The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt

Episode 3

This week's episode of The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt is centered around the motivations behind Lowa's arrival at Natra, which unfold like a slow-burn mystery. Her publicly stated reason is that she wants to marry Wein. After all, as an imperial princess, marrying the crown prince of her empire's neighboring country makes total political sense. It's also not out of the question for her marriage request to be romantically motivated, since she and Wein went to school together and were close friends.

However, Wein doesn't buy this for a second. When confronted in private, Lowa confesses that she wants Wein's help in claiming the imperial throne by taking advantage of the empire's current succession crisis. Yet, Wein doesn't believe this either, and it is implied via a flashback that her real goal is a social revolution—to use war as a tool to forge true gender equality.

Yet, even as the episode lays out her possible motives, we are given other contextual clues about Lowa's situation. Her retinue is loyal not to her, but to her brother. She is being courted by the heir apparent of Antgatal—a man whose grandfather helped form the empire through cunning betrayal. Weapons and armor are being smuggled into Natra. All these details come together to form a compelling mystery because, even with all the clues out in the open, there are many different ways to interpret them—doubly so if Lowa really is Wein's intellectual match as the characters' keep mentioning.

While all this is going on, we also learn a bit more about Ninym and Wein. The first episode showed that Ninym is the only one privy to the true Wein behind his “perfect prince” façade. In the second episode, we see that the mere act of Ninym being insulted is enough for him to throw his carefully-crafted plans out the window for the sake of retaliation—going so far as to personally lead an assassination squad to get the men responsible for the slight.

In this episode, we get Ninym's view on their relationship. She claims they will never marry due to her ethnicity—which says both a lot about their world and how she sees her place in it. However, she also reiterates what Wein said last week, that she is his “heart.” What's interesting here is something that is lost in translation. In Japanese, there are two words for “heart”: one for the literal organ, “shinzou,” and one representing a person's emotional core, “kokoro.” The one used here is “shinzou”—the physical beating heart. So rather than being Wein's emotional center, Ninym is, metaphorically, the vital organ that keeps him alive. There is only one of her and she is both indispensable and irreplaceable in his eyes. This distinction adds a bit more nuance and intrigue to their relationship even as it seeks to clarify it. And, what can I say, between this ongoing personal mystery and Lowa's more external one, I'm quite invested in Genius Prince's Guide story and characters at this point.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• I guess the series is not above treating sexual harassment as comedy.

• I like how, in this episode and the last one, the Princess' school lessons are used to give us vital plot exposition in a natural way.

• I wonder how Wein, Lowa, and Ninym's other two school companions fit into this whole situation. Are any of them related to Antgatal, or is the show just setting things up for subsequent story arcs?

• My guess for Lowa's actual plan? She's hoping to incite a war and force Wein to annex Antgatal, freeing her of any marriage prospects with the Antgatal heir while potentially giving her control over a fief where she can enact social reform should she succeed in marrying Wein.

The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt is currently streaming on Funimation.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.