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.
