The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - The Fated Magical Princess: Who Made Me a Princess

The story follows Athanasia de Alger Obelia, a young princess given prophetic dreams that her father, Claude de Alger Obelia, the cold-blooded emperor of the Obelian Empire, will banish her. Athanasia must use all of her wit and cunning to survive in the palace and to prevent her own death.

The Fated Magical Princess: Who Made Me a Princess is a Chinese animated series based on the Who Made Me a Princess manhwa by writer Plutus and illustrator Spoon. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

The ongoing overlapping influences of genres like villainess, isekai, reincarnation, LitRPG, and others can make it difficult to define where a story actually fits in. Sure, the plot of The Fated Magical Princess has not, in its opening volley of three just-slightly shorter-than-usual episodes, confirmed that Athanasia is reincarnated in any way, nor that the world she's inhabiting is a prestructured one explicitly based on a game with her definitively designated as its villainess. But it also hardly matters, for all intents and purposes, since the mechanics of how she's interfacing with the world and what she's trying to do still slot into those genre markers. Athy has the core power of villainess reincarnation: knowing how her story is supposed to go ahead of time. She also has an astonishing amount of awareness for a baby that's barely grown past five years old by the end of this third episode, which further feeds into the reincarnation angle.

Starting from Athy's infancy is also, as it so often is in series like this, a sign that the plot of The Fated Magical Princess is in for the long haul. The crowded collection of presumably romanceable hot dudes glimpsed in the OP is still a ways off, as Athy is, at this point, a charmingly effective tot of a lead. Her voice actress's…sometimes less than well-advised efforts at doing "baby voice" aside, that aforementioned cognizance means her attempts at avoiding her bad end are earnest and encourageable, if not always effective. I'm not quite sure what level of class consciousness embezzling from one's self is, nor how well it would actually work as an escape path, but points for trying anyway, Athy. She's got a good face game and makes me believe that her one weapon, her irresistible cuteness, might actually work to her advantage.

It's a stuttered, simple start of watching Athy struggle against her own plans and destiny while just barely uncovering that path that keeps this introduction going. Charming as she is, listening to Athy constantly narrate points of her life, plans, and the setting's backstory can get tiring after a while, in a way endemic to so many other fantasy isekai-type series. I wish she could settle into more effective back-and-forth with the other characters, including her presumed-antagonistic father, since that's how people actually figure themselves out in real-life situations. It would tap into the interesting inconsistencies of this story. Already I can see the intrigue in the unreliable-narrator aspect of the "original" Athy's POV—that she only acted out because she thought dear old dad was cruel and dismissive when really his royal duties (plus some sort of torturous curse) prevented him from spending as much time with her as he wanted to. Magic or not, reconciling that disconnect and learning more about herself and the world, that's the real treat on top of the bejeweled serving dish of The Fated Magical Princess.

This donghua adaptation certainly wants to look the glitzy part. The presentation in the first episode actually hooked me a bit, despite odd design decisions, like letting the wee tiny baby sleep in a hilariously huge big-people bed. The production definitely settles after that initial episode, though, with some low-effort jank leading to incidental character movement and inconsistency in models. In general, there's some rigid oddness to the composition, which feels very copied over from how it might have been arranged in the manhwa version—something you know when you see. This isn't a series that needs to look amazing all the way through, especially not for the more setup-laden spot it finds itself in at the beginning of a long-running story. However, it could use a stronger hook. I can't believe I'm saying this, but even after three episodes to start, The Fated Magical Princess might need another episode or two to overcome issues like the infodumping narration and allow Athy to interact more with her plot and setting. As-is, it's interesting, but in the way of reading a potential-packed synopsis on the back cover of a book, and I feel like I'm still waiting for it to really dig into the ideas and concepts it has going for it, which is still more optimistic than I feel about so many explicit isekai and reincarnation anime after less than three episodes, at least.

With the ubiquity of isekai still having a stranglehold on anime, to say nothing of the steadily-increasing number of villainess isekai stories, it's fascinating to me that the anime adaptation of Who Made Me a Princess cut out the isekai aspect of the story. Or at least, as of these first three episodes, it appears to have. That in no way damages the plot; technically, all that's required is that Athy know about her future damnation at the hands of her father, as well as the existence of Jennette. (Although eliminating this element does fundamentally change the meaning of the in-world book The Lovely Princess, which is clearly shown in the opening theme.) However, it's an interesting choice nonetheless, and while I doubt it signals an industry-wide shift away from isekai, it's still worth considering.

Besides that one choice, this is a fairly faithful adaptation of the source material. Even better, it's faithful to Spoon's beautiful art, particularly in the dress department. One of the joys of the manhwa is the many outfits Athy wears, and so far, that's a delight replicated in the anime, right down to the fact that her maids dress her in pink, but once her father starts taking a hand in raising her, she's shown in red. Given that flashbacks of her deceased mother, Diana, highlight that she often wore red (and had red eyes and lived in the Ruby Palace), that's a very deliberate choice on Claude's part, because whatever else he may be, he's clearly still trying to cope with Diana's death.

And that's where Athy's dreams of the future and her present reality collide. In her dreams, she doesn't meet Claude until she's nine, and even then, the implication is that he's a pretty indifferent, if not neglectful, parent. But now she's met him at age five, and he seems fascinated by his daughter, even if he's garbage at showing it. He figures out that she's his child because she looks like Diana, and that seems to play a part in his decision to actually be a father to her, even if he's got some serious flat affect due to emotional trauma. Athy's terrified of him, but none of his actions indicate that she has any reason to be – he seems to be really trying. He's just…not good at it. He feeds her sweets, he gives her dresses, he wants to spend time with her, and he saves her from drowning before instructing his knight Felix to guard her and teach her to swim – all indications that he really does care. But Athy can't quite see it, and that's just as much a product of her terrifying dreams as it is his inability to show what he's feeling in ways she can understand.

Although the episodes are notably short – twenty minutes, including the opening theme, ending theme, and a fairly lengthy preview – I'm still pleased with this adaptation. The art and animation are lovely, the colors replicate the manhwa art, and the pacing is good. I'm hopeful that it will get enough episodes to cover the whole story, as the imagery in both theme songs indicates, but either way, I'm looking forward to seeing more.