansion himself until she submits.
So basically, this guy refuses to court her properly by convincing her that he can give her that free life she wants, and instead just forces himself to her, limiting her options to either learn to love him... or just simply be forced to marry him.
And considering her family is quite supportive of all this, we can throw slavery into this as well, with her basically being sold to a royal family at a very young age.

There's a limit to what counts as a humorous Anime take on a realistically problematic situations and behaviors, and this one ain't it.
As much as I want to laugh at the little comical escape the princess does, I just can't see it as 'funny' when every time she gets caught, she reacts more like an actual prisoner who desperately begs to be freed than a comical character whose plans just got thwarted for the hundredth time.
Overall, this is just a 'Cat and Mouse' Rom-Com with a premise so horrible you won't feel like laughing.

----------------
In an attempt to end this with a little positivity, I'd say that much younger audiences would likely not notice those aforementioned premise issues and just simply enjoy it as a cute Rom-Com show ("Ignorance is bliss" as the saying goes). Production quality is also pretty good.
I also appreciated the dynamic of the FMC with her brother and her servant. Their little banters provided some fun, for what it's worth.

It was 10/10 up to episode 2, the plot looked really interesting and i hoped the heroine to just continue going well with her escapes and making everyone goes after her continuously, but from episode 3 its just became its inverse and the heroine became the most stupid character that can't even think for a second before doing her things. And the second worst thing, the male protagonist is just forceful, its impossible to like him too. There was some characters that i really liked in there, but they turn to be more and more like a mob and will probably disappear from the anime

I ... won't recommend but feel free to watch and see how she plans and the characters actions in response and then getting angry with it every single moment

Well, it's just bad writing. That's all really.

I have read scores of Otome, Shoujo, etc, and I can tell what the writer is aiming for in any story.

Here, the writer wants to showcase Stockholm Syndrome and toxic love (which is pretty liked by teenage girls), but they really f-ed up the overall story because they made the FL more resilient against whatever happening to her, which takes away the fun or entertaining part, many sequence feel like SA, and all side characters are unlikable to the core.

I mean it's not that toxic stories are bad, like there's a writer call Sol (don't ... exactly remember his name) who writes super toxic ML and weak FL, but his characters are so vibrant, it takes time for you to hate and love the characters (though the ending is always sh*tty) but at least those stories give you entertainment...

Whatever, don't waste your time in this show, if FL doesn't marry the Crowd Prince in the end, then maybe I will write a positive review.

The premise of this anime, where the princess despises being with the prince and constantly tries to escape, starts with potential, but quickly becomes frustrating. Despite the princess’s clear desire for freedom and refusal to marry the prince, he continues to keep her locked in the castle, essentially as a prisoner. What boggles my mind is why the prince still insists on marrying her when it’s obvious that she wants nothing to do with him. His motivations for such an obsessive pursuit remain unclear, making his actions seem less like genuine affection and more like possessiveness. What’s even more puzzling is that her brother, fully ... aware of his sister's wishes, supports the prince's actions and even helps him keep her confined. This lack of respect for the princess's autonomy is baffling and takes away from what could have been an interesting story about freedom and choice. Instead, it becomes hard to sympathize with the prince’s obsessive behavior, leaving me disconnected from the characters and the plot.
To make matters worse, the writing fails to balance the tone of the story. For a rom-com, it’s astonishingly poorly executed—particularly when the characters almost die from a monster attack, only to later talk about how "fun" their day was (episode 8). This dramatic inconsistency not only undermines the stakes of the plot but also highlights the show's lack of attention to detail in creating a believable emotional journey. It's a huge missed opportunity to create something engaging or even remotely grounded.

I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons — What kind of literacy crap is this? If your answer is Stockholm Syndrome, you're right!

Let's all agree to disagree: with power comes responsibility...except that when this power is being used to hold someone captive, which turns up the dials to 11 of a love-hate affair, it is not a wise way to commit a rash act, the size of a politically-wedded marriage in the making. Yet, this is what mangaka Izumi Sawano concocted with his/her series of Kisaki Kyouiku kara Nigetai Watashi a.k.a I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons, a show where a princess gets held ... captive and tortured for most of the strictly decentivized scenarios, only to want out when the prince consistently gaslights her into being in communion with other girls than the one he's wedded to. One thing's for certain: escape is foolproof; staying is insanity-proof.

In fantasy shows, political marriages happen for 1001 reasons, which can lead to either good or bad outcomes depending on the situation at hand. But when you're the daughter of a duke who's betrothed to the crown prince from a young age and being forced to be subjected to strict education a.k.a princess lessons while your future husband goes around to cheat with other women, that's just a relationship of red flags all over. This is the scenario for the red-headed "not so Shirayuki-hime" of Leticia Dorman being roped into a political marriage for fame and fortune, something that her Dorman family desires but not the young girl herself, forced to take on princess lessons from headmistress Laila until the day of her certified marriage with Crown Prince Clarke. And enough is enough, for Leticia can't bear to see her going through hardship when Clarke himself is just fooling around like a dork and subjugating the red-headed girl into pure Stockholm Syndrome a.k.a forced love; that escape is imminent, and she'll risk it all just to get out of the control that her loved ones have on her.

If it isn't already obvious enough, everything about this show ranges from cringe to pure weird, and even for a romance that's set in medieval times, arranged marriages don't get as creepy as this one does. I admire Leticia's relentless pursuit of freedom, but when her captors are one and far away, the many within the mansion itself, even having to think about escape, become second nature, guaranteed each and every time. And in hindsight, you'll definitely blame the crown prince for initiating this whole romance farce in the first place, but reality is far from the sweetest taste, because while Clarke genuinely had "love at first sight" with Leticia, it's at the circumstances of which he is in control of the entire situation, but he chooses to ignore it for the sole basis of teasing Leticia every now and then for her failures in escaping. Call Clarke every bit as deranged as you want; the red flags were there from the very start. And even though the contributors, ranging from Leticia's brother Nadir (who orchestrated the whole scenario) to the opposing kingdom outsiders of Prince Louis and his aide Lyle, are as ludicrous as they can come, this "comedy sitcom-cum-romance parody", while funny at times for breaking the 4th wall, is just painful to sit through and try to understand that this is a show where everything is "not" supposed to be taken seriously. I just don't get the gist of trying to subterfuge genres to create a thing that the outcome (as we know it) will turn out as bad as we foresaw.

Not even the 3rd-rate studio of EMT Squared nor the OST does wonders. This is just bare-bones animation at its finest (while it does look beautiful at times), and the OST is just completely forgettable...or, I might as well say it: charred to the brim.

A happy-go-lucky relationship that needs endless forms of psychological torture just to make ends meet? Sorry, no thanks, I'm outta here to puke my spit into a garbage waste trash for an infamy that we can "agree to disagree" is legitimate trash.

I have no complaints about art style or voice acting, but the story is absolutely disgusting. I don't oppose the part when the FMC is basically sold off by her parents and brother, to the royal family to be married, since it is something that did happen in the time period portrayed. But the behaviour of MMC and the rest of the other characters is appalling. This story is nothing but a girl trying to escape her captor (MMC), who claims to love her but behaves in disgusting ways towards her, while being gaslit and tricked by everyone around her in hopes of instilling some ... kind of Stockholm syndrome in her.
The entire tone of the anime attempts to make the disgusting theme "lighthearted" and "fun", but in my opinion it only makes it worse.
The MMC reminds me of another character, King Midas, from the Plated Prisoner book series, and so does the premise of this anime. And like what happens in the books, the only way I see for this anime to be saved is for another Male Lead to rescue her, show her what love really is, and help her get the life she wants.

Even redo of healer or Twilight would be a better love story than this. Just for a change, I wanted to watch something different, but I was disgusted as a male. It's one of the rare animes that managed to disgust me, which I do not get disgusted easily in most animes. As far as I understand, this story was written by a female author, but I wonder, even as a male, I am disgusted, how she doesn't disgust as a female just like main character. The story feels like a fantasy of the author, the art is fine, and all characters are unreasonable ... except the main character. Maybe diehard Twilight fans may like this, but I don't think any sane person may like it.

🟢New anime early NO SPOILERS review
Story:
Girl is taken away from her family with their consent (f***ing cunts) to the King's castle to learn how to be a princess so she'll marry the price. She wants nothing to do with royalty boring life, but only freedom to do whatever she wants, the Prince however is a selfish prick who wants her and not anyone else.

🅾️🅿🅸🅽🅸🅾🅽:
People who saw the trailer thought that this anime looks like Disney, it's not, BUT IT'S HILARIOUS. This anime should be treated as a "Comedy sitcom romance parody", not an actual romance story, there's a reason why the MC keeps looking ... at the screen as if she talking to the audience and says "I'm f***ed". I think the main two things this parody trying to make fun of is about most girls would want to marry a prince, and so the show gives us this MC girl who wants nothing to do with that, and instead of prince charming you got this prince who is annoying as f*** and you want to puke from. So in a way you got the classic story of girl and a prince, but both of them reversed.

Apparently women's rights don't matter here. The parents just gave her away, and again this is not our modern IRL life, it's a fantasy world, so if you compare it to our old age, yes families did ship their daughters at young age for connections with other families and to raise their own name. Back to the characters, her own brother is pimping her, the parents act like NPC, and the prince... He just doesn't care (he cares, but he's f***ed up in the head) about how she feels and keeps taking her and carrying her away against her will, like she's a bag of potatoes. There are moments where a character suddenly change their mind on something that makes it feel like they're not the same person. There's flaws in the writing, one time the prince took her and asked if she's mad that he took her from her family and friends and she says "no i'm fine", it broke her character for me because she doesn't want to be with him, she doesn't even feel love towards him and then the story somehow gonna force it. Anyway if you coming into this for romance, you're not getting it, it's dog shit romance writing.

Overall I understand why people rate it bad due to how it displays women treatment, again there are stuff that the characters say that is simply unacceptable, for example; to keep her away from escaping every time, the prince put her in a room where she isn't allowed to leave by herself (which takes away the freedom she wants), she then escapes and he tells her to "go back to your room" like wtf? It wasn't funny for me, but i try to think of it as the show trying to intentionally say something absurd to be funny. In terms of comedy, i just keep getting a kick from watching how this goofy girl trying to escape every time, she has many funny skits. I'll put this show as "7" because it's entertaining to watch due to how bad it is, but if this was a real romance writing and all the weird unacceptable stuff, i'll put it as "3", so I'll settle on "6". I'm there for the pure comedy and watching how this mess collapses. The point is, it's so bad which makes it funny.

🔥HOT BONUSES!
1. There's a feminist and woke hate mob boycotting this anime LMAO, people you taking this "NO means NO" too seriously, it's just a comedy sitcom parody, it's not a real romance, it suppose to look like a "WTF" mess, just enjoy these crazy characters and the crazy situations, RELAX. And i'll add the double standards here, why anime like "Nagatoro" is ok and popular trend despite how the female character treating the male character like a rag on the floor, yet here you got the reverse and so hated. I tell you why, because for women or thirsty guys it's funny and not taking seriously because everyone understand it's a parody comedy, but the second the male does it, all the woke activates awake. get a life, all of us understand that it's not real, learn to separate fictional from reality.
2. Jun Fukuyama, is voicing the prince. He known for voicing characters such as Kraft Lawrence from "Spice and Wolf", Lelouch Lamperouge from "Code Geass", Yukio Okumura from "Blue Exorcist", Koro-sensei from "Assassination Classroom", King from "The seven deadly sins" and etc...
3. If you're a guy who got a girlfriend and you trying to bring her into anime, do not show her this, because she'll think "this is what he likes watching and this what he thinks about women?" she'll dump you the next day.🤣

⚠️: I will edit this review at the end of the season with my final thoughts with no spoilers at my "Anime List" on my profile, i will NOT delete this early review. If you want to check the season review or other anime reviews i do, you can check it here: https://myanimelist.net/animelist/Ron014

It's like this anime was written by a 12yo girl, and I wonder who in their right mind accepted to make it into an anime and invested money on it.

This anime is ruined by the bad plot and the bad characters, and nothing saves it. The character's personalities are plain and superficial, and their actions are predictable but also you will find moments in which their actions betray their personalities so that the plot remains in track: for example, why didn't she actually manage to flee, if she's so obstinate? Why would she suddenly think about falling in love with an obsessive Prince after being ... locked for so many years in the palace without liking him even a bit throughout all those years? This gap between her personality and actions is what keeps the plot together, but it fails to properly develop a justifiable romance between the main characters. The side characters are unlikeable, and their romances also fail to develop.

Some anime with bad plot just require us to turn our brain off and enjoy the ride, but this one is so bad that even turning your brain off you still won't enjoy watching it, and as someone that has kept it up until episode 11 I can tell you that this anime only gets worse.