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.