We’ve seen this sort of thing before. A princess somehow learns that she’ll eventually be banished from the kingdom and imprisoned in a tower, so she starts making moves to secure her future. You know the drill: collect enough funds to run away, perhaps meet several hot anime boys in her new life outside the palace walls, and maybe establish herself as an independent young woman. Sounds like the classic isekai setup with a female protagonist. Except… it’s not an isekai? But let’s back things up a bit.

Our new show follows the story of Athanasia, a princess whose mother tragically passes away shortly after giving birth. Her father, the emperor, immediately gives an order to burn all of her mother’s possessions (though we’ll find out later that he tried to recover her portrait). Althanasia becomes an afterthought as she’s raised by a bunch of maids in the Ruby Palace. Not once does her father go to see her. Even most of her maids don’t care about her, because what’s in it for them? The only exception is Lilian, a former friend of her mother. This saintly woman gave up a life of nobility just to care for Athanasia.

This is a world full of magic (of course it is), but Althanasia is oddly born without any magical ability. Already, however, this is sort of untrue. She actually has an incredible talent: the ability to see into the future. The future even materializes as a literal book that she can read. That sounds pretty damn magical to me. But we’re not talking about a five or six year old child seeing the future and thus scheming her escape. That would be impressive enough as it is. Athanasia actually starts doing this as a baby. She’s even dropping exposition on us as she cries in her favorite maid’s arms. Is this the smartest baby or what?

Usually, shows would justify this sort of thing by making it an isekai. Why does our heroine know what will happen in the future? ‘Cause it’s actually a middle aged office worker who somehow had a bad date with truck-kun, so she’s been reborn into her favorite otome game. That’s why she’s so smart! That’s why she knows everything! But like I said up top, this isn’t an isekai. Athanasia is just a really fucking smart baby for some reason. We fast forward a few years. Our slightly older princess knows that one of her maids will try to steal valuables from the Ruby Palace, and as a result of trying to stop the unscrupulous thief, Lilian will die. Our super genius princess thus hatches a plan to ensnare the evil maid and protect the woman who is essentially her adoptive mother. Wow, pretty impressive for a child.

But this is where the show starts to disappoint me. Athanasia is smart enough to catch a criminal. She’s also smart enough to realize she needs money to survive on her own. She’s smart enough to recognize that sparkly items like gold and gems can be used to secure her future. She’s smart enough to manipulate her servants into giving her exactly what she wants. But our princess also makes some pretty unsmart assumptions. For instance, she concludes that the only reason why she’s going to meet her bad end is by bumping into her father. As such, she tries to avoid him at all costs. Huh? That’s your logic? Are you a super genius or not?

Needless to say, the timeline has already significantly diverged from what she read in her magical book. So is the book even valid anymore? Should Athanasia just throw it away? But let’s keep moving along. Instead of meeting her father when she’s nine, she meets him years earlier instead. And for some odd reason, he doesn’t outright reject her (nor does he ever wear a shirt — what’s up with that?). He actually seems fond of the child. Oh, don’t get me wrong: he’s still a shitter who abandoned his daughter for years. Not hating your child isn’t even the bare minimum. He’s completely failing at this fatherhood business. Maybe we’ll get a sob story about him and his former consort, i.e. her mother. Maybe he’s got a dark and painful past. In any case, cool story, still a deadbeat dad. But that’s not even the part that disappoints me. It’s Athanasia who disappoints me.

In the presence of her father, our princess completely clams up. She can barely say anything, and when she does respond to him, she plays the fool. So… not a genius baby after all? I know she’s scared. I know she’s bewildered by the timeline being out of whack. But c’mon, you can’t go from her outsmarting a thief to… this quivering moe blob. But wait, we still have another episode to go (they dropped three right off the bat for some reason)! Yeah, they had us in the first half, but she’s going to rally back and impress me in the second half, right?

Nah. For whatever reason, the emperor is now taking a keen interest in Athanasia, so he calls on her to enjoy tea and cake with him everyday. Somehow, a tiny little girl can scarf down all of these pastries no problem. I’m a grown man and I can’t do that. Unfortunately, that’s still pretty much all she can do around her father. And again, this would be fine if she were a normal child. But I already know she’s not, so seeing her be this… plain for two episodes in a row is a letdown. I don’t expect our princess to engage her father in an epic battle of wits. Nor do I think she should start demanding answers from him, i.e. “where have you been the past few years, you bastard?!” But I expect more that what we’re getting.

In the latter half of the third episode, a pretty trite scenario plays out in which Athanasia nearly drowns in a pond, so her father has to prove that he does care by saving his child… except, y’know, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Channeling Chris Rock here by asking, “What do want? A cookie?” But sure, up until this point, she still thinks he doesn’t care about her one iota, so this “grand” gesture means a lot to Athanasia. Maybe all these awkward father-daughter exchanges can finally take a turn for the better after this episode. All I’m saying is that if she’s supposed to be smart, then be smart.

As for the father, when he thinks he’s alone, we see him give the whole edgy “I thought I forgot things like emotions a long time ago! But… I don’t hate that child.” Blech. Hate is an emotion too, my dude. But why is this emperor different from the one in Athanasia’s vision of the future? Well, she meets him earlier this time around, right? Maybe by the time she met him in the other timeline, he was already being manipulated. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the villain behind the scene happens to be her half-sister. There’s always a bitter female rival in these shows.

To wrap this up, they probably dropped the first three episodes just so we could get the father-daughter stuff out of the way in one go. Now that we know he doesn’t hate her — ohmygod, father of the year! — we can start introducing her to those cute anime boys. But I’m still unsure what to do with this show. Sundays don’t typically have a great track record. In the summer, we had the unimpessive Gachiakuta, Temu Overlord in Mynoghra, and a pedophile inappropriately hanging out with a British schoolgirl at a game center. So yeah, slim pickings. If the fall follows suit, I might actually have to blog about Athanasia and her exploits. Meh.