The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold To Another Kingdom

Philia's family has produced saints for generations. It's no surprise that she's known as the greatest saint of all time—and set to marry the second prince, Julius. What no one expects is for Julius to call off the engagement, claiming that Philia's perfection makes her charmless and unlikable. To add insult to injury, Philia is packed off to a neighboring country in exchange for gold and resources, forcing her to leave her homeland. Despite bracing herself for mistreatment, Philia finds a warm welcome in her new town, where she puts her saintly abilities to good use, erecting barriers against monsters and curing epidemics. But even as she flourishes in her new life, her homeland is under threat of destruction.

The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold To Another Kingdom is based on a light novel series by Kōki Fuyutsuki. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

Oh, are we getting another abandoned saint series? I got the sense that the microgenre was shoved out of the way for villainess anime right as it was just getting going. There's even some overlap between the two: series like I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss are structurally similar to The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold To Another Kingdom, both of which hinge on a young woman being abandoned in favor of a more appealingly feminine option. It's just that villainess series tend to have an ever-so-slightly subversive edge, especially in the structure where their fiancés publicly reject them, while “saints anime" have a woman with healing and/or potion-making skills who is straightforwardly good. There has to be a different reason for them being discarded.

In this case, Philia gets shipped off because, even if she's hypercompetent, she doesn't smile enough. She's powerful and intelligent, but because she doesn't perform it with the proper girlish warmth, she's perceived as cold and intimidating. To make matters worse, her cute sister isn't quite as powerful but she does everything while performing the proper emotional labor as well. We can all see where this is going, right? I mean, even without reading the title, which of course spells it all out for us because that's just how the world works these days. It's a slightly exaggerated version of how competent women must soften themselves in other ways—or else people think of them as ice queens or harpies. At first I was suspicious, but once I realized what was happening, I relaxed into the concept.

The problem comes from the character writing. I get that the idea is that Philia has a naturally flat affect and a lifetime of abuse has further sanded down her personality to next to nothing. With that in mind, I hate to say she's boring but… she kind of is. She's not an interesting or entertaining protagonist, which makes the episode's 23 minutes drag on and on. The technical elements of the production do the story little favors as well—with stolid direction, forgettable music, and middling animation. The highlight was easily the watercolor-inspired backgrounds, with soft colors that complement the lavender of Philia's hair beautifully.

Plus, there's a predictability that I know is comforting for some people but doesn't leave me salivating for more. The handsome young man with the blonde braid is going to be the prince of Parnacorta, a hilarious name for a country that I think comes from adding r's to the word “pannacotta.” She'll meet a passle of handsome but dull young men who appreciate her and her heart will slowly heal. Yawn.

What's interesting about this anime is that, at first, it appears that Philia is living in the shadow of her sister due to her personality—that if she smiled and were bright and cheerful, she wouldn't have the problems she has in her life. After all, this is what we hear people say and is certainly what Philia herself thinks. However, this isn't the actual issue at all—it's just a convenient excuse. The real problem in Philia's life is insecure people.

In her own family, it's clear that Philia was the scapegoat and Mia the golden child. This caused Philia to work hard to try and get the love she was denied—always doing her absolute best to surpass the expectations placed upon her. However, being the best always incites envy among others—especially in insecure people like the doctor who gives her an impossible task just so she will fail.

Of course, the worst of all is Prince Julius. He has yes-men telling him how great he is—how he's going to be the best king ever. However, all he has to do is glance at Philia—a woman both more talented and hard-working than him—to see that lie for what it is. So, does he confront his insecurities—strive to be the best prince and partner he can be? Hell no! He removes her from his presence, selling her to the neighboring kingdom. Luckily, the prince of said neighboring kingdom looks to be without ego and more than a bit grateful for her coming to their aid.

The other thing I really like about this story is Mia. Often in these types of stories, the doted on sister is one of the main villains; here we get the opposite. While undoubtedly the golden child, Mia is nonetheless a good person. She genuinely cares for the people of the kingdom and loves her sister dearly. Seeing how Mia deals with her sister's sudden disappearance looks to be just as interesting as Philia's life in her new home.

All in all, I'm decently excited for this one and can't wait to see how things develop next week and beyond.

There's no sense in pretending I haven't read the source novel for this anime, so let me just say this: it gets a lot less bleak. Philia Adenauer's life as the 28th Saint of Girtonia practically reaches Griselda levels of awfulness. Sent away by her parents at age five and tormented under the guise of “training,” only to be summarily rejected by them in favor of her younger sister Mia, this poor woman is terminally underappreciated. Even worse, there's no clear reason for her to be so reviled by her family and society. They don't like her because she doesn't smile? What, she's supposed to work herself to the bone helping people and smile like she's not exhausted? These people want a Barbie doll, not a saint, and one who “knows her place,” to boot.

It's beyond depressing, verging on infuriating, especially when her fiancé Prince Julius and the townsfolk gripe about her being too good at her job. The mixed messages Philia is receiving are astounding, and still she makes it clear that everything she does is because she's a saint. It's what she's been trained to do, but somehow it's still not right or enough. The only person who seems to care about her is Mia, although the episode's end tries to cast doubt on that. But I think it's worth remembering that although Julius and the Adenauer parents say that Mia will be thrilled to take over for Philia as both main saint and Julius' fiancée, Mia never says that. In fact, her actions and statements seem to directly contradict it; she admits herself that she's obsessed with her older sister. Unless she's the greatest dissembler ever, there's a decent chance she's not going to be happy that Philia's been sold off to neighboring Parnacorta.

The draw of this show is plainly the story. That's not to say that the visuals are bad, because there are a few very attractive images, and the way that Philia looks so worn and washed out when compared to the other characters is well done. But it's also visually hanging on those small details and stills rather than overall spectacular animation. Our investment in the story needs to come from wanting Philia to find people who care about her and who can do something about making her life better, and it looks like she's going to find them in the next episode. Her utter shock when Parnacortans greet her with fanfare is an indication of how she's resigned herself to never actually getting the love and appreciation she craves, and watching her get that is enough to make me come back next week.

The Too-Perfect Saint has a watercolor aesthetic that I really love to see in these kinds of soft- fantasy types of shows, with pleasing character designs to boot. It also builds a very likeable and natural fairytale atmosphere for its setting. We've seen stories about noble “saint” types before, but there's an intangible degree of…I'm not sure what to call it? Confidence, maybe? Either way, this is a show that knows what kind of anime it wants to be, and if you were to simply look at its visuals and listen to its music, you'd likely assume that it was on track to be a real winner.

The issue, though, likes with the titular Saint herself. Philia is, to be blunt, one of my least favorite kinds of characters to follow in these sorts of “Everyone Was Mean to Her, But Her Beauty and Kindness Won Out in the End” fables. There's being put upon, there's being a bit of a quiet introvert, and then there's the utter void of personality and relatability that is Saint Philia. I can see why an anime like Too-Perfect Saint would assume that a complete wallflower like Philia would be an ideal protagonist. She's meek and quiet enough to explain how the world could overlook, or at least take for granted, her obvious beauty and her preternatural skills, and the cartoonish inhumanity exhibited by her family makes it basically impossible to root against her.

What happens, though, when your heroine is such a vague outline of an underdog that she doesn't even seem like she cares all that much about what happens to her, or what she wants. I know that this isn't factually true; obviously, Philia is hurt by the betrayals, and it's terrible that such a thing happened to a girl that is still basically a child. That doesn't change the fact that this show simply struggles to sell that emotional investment in any meaningful way. For a great example of how to do this kind of melodramatic tragedy right, look no further than My Happy Marriage. In that series, Miyo is basically the same exact kind of Cinderella variation that Philia is in Too-Perfect Saint, but you feel Miyo's misery in a way that makes you demand justice and happiness for the girl. I'm about as interested in Philia's fate as I am in learning more about the free roofing inspections that I can't stop getting robo-calls about whenever my city gets a hailstorm.

There's a kernel of an interesting anime in The Too-Perfect Saint, and maybe Philia's story will become exponential more engaging as it goes along. The job of a premiere, though, is to get me more excited to watch the very next episode and, in that duty, this episode has failed.