Anime Spotlight #75: I Was Reincarnated As the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (2026 Update)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Animeister.

High, Ticketholders!

Today is important for getting stoned (and for no other reason), and it's my second week of isekai anime in April, so I decided to cover the second season of I Was Reincarnated As the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (for some reason), the first season of which I reviewed on July 15, 2024, prefaced by a tangent on the awkward linguistics and social stigma of being sibling-deficient, the cultural importance of long-winded names, and the number of nickels I'd have for anime about throne-distant isekai protagonists.

Here's the review copy of that before I get into the second season, with a few edits:

I Was Reincarnated As the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (thank this series' one angel for predictive text) is obviously your usual novel/light-novel/manga franchise publication salad, this time written by the awesomely named Kenkyo na Circle and illustrated by Meru (light-novel) and Yōsuke Kokuzawa (manga).

As a nice change of pace, the main character isn't some personality-void protag-kun with dark, spiky hair from Japan this time, but instead a mage from a different fantasy world who loses a magic duel to the death and gets reborn as Lloyd Saloum, the seventh son (well, he's really the fifth son because he has two sisters in line ahead of him) of the King of Saloum in a world where magic is just about everywhere. So like the title says, Lloyd uses his distance from the throne to study magic with an obsessive, sociopathic fervor, to the point that he sees people with cool magical abilities as resources to further his study of magic (not in a morbid, sacrificial sense, but in a detached, mutual advancement sense). In the first two episodes alone, he enslaves a reality-warping demon into a cute animal mascot form (kind of like Natsume's Book Of Friends, if Natsume used a nuclear magic spell and a sadistic personality to subdue Master Kitty-Kat instead of just punching him in the face) and draws the attentions of a female adventurer from "the East" who fights with Demon Slayer-like breathing techniques and Dragon Ball-light chi blasts.

Of course, there is a light smattering of ecchi (suggestive/adult content that isn't quite pornography yet, which I commonly refer to as Japravity) in here as Lloyd is often put in androgynous clothing by his busty, retired assassin maid who has a homicidally protective age-gap crush on him, and the aforementioned kung-fu lady is in a love quadrangle with Lloyd, his magical adult disguise, and his sparkle-handsome adult brother. Oh, and later there's a child assassin who magically sweats poison when she strips half-naked, and she develops a "senpai did something nice for me so I wanna bang him when we're older" crush on him. Keep in mind that this is all played for laughs because Japan.

Not that 7th Prince is entirely an isekai sex comedy, mind you; the aforementioned encounters with the demon-turned-sidekick and the man-crazed kung-fu lady (not to mention the other two, big demon fights of the first season) are graced with some mind-blowing, eyeball-melting effects animation that would make Studios Trigger, Bones, and ProductionIG take notice. Even the comedy gets some off-model chibi work so the meme community can go apeshit with Lloyd's many expressions. From an animation, action, and humor standpoint, 7th Prince is like Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, J.J. Abrams, and Guillermo Del Toro co-directed an epic Ren & Stimpy movie...except they would at least attempt to manufacture decent tension into the fight scenes. As amazing as they all look, the fights in 7th Prince basically come down to this:
Demon: "Pathetic human! I will erase your soul, eat your entrails, and use your body to conquer the world! Bear witness to my ultimate technique that has been lost to the ages!"
Lloyd: "Oh; I see how that works now!" Uses demon's finishing move against it. "Haha; demon go brrrrrr!"

It's never a question of whether Lloyd will win, but of how he will win and how funny the demon's contorted face will look when it dies of ownage. Even the effort between the fight's beginning and Lloyd's ensured victory is a case of "tell, don't show," as all strategy and challenge is casually discussed after the fact like the twist reveal in an ill-conceived heist movie.

This is totally subjective, but the final, two episodes of the final fight legitimately bored me. I felt like I was falling asleep to an ultraviolent screen saver or something, which is not a description you want to hear in regards to the season finale fight of a comedy battle shōnen anime.

And that sentiment continues into the second season. It's basically the 80s/90s sequel of sophomore anime seasons, with a bigger starting cast (the underaged stripper assassin and her guild of cursed killers—whom Lloyd cured with magic tattoos as an epilogue after putting their demon-possessed leader to rest in that two-episode final battle I slept through while it was on in the background two years ago—are running a township for Lloyd while he studies magic instead) and Lloyd overpowering a vain, horny angel and turning him into a cute animal mascot (whom I'm almost positive goes clam-diving on Lloyd's oldest sister in a hotsprings bath while disguising himself as a duck toy in the final episode) because he wants to study church magic this time (which he masters by the second episode, also, so that Season Two can be one, stupidly long, less visually interesting battle between Lloyd's group and the holy and undead forces of Pope Gor Voldemort von All-For-One (because he turned himself into a magical chimera so he could slay God and crush the dregs of humanity as revenge for the deaths of his family). I wish I could say more about Season Two, but aside from the little demon fluff-goat starting to re-collect mana and getting a humanoid form, and the teaser that he's probably going to rematch Lloyd in a third season we might not get (read the manga, I guess), it really is just the first season again with the religious polarity crooked slightly different and more of a lesser version of what bored me before.

Again, prepare to witness the depths of something else.

For example, I'd like to witness the depths of your awesomeness as you remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment something at the bottom of this post (yes, even the word, "something" would count as something, because words are magic), help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my demon (and angel)-pwning content.

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Animeister,

Out.