First Look: Fall 2025 Anime Overview: May I Ask For One Final Thing, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, and Spy x Family s4

May I Ask for One Final Thing?

Premise: Scarlet El Vandimion has stoically suffered being the fiancé of a bratty jerk prince for years. However, when said jerk prince betrays her by publicly humiliating her, revealing he’s been dating another girl, and breaking off their engagement after hitting her with false accusations, Scarlet realizes she’s had enough. She’s always been a huge fan of punching assholes, and now it’s time to beat up the prince and all the nobles who’ve been scheming against her. Scarlet’s fists crave more blood,  and thus begins Scarlet’s mission to hunt down corrupt nobles, slavers, and anyone else who brings harm and give them the beating they deserve.

Sometimes you just want to see a woman beat the shit out of horrible rich people, and this anime will give you that in spades. Scarlet is an utter delight, poised and proper, but absolutely thirsty for assholes to punch and glorying in the joy of releasing her prodigious skill while correcting injustice. You love to watch her work, especially since her targets are well chosen—wealthy, entitled people who genuinely exploit others.

Scarlet is a noble, but after being forced to be around the asshole prince for so long and take his bullshit, she’s seen enough to know the nobility is corrupt and the kingdom needs some serious reform. Slavers, those who hurt the poor and vulnerable, and just plain old assholes-- none of them are safe from Scarlet's unstoppable fists. Turns out, sometimes violence is the answer. Or at least it’s fun.

It's not a particularly deep show, but it’s good at the thing it does, and pretty funny at times. Some might find the main joke--that Scarlet is formal and elegant while being extremely bloodthirsty and devoted to punching--repetitive but I never get tired of it.

The show is a bit formulaic and has its downsides—I think Scarlet’s love interest, the elder prince who actually cares about his kingdom, can be kind of insufferably smug, and the power dynamic between them means Scarlet has to put up with some bullshit (though she’s unafraid to threaten violence). On the other hand, he’s not that bad, and it is relatable how much he enjoys watching Scarlet commit violence. I do think he gets too much screentime at times, especially in the finale.

The cast besides Scarlet is skewed male, but there is one central female character besides Scarlet. She has a sweet relationship with her, and the girl has her own arc and character development (though the story gestures at her being a lesbian and having a crush on Scarlet, then immediately switches to “she met a man to swoon over”, which is disappointing). However, the main villains of the series, both women, have very…stereotypical motives and are very shallow, and that aspect can make how male heavy the rest of the cast feel more annoying.

It does have the interesting concept of the villain being an isekai kid who feels she’s entitled to be the main character of the story and get all the stuff iskeai kids usually get, but it doesn’t do as much with that as I'd like. (the credit sequence she stars in is killer, though.) One thing to warn for: there is a brother obsessed with his sister, but it's not too severe-- the same dude hits on Scarlett a lot too, but she's always ready to send him flying if need be.

It’s definitely no masterpiece, but it’s fun for what it is. I love cool ladies punching people, and I love jerks getting what’s coming to them, so I enjoyed it.

The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess

Premise: A woman named Konaha get’s isekai’d…into the cringe-ass story she wrote when she was a young teenager. But she’s not reincarnated as the perfect self-insert main heroine (who’s even named after her), but the villainess, Iana Magnolia, who dies early in the story. She manages to avoid that fate, but a hot boy butler in love with the main heroine is ready to assassinate her if she makes the wrong move, and there are a a lot sticky situations Iana has to save said main heroine from. Also, Iana's grown up since she wrote this book as a teen, and hasn’t thought of this story in years...so she doesn't remember a lot about what will happen next. But the biggest challenge of all is not dying of embarrassment as she cringes at her cliched writing choices and situations she puts the characters in.

I was delighted to hear about this anime, because I actually wrote a comical short story with the same “girl got reincarnated into the cringe-ass novel she wrote when she fourteen, is incredibly embarrassed by her own writing” premise years ago. To prove this, I’ve decided to put the whole thing, with a very lengthy amount for free, on my patreon, if anyone’s interested in it-- here it is.

(It's not very thoroughly edited though, so expect some mistakes and roughness. Also, to prove this has been in the works for a while, here's the part one post I made on Patreon three years ago)

I took my story it in a way different (somewhat more philosophical) direction that this series, but it was still really exciting to see something with a similar starting point to what I wrote. An actual mangaka and I had similar thoughts, and now the thing I wanted to see in the world got an anime!

This is an anime that truly understands the horror of the sheer, unabashed self-indulgence of a teenage girl writing her original-character-do-not-steal and throwing every trope and romantic fantasy at the wall. And then looking back at that as an adult and dying from embarrassment. There are a lot of great jokes.

It’s an affectionate parody of the cliches and tropes in harem-y romance novels, while also shamelessly playing into some of those tropes. It’s very fun and there’s lots of relatable content. Iana is a lovable protagonist, always on point with her comedy, and very proactive and determined, often saving Konoha and the other characters from various threats.

A big content warning is that a LOT of the threats toward Konoha are sexual violence, because Iana’s fourteen-year-old self was very fascinated with the subject due to it’s taboo nature and her awakening sexuality…the anime itself comments on this fascination. From my own experience, it’s fairly realistic for a pre-teen/teenage girl to fixate on taboo and dark subject matter like this-- I fixated on sexual violence in my writing in a more morbid, anxious way, while for Iana it was a safe way to engage with eroticism, something she was simultaneously ashamed of and enthralled with. So I think acknowledging that this is how teen writers might explore their feelings isn't a bad thing.

The show is very lighthearted about it, so the villains are always comically defeated before anything can happen for the most part, but it does escalate when Iana is captured and dragged to an evil queer woman’s sex dungeon.

Yes, that does happen! But the story also comments on how this scenario is a result of Iana’s past fixations. She admits her stories treated the women besides the heroine like crap because she wanted her self-insert to have all the men to herself...

,

(the incredible accuracy to so many fanfic and crappy romance novels...)

...and that when Iana finally did include female characters, she still wanted the heroine to have no competition and be adored by everyone. Because of this desire (as well as Iana being genuine fan of yuri and bl), Iana made all her supporting female characters "huge lesbians".

Iconic, honestly. I wish more women solved their poor treatment of female characters with yuri. Learn from Iana, fanficcers!

Teen Iana was also obsessed with “beautiful girls in peril”, especially if those beautiful girls were scantily clad. She just really loved seeing hot girls tied up and threatened by evil villains and...yeah, Iana’s almost certainly bisexual, isn't she.

So yes, there's a stereotypical evil lesbian and tropey sexual peril. But the whole time it's acknowledged that all these unfortunate tropes are the result of a horny fourteen year old following her kinks, which adds another layer to it. But that doesn't change the fact the tropes still play out. Iana gets stripped to her underwear in one stroke, the villain monologues about what she’s gonna do to her, she has other girls in cages, and so on.

If that stuff all makes you uncomfortable, avoid. For me, while it is very "have your cake and eat it too" of the show, it didn't bother me too much. it wasn't graphic, there was no fear anything would happen to Iana thanks to the show’s tone, and the context of it all made it interesting for me.

Overall,the show is a ton of fun and with some good laughs. In fact, there was one joke skewering the “not like other girls” trope that made me choke because I laughed so hard the characters are likeable (minus the annoying guy who has a crush on Iana and never listens to her and is super obsessed…but then we discover he really wants her to dom him and some good jokes come from that), and it’s a nice mindless watch.

The production values aren’t great at all, the animation struggles, but can be charming despite that. And wonk sort of fits the setting of a crappy novel.

Basically, provided you’re okay with the questionable content a horny teen would write about, this is a pretty entertaining watch.

Spy x Family Season 3

Spy x Family stayed the course as always, though there was some tragic backstory for Loid that was pretty sad and slightly dark stuff with the terrorists hijacking the school bus. We’re back to having not much Yor again, sadly.

Yuri just gets even more unlikable; he is literally okay with leaving Anya to die until he remembers it would upset Yor. And then we get up close and personal with how the SSS has killed students just because they were peacefully protesting, and it’s not a secret, but are still supposed to be okay with Yuri despite the fact he works for them? The whiplash is incredible.

But that aside it was an enjoyable enough season.