The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess

Exceptionally gifted to his own detriment, Prince Cecil had always found life effortlessly mundane. One ordinary day, his life took an unexpected turn when he became engaged to Miss Bertia, the Chancellor's daughter. This engagement, however, was anything but typical. Bertia declares herself a villainess. She claimed to have memories of her former life, where she had been the antagonist in an "otome game". Her lofty ambition was to excel as a villainess and thus have her engagement annulled. However, despite her plans for various misdeeds, her attempts have always been unsuccessful.

An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess is based on the light novel series by author Shiki and illustrator Wan Hachipisu. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

I'm doing everything in my power not to pre-judge villainess isekai. “This could be a fun twist on the premise,” I tell myself. “Every time I think one sounds totally soulless and generic, I end up having a great time!” And An Observation Log of My Fiancee does kind of shift the formula around. I mean, for one thing, it's from the point of view of the marriage candidate, not the villainess. Cecil, who is so smart he invented a new theorem at the age of nine and has never felt challenged in his life, is bemused by his new fiancee claiming to be a great villainess in the making, due to her memories of playing a game in a previous life, etc. All the stuff that we've heard before.

So the question is, is it a sufficient twist that Cecil is the point of view character? Eh… not really. Perhaps things will shift once the characters reach young adulthood, but right now, it's just the same schtick seen through a different set of eyes. Bertia professes that she's fine just going along with the plot, but in this season's second fatphobic premiere, she loses a ton of weight so she can be an “elegant flower of evil.” When she realizes that her mother is doomed to die from a plague, she confesses that her mother's life is more important to her than sticking to the scenario. She's vaguely likable, but pretty much the stock character as originated by Katarina von Claes. Nor does Cecil enthrall me as the perspective character; his lengthy description of how he went about preventing the epidemic was dull as dirt.

It's not the most boring series but still lacks originality; similarly, the animation is acceptable but never reaches past that. Bertia and Cecil together are a big eye-smarting mass of red, blue, and yellow primary colors, Bertia's hair and dress particularly garish and clashing. Bertia's big personality would be well-served with equally boisterous animation, but the two characters mostly sit at tables and talk over cake.

If you're going with one villainess series this season, Always a Catch! is almost certainly the better bet of the two new ones.

Man, imagine if Observation Log of My Fiance Who Calls Herself a Villainess wasn't forced to fit into the mold of disposable light-novel genre conventions. The premise here has so much potential, and I can so clearly see the version of this anime that could make for an incredibly compelling fantasy mystery. I have a pet fondness for stories that explore what it's like to live in the world of an otherwise conventional or famous story, but from the point-of-view of a secondary character who usually only exists to support the protagonists' adventures, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, or Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. We've gotten so damned many of these villainess reincarnation stories at this point that the concept of watching the usual events play out through the hapless love-interest's eyes is a great one. Imagine how interesting it would be to watch him slowly realize that his fiance has terrifying, omniscient foreknowledge of their lives and fates. Think of all the ways the story could play with expectations when its protagonist has to suddenly reckon with the fact that he's a fictional character from a (presumably) mediocre visual novel who has suddenly been torn free from the shackles of his destiny by some dark goddess from another universe. It could be so good, darn it!

Now, technically, what I just described is kind of what An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess is already about, but that title ought to give away how little interest this show has in being particularly creative or experimental. No, at the end of the day, what we have is a candy-colored retread of all the hit story beats that most every Modern Villainess-isekai is contractually obligated to pull out of the freezer-burnt depths of Light Novel Cold Storage and reheat for immediate consumption. Cecil is a bored super-genius who approaches every single conflict in the story with the cold calculation of a sharply dressed automaton, while Bertia is the usual, bland, well-meaning heroine who does all of the bland, well-meaning heroine stuff that these scripts demand. She loudly (and insanely) declares her status as a reincarnated video-game player to anyone who will listen; she cries at all the right moments to show how much she really cares about all of these silly cartoon people she's suddenly become family to; she banters endlessly with Cecil in a parade of sequences that are meant to get the audience totally on board with their inevitable romance. Etc &etc.

I don't necessarily begrudge Observation Log of My Fiance Who Calls Herself a Villainess Preview for being exactly the hodge-podge of cutesy tropes and archetypes that it presents itself as. The show looks pretty good, and it runs through this initial story at an entertaining clip. I just wish we could get more of these stories where the characters acted even ten percent more like interesting and complex characters, rather than the silly comic-strip rehashes that we're always stuck with, instead. This is an inoffensive take on a formula that will likely satisfy diehard fans of the villainess anime subgenre, but anyone looking for a show with more substance than a stick of freshly spun cotton-candy will probably get bored before this first episode has even run its course.

To fans of villainess stories, this anime will feel like a combination of two of the big ones: I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History and My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Like Alicia in the former, Bertia is a young Japanese woman who has reincarnated into a fantasy otome game as the villainess. Moreover, she is obsessed with being the best villainess she can be—wanting to surpass the original character.

However, like Catarina in the latter, Bertia isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. She's very much an act-first-think-never character. To the audience, this makes her endearing. To Cecil, her fiancé and the crown prince of the kingdom, it makes her a breath of fresh air.

This is where we get to how this anime separates itself from the villainess anime that have come before. The main new aspect is that this story is told through Cecil's point of view, not Bertia's. Cecil is one of those people who is naturally talented at everything. Things that are obvious to him seem like groundbreaking revelations to others. There is no excitement nor challenge in his life—it's all just monotonous. It's then that he meets Bertia and is unable to predict her actions—much less decide whether she is insane or actually a person from another world.

To be fair, it doesn't matter to him at the start which she is. She is interesting either way. And through some testing of her future predictions, he comes to believe her reincarnation story. However, what's most important is that, through his interactions with her and actions for her, he is able to come to see his own deficiencies as a person—which is the vital first step in fixing them.

The other important twist to the story is why Bertia wants to be the best villainess she can. Simply put, it's not because she loves villainess characters, it's that she loves Cecil as a character. She knows that the villainess is the tool by which he will fall in love with the heroine and she'd rather see him truly happy than be with him. Of course, from what we know about Cecil we can see that all of her actions are having the opposite effect—and that's the source of the series' humor.

All in all, if you like villainess stories, this one looks to be a fun one.

I think we all know the drill by now: otome game player from Japan ends up reincarnated in a game she once played, but as the villainess rather than the heroine. She proceeds to not be a villainess, winning the heart of the main lead. An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess has no interest in subverting that part of the narrative. So what's its angle? That Bertia not only is gleeful about getting to play her evil role in her favorite story, but that she tells Prince Cecil all about it.

It might not be particularly innovative, but it certainly is fun. Bertia's a ball of sunshine and mostly joyful energy. She's genuinely enthused about being part of the story, and she's fully aware that she's not the real Bertia, and therefore won't act exactly like her. She aspires to a more elegant villainy than the original, and while that's at least in part an excuse to have her lose a substantial amount of weight – and I don't love that “elegance” and “plus sized” are treated as incompatible – it's also a bit of fresh air. So many otome reincarnators act as though everyone involved is just a game character. Bertia seems to know that they're people in their own right; it's the story she feels ought to be set in stone. As long as the plot plays out as it's meant to, she's okay with other changes.

Or at least, she is after Prince Cecil talks a bit of sense into her. He's the point of view character, which is another trick up this show's sleeve, and he's not sure he buys Bertia's otome game story. But he recognizes that it's important to her, and he's fascinated by the girl herself. And frankly, even though he's only eleven, he doesn't care to end up with some random heroine, so it's probably in his best interests to humor his fiancée…while gently guiding her away from this story she feels is so important. As he says to her when she's recounting a future event, what's more important, the story or your mother's life?

The vibrant colors of this show do a very nice job emphasizing Bertia's energy and how bland Cecil's life was before she came into it. Bertia appeals to him because she pulls him out of his proscribed role as Mr. Perfect Prince. She gives him ways to use his immense talent that he otherwise wouldn't have thought of. I called her a ball of sunshine earlier, and that's exactly what she is for him: someone who illuminates his drab life. While I find her ojou-sama speech patterns kind of annoying (a case where I prefer the silence of the light novel), this is still a lot of fun to watch. It's not reinventing the villainess wheel, but it does enough to make it appealing.