The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Tearmoon Empire

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"I have... a head?! And... I'm young?!" Twenty-year-old Princess Mia of the Tearmoon Empire, often scorned as the "selfish princess," was executed by guillotine in a rebellion. Next thing she knew, she awoke in her own twelve-year-old body, with her own blood-stained diary that she kept before she was beheaded sitting next to her pillow. Given a second chance at life, Mia decides to rebuild the empire. For the sake of Tearmoon's future? To save the people from starvation? For all the soldiers who lost their lives in the civil war? No! Everything she does in this life is for the sake of avoiding the guillotine! "F-For me, this should be a piece of cake!" Thus, the useless, cowardly, self-serving princess brings about miracle after miracle in her great struggle to save herself in this altered-history fantasy.

Tearmoon Empire is based on a novel of the same name by Nozomu Mochitsuki. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
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It doesn't take a history degree to realize that this anime is a bit of thinly-veiled historical fiction. The Tearmoon Empire itself is based on the Kingdom of France in the years leading up to the French Revolution—with Mia herself being a direct proxy to Marie Antoinette. Tearmoon Empire takes this story and makes it into a villainess time travel story—i.e., one where the villainess truly repents at the moment of her death and quantum leaps into her younger body. This anime diverges from the other stories of this type in two big ways.

The first is that Mia initially rejects what has happened to her—despite the proof of her own blood-soaked journal and vivid memories. She wants so badly to believe that it was all a dream—that she can indulge once again in a truly selfish, sheltered life without having to worry about the state of her country. But, no matter how much she tries to run from the reality of her situation, the events of the future have changed her. She can't be as haughty and cruel as she once was after eating the rotten food of the poor for years or knowing the true suffering of living an existence covered only in rags. Things like “noble blood” matter far less than deep loyalty after that.

The second twist on the formula is that while Mia has been changed by her experience and has knowledge of the future, she still has no idea how to save her country. She may know “what” will happen but the “why” is far beyond her—much less any ideas on how to fix things. She went directly from selfish princess to prisoner after all. While she was able to reflect on her actions, she didn't magically gain a knowledge of economics or tax law.

Luckily, the one thing Mia has on her hands is time. And with a lot of studying and the support of some loyal and intelligent followers, she just might be able to save her country (and herself) from the bloodbath to come.

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James Beckett
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Now, here is a reincarnation premise I can get behind! Instead of some anonymous Potato-kun protagonist getting hit by a truck and sent to live out his dullest RPG power-fantasies in another world, we have a doomed Marie Antoinette stand-in who loses her head to the guillotine, only to find herself transported back into the body of her eight-year-old self, blessed with another chance to avoid her nasty execution (and also, you know, the collapse of her country). Just imagine: Genuine stakes! Meaningful character development! The chance to watch some spoiled rich assholes learn the fundamentals of basic human decency!

It's that last part that makes Tearmoon Empire genuinely interesting to me. As the premiere makes very clear, Princess Mia Luna Tearmoon lived her life as many of her counterparts in the real-world European Aristocracy did around the turn of the eighteenth century, which is to say that she was a selfish, vainglorious hedonist who leeched away at the coffers of the state to prop up her own needlessly lavish lifestyle, damn the consequences. It wasn't until her wealth and privilege were forcibly stripped away from her that Mia realized that maybe, just maybe, her abusive and neglectful behavior had a hand in this whole Revolution thing. By then, of course, it was too late…until it wasn't. Moreso than the cutesy "I'm an adult trapped in the body of a tiny child!" stuff that the show will doubtless milk for as many laughs as possible, I'm interested in seeing how Mia's new perspective on life will lead to her making meaningful changes to both her own life and the lives of her people, beyond simply resisting the urge to fire every chef and maid that causes her a slight inconvenience.

Granted, I don't expect the show to become some grand, political treatise on the inherent evils of monarchic institutions and aristocratic social structures. This is a comedy, first and foremost, and it needs to be funny. Thankfully, Tearmoon Empire succeeds on that front, too. It's no Asobi Asobase or Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, but it can effectively play up slapstick like Anne falling facefirst into a giant cake, and that's no small feat. I said earlier in this Preview Guide that I consider a comedy premiere mostly successful if it can make me laugh out loud at least once. Tearmoon Empire managed that, and it's also telling a compelling story, to boot. That makes it an easy recommendation for me.

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Rebecca Silverman
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Mia Luna Tearmoon embodies every tale told about the ill-fated French queen Marie-Antoinette. And maybe a few of the true ones, too – Mia's not inherently bad; she was just raised to believe that her wants and wishes came before everyone else's needs. If people tried to educate her otherwise (and as of this first episode, there may have been a grand total of one person who did), she resisted with every spoiled bone in her body. Is this her fault? Maybe, but if it is, she's not without hope of redemption because if she were, she wouldn't have been sent back in time to correct her mistakes lest she risk being pulled into Madame la Guillotine's cold embrace a second time.

Or at least that's what Mia herself seems to realize. It's funny how three years in a cell eating rotten food will make you think about what landed you there in the first place, and any hopes Mia had of that proving to be a dream are swiftly dashed when her incarceration diary ends up back in the past with her. And this time around, Mia isn't going to fall into the same traps – she's going to reward the good, learn about the economy, and even eat tomatoes. It's already a rewarding journey in this episode: we can see how Mia has to fight not to fall back into her bad habits and that she's thinking about everything that went awry last time. She realizes, for example, that firing her chef was a poor plan, and after years of moldy bread and raw tomatoes, she recognizes that the chef was truly doing his best for her, and she can now appreciate his meals. Her redemption isn't any one thing; it's a million little ones, and that makes this a straightforward story to get into, even if you don't already know what's coming from the light novels and manga adaptation.

It also helps that it looks beautiful. Even the gilding on the guillotine is pretty, and the entire palace looks like a direct tribute to Versailles, which is doubtless on purpose. Mia's voice can be a little high-pitched at times, but her personality is a lovely mix of wanting to do what's right and not entirely understanding what "right" is. She's got an inkling, but she was so behind in her understanding of how her empire ran the last time that she's going to have to work to get out of the mess that ended her life the last time…and that doesn't always feel like something she thinks she's capable of doing.

Time loop stories may be a dime a dozen at this point, but there's a reason why this one is popular in its original form. It's surprisingly thoughtful, has moments of humor, and stars a heroine whose best may not always be enough, although we can see from the servants' reactions that any change in her bratty demeanor is seen as unique. Take it from a novel reader – this is good, and the adaptation is doing it justice.

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Nicholas Dupree
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With how many villainess shows we've gotten in the past year, it's honestly refreshing to have the same mechanical setup without all the video game terminology. It gives the whole concept of rewriting one's future a lot more weight when that future wasn't prescribed in the form of a dating sim, you know? Plus, there's no jokey ending or over-the-top comeuppance in Mia's worst timeline: all that's waiting for her is years of confinement before a date with Joseph-Ignace Guillotin's funky contraption. It's an unusually brutal end for these kinds of stories, but it works well to set Mia and her quest to avoid revolt apart from their contemporaries.

Mostly I just appreciate that it doesn't seem like the solution here is for Mia to simply be nicer to some key folks. That's certainly part of it, and her reciprocating Anne's kindness in this new timeline is a solid emotional hook, but it's clear that the Empire's reckoning wasn't something that “being nice” could solve. The empire was bleeding money, let life for the common folk go to hell until they had nothing to lose from revolt, and was led by a royal family so sheltered from it all that Mia was near-identical to the largely a-historical version of Marie Antoinette we're all familiar with. Fixing all that will require Mia to learn statecraft, and to become a ruler who's at least competent enough to not invoke the wrath of her subjects. While we don't quite see that in action yet, she's already searching for an advisor to start reforming the empire's finances. That's a decidedly more compelling narrative than just learning to not be a little privileged monster.

All that said, this episode in isolation can feel like it's going through the motions for a while. Mia learning to appreciate her personal chef's cooking after years of moldy bread and rotten fruit is nice, but goes on a bit too long after making its point. As I mentioned, her reunion with Anne is a nice emotional hook but is very similar to other Villainess-adjacent setups. While these make sense as baby steps toward Mia's change in character, they don't quite capitalize on the parts of the story that set it apart. It's not terrible by any means, and the sharp direction – littered with a few snazzy transitions to boot – keeps it all moving swiftly, but this seems like a show that will prove its worth better with a second episode. It's compelling and funny enough to earn at least that much, for now.