I haven't read the light novel that this story is adapted from, so I can only judge this work on the strengths and weaknesses of the anime, not the original text of the story.
Overall, this anime is an extremely lackluster political story with a sloppy harem, with an infuriating amount of plot holes, deus-ex machinas, incompetent villains, and shoddy writing. Don't come into this story with big expectations. That being said, the art is just passable enough to make it a barely enjoyable watch if you have a few hours to waste and just want to turn off your brain.
The plot is probably the weakest part of this story. The whole story appears to be just one set of convoluted schemes after another, disguised as a political thriller, but in actuality just an amateur author's attempts at writing something barely legible as political machinations.
As an example, despite the title, The Genius Prince's Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt never actually mentions exactly what the debt that the country needs to resolve actually is. The anime starts with us being dropped in the middle of a battle between two countries, and then it's just one battle after another, without any real explanation about the economic straits that need to be resolved. The main character makes some offhand remarks about their country being poor because of a lack of agricultural land, and that's about it.
On top of that, the story only ever focuses on the battles and military aspects. At no point does the "genius prince" ever try to improve the economy or industry in his own country. Instead, the main character just muddles around with hare-brained schemes where he's gambling with the fate of the entire country at every single moment, and the only reason he ever even succeeds is because of the sheer mountain of plot armour the author gives him, such as :
The characters are both the best and the worst parts of the story. I honestly get whiplash from how wildly the quality of the character writing changes at different points of time.
The main characters - Wein, Ninym, and LowellMina, are interesting people, with genuinely fun banter between them. Their internal dynamic is the fuel that keeps the anime fun and enjoyable, and I could honestly watch an entire slice-of-life that focuses only on these interactions between them.
On the other hand, in their interactions with the rest of the world, the main cast are portrayed as incredible geniuses, even though we never actually see much of that "genius" on screen. The author's idea of genius seems to be the ability to employ basic military strategies, as well as get involved in extremely convoluted mind games where they're somehow planning things 15 steps in advance with completely insufficient information and no good explanation at all.
However, anyone that isn't the main cast is basically portrayed as an incompetent half-wit. As I mentioned earlier, enemy generals barely know how to train and lead their armies, always just attempting brute force attacks instead of any real strategies. In fact, the enemy generals often go out of their way to intentionally choose the worst possible strategy given the battleground and their troop compositions. On the other hand, Wein's underlings are sycophantic yes-men that are incapable of any independent thought, who worship every single word that comes out of his mouth. As an example, one of the antagonistic characters actually ends up getting drunk and killing himself by accident in a situation where his life was never even in danger, so that's the level of quality we're dealing with here.
It's no surprise why the non-main cast are such imbeciles - the author has to make the entire world an idiocracy so that the average-intelligence main cast can stand out as geniuses in comparison.
This is a touchy one for me. On the one hand, I can see that the author actually tried to create some decent worldbuilding, setting up a map of the continent and a basic history of the main countries on it. However, the author doesn't actually seem to know that much about actual history and politics, so all the details of this world are extremely shallow, and the entire worldbuilding of this world could probably be summed up in a single paragraph.
There's actually not much depth to any of the politics we see on-screen, even though the characters try to talk as if they're all involved in complex machiavellian plots. As mentioned earlier, the antagonists are all incredibly incompetent villains who fold under the slightest pressure. Their schemes are all ridiculously inefficient attempts at grabbing power, so they fall apart under even the slightest scrutiny.
Overall, it feels like this was a story aimed at elementary school or middle school kids who are just learning about politics for the first time. Maybe if it was clearly targeted towards such an audience, it might have worked better.
The art is okay. There's definitely no amazing animation or art anywhere, but there's nothing downright bad either. There are occasional cringe frames like the one below, where you see some truly ridiculous expressions on faces if you look close. Fights are also extremely basic, with lots of still frames. But other than that, the animation is fairly okay, though you definitely notice the quality dropping by the end of the season.
The opening credits are pretty decent, but then they apparently ran out of a budget, so the ending credits are just a recap reel of the episode.
The anime also attempts a moderate amount of fanservice, with suspiciously designed clothing and overt bath scenes, all in service of an extremely boring harem plotline. Personally, I'm not a fan.
The soundtrack is also decent - both the opening and ending theme songs are fine, though neither really stand out. The voice acting is good in general, but it's at about the average level of quality for most animes.
Overall, I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this anime to anyone. It's an easy brain-dead watch, but you'll sorely regret it if you have any expectations of it. The character interactions are fun between the main cast, but the rest of the anime is forgettable nonsense. In fact, the ridiculous plot armour can genuinely make you want to punch the screen, watching how some half-assed scheme by the protagonist actually worked, all because the world itself warps in order to make the author's self-insert protagonist come out on top at the end.
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