The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Always a Catch!

Maria, the daughter of a duke, grew up believing she would one day inherit her father's dukedom. Accordingly, she focused her attentions on honing her martial arts prowess, while thoughts of marriage fell by the wayside. But the arrival of a baby brother in her family means she's losing her role as heir. Now that she's decided it's time to marry after all, she's arrived a little late to the game. Upon going to study abroad in a neighboring country where she might still stand a chance at getting hitched, she's bewildered when the crown prince there declares before all that his engagement to her is null and void, an engagement she didn't know existed. Apparently, he's mistaken her for the wrong girl. But once that's all cleared up and he catches sight of her knocking out a whole pack of bandits, it turns out that this prince may have a thing for ass-kicking young ladies after all.

Always a Catch! is based on the Nigashita Sakana wa Ōkikatta ga Tsuriageta Sakana ga Ōkisugita Ken light novel series by author Mayo Momoyo and illustrator Itsuki Mito. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

Is my love for the manga this series is based on coloring my impression of the anime? I can't discount that, but I also think that Prince Renato has one of the more memorably stupid denunciation scenes in the villainess genre. First of all, Always a Catch! isn't actually a villainess series, which makes Renato look rather foolish. But to not even know what Aida, his fiancée looks like and thus make his denunciation to an entirely different person? That is Bakarina-level idiocy right there. It just makes him look like an utter fool, and how can anyone watching the debacle possibly trust him after such a monumentally stupid mistake? No wonder Aida seems to prefer his younger brother Prince Placido.

But that's Always a Catch! in a nutshell: never quite what you're expecting it to be while being somehow ten times sillier. The obvious comparison is with May I Ask for One Final Thing?, but where Scarlet plays her violence straight, Mimi's comes with a hefty dose of goofiness. She's well aware that she's hardly the perfect lady – up until her younger brother Teo was born, Mimi was the heir to her father's title, and she was trained as such. Then when he finally got his male heir, she cheerily decided to go find herself a husband, because why should she get upset? The only thing that we see get Mimi down in this episode is the fact that Renato spurned her, and that's because he hurt her friend and may be an idiot who refuses to wear glasses. She's as straightforward as they come, completely comfortable with who she is and what she has to learn. Even when she feels a twinge of embarrassment dancing with Placido she recovers almost immediately.

Although the art relies on chibis a fair amount, it still looks both good and similar to the manga. (The novels aren't available in English as of this writing.) We do lose the wonderful sense of weight to the women's skirts, which is a shame, since the lack of cage crinolines means the shape of their gowns is attained by up to forty pounds of petticoats. I know, it's fantasy, but the manga made the weight of the skirts clear, and I was hopeful. Of course, we also haven't seen Mimi really cut loose yet, so I may be premature in my disappointment, especially since we've certainly gotten some solid hints about her physical prowess, most notably in the scene where she reverses Renato's hold on her wrist.

On the whole, I'm happy with this first episode. Mimi's exuberant voice, the sweetness of her friendship with Aida, and of course her totally normal brass-knuckle hair accessory all do a great job of letting us know who Maria Annovazzi is. Trust me, you want to stick around to get to know her better.

The premiere of Always a Catch! is one of those excellent first impressions that remind us how execution will almost always be more important than originality. On the surface, this is another one of those cliche romances about a Cinderella-type heroine who is cruelly abandoned by a sneering royal fiancé before the whole of high society. The colors, designs, and overall presentation of the show in these opening minutes also smack of the same old, same old routine of being perfectly pretty to look at with little else going on beneath the surface. It isn't long before Always a Catch! starts to win us over, though, and through the simplest of strategies, too: It's just a really good and entertaining show.

Our protagonist, Maria, is very easy to root for once we spend more time learning about everything that brought her to that most overdone of fateful moments with Prince Renato. Already a tomboy by nature and the oldest in a line of all-female inheritors, Maria has spent most of her life training to inherit her father's duties as the next Dutchess Annovazzi, which means she's more comfortable studying martial arts than the arts of fine dining and high courtship. She's a spunky and eminently likeable leading lady who you can't help but root for when the arrival of a baby brother forces her into an entirely unexpected quest to get hitched and preserve the traditional norms of the aristocracy. The writing is breezy and engaging, and the animators do a great job of making Maria's movements just bouncy and stretchy enough to add even more life to the character without breaking the reality of the show.

I even ended up enjoying the way the episode worked up to getting Maria to that big moment of rejection, since the full context of the scene is much more complex and interesting than a plain old inciting incident for a trifling melodrama. Prince Renato is less of a scenery-chewing cad and more of a well-meaning idiot who is too intent on calling out what he perceives as unjust behavior to notice that the woman he's berating in front of so many people isn't even Aida Ametis. For her part, Maria is less concerned about whatever embarrassment she ought to feel than she is about how to best stand up for her friend and tell off the idiot who is screaming at her for no reason. It's a classic genre standoff that has been given enough texture and believability to become genuinely engaging. Indeed, it has never been easier to feel cynical about the anime industry's penchant for blatantly recycled tropes and lazy pandering, but that also means that it's never been a better time for a premiere to surprise you with its depth and charm. I'm looking forward to seeing even more of Maria's adventures in the coming weeks.

I have one major quibble with Always a Catch!: Mimi does not have the shape of a woman who has been training in martial arts her whole life. She doesn't have to have the figure of Noi Dorohedoro (my huge and beautiful wife), but even if she has a naturally petite frame, she should have some muscle definition. Instead, her arms are roughly as wide as a willow branch, and narrow shoulders. If you're going to write a character who is super into fitness, her design should at least somewhat reflect that.

But I won't spend too much time pouting because, otherwise, Always a Catch! is a charming example of a genre space that constantly teeters on the precipice of overdone. I've long held a soft spot for girls who love fighting and meat, and that's exactly who Mimi is. With the birth of a baby brother, her life to inherit her father's title and estate is upended, and now it's on her to go out and find herself a husband. Never one to let a little thing like that get her down, Mimi heads abroad to join her bestie Aida, who is engaged to the crown prince, at finishing school. Her lack of proper ladylikeness is demonstrated not just through her headstrong personality, but also in details like a hair ornament shaped like brass knuckles. As the episode plays out and Mimi watches all the necessary components of a villainess story move into place, she continues to roll with the punches.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

This episode is clearly setting things up for what's to come; Prince Renato's genre-defining declaration doesn't come until the final minutes. With this in mind, it's unclear whether or not it will really set itself apart, especially when another series with such a similar premise already exists. I do know, however, that I wouldn't mind spending more time with these characters; I get the sense that Mimi's comment about Renato needing glasses wasn't just a one-off joke, and that the poor boy really does come across as a crank because he's nearsighted, which allowed Eleanor to take advantage of him.

I'm interested to see how the animation looks once Mimi starts truly throwing blows. This episode looked lovely, and I hope it'll stand up when we get to a more punchy part of the story.

Once again, we have a villainess anime—or at least the framework for one. There is the proper noble lady who is set to marry the crown prince, the new lover of the crown prince who claims to be bullied by the prince's fiancée, and the crown prince himself, who annuls the engagement at the school graduation party. The difference here is that the main character of this anime isn't the purported villainess but rather her tomboy childhood friend.

Basically, Mimi, the aforementioned friend, is a wrench in the works—the person who knocks the plot off the rails and sends it in an entirely different direction. She is in a unique position and has nothing to lose by standing up to the crown prince. She is a foreign noble, and while she may be searching for a husband now that a male heir has been born in her family, this is far from the only place she can look for one.

Moreover, she was raised to lead her family's Dukedom—to fill a traditionally male role. Thus, she prefers to attack problems head-on, and things like etiquette and the proper way of speaking for a woman in high society are still more than a bit foreign. This forms the core of the series' comedy as Mimi bulldozes through social interactions and isn't afraid to speak truth to power.

Honestly, my favorite bit of comedy in the show comes from Mimi's signature hair ornament, which symbolizes who she is as a character. It's a highly decorated pair of brass knuckles, which speaks to her being of high nobility and ready for a fight. However, it also serves double duty as a locket that contains a painting of her family inside—showing what is most important to her on the inside.

My only complaint in this episode? That she didn't punch the crown prince outright (be that with the knuckles or without) for grabbing her. However, I do find it interesting that the crown prince doesn't even know his own fiancée's face. He's either A) shockingly uncaring to the point he never bothered to look at her face, B) has prosopagnosia, or C) actually does need glasses just as Mimi suggests. We'll just have to see which it is when she (hopefully) lays him out next week.