The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even

Elizabeth Leiston, daughter of the influential prime minister, is a picture-perfect lady on the path to becoming the future queen of the Kingdom of Haldoria. But her life takes a sudden turn for the worse when her fiancé makes a show of publicly calling off their engagement. Soon after, he throws her in jail and starts spreading nasty rumors about her. The encouragement Elizabeth receives from her loyal waiting-maid, Mireille, and her inner fury are all she needs to reconsider her goals. She will get even with those who wronged her and bring down the damned kingdom, even if it's the last thing she does. Luckily, Elizabeth is no damsel in distress and has seven powerful magic grimoires she won't hesitate to use.

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even is based on the light novel series by author Metabo Hagure and illustrator Masami. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

To say I've read and watched a lot of villainess stories would be a massive understatement. Regardless of quality, they are my garbage bin, and I am their trash panda. That said, A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even bucks the normal trends in some genuinely interesting ways.

Most of the stories in the “villainess gets revenge” sub-genre attempt to drive the suffering up to 11. What breaks the villainess is often a series of the most brutal betrayals imaginable—friends, lovers, and family all casting her aside or worse. However, A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even tones things down to a far more realistic level. What causes Elizabeth to betray her kingdom is more a death by a thousand cuts than anything over-the-top.

Everyone relies on her and shows only the meagerest lip service in gratitude for all she does. But even then, when she needs help—has been thrown in the dungeon without any proof for a crime she didn't commit—no one shows up for her: not the king whose work she helps with and not the father who claims to love her. They basically tell her to figure it out herself. Even the people whose lives have been improved by her reforms are quick to turn on her once some unsubstantiated rumors start floating around.

Thus, Elizabeth is left in a dungeon for weeks, still doing all the paperwork needed to keep the kingdom running—i.e., the work that her former fiancé is still pushing off on her even after dumping her, humiliating her, framing her for attempted murder, stealing her private assets, and locking her up without trial. And finally, it clicks: these people don't deserve her.

Usually, in stories like this, the villainess character is denounced, imprisoned, and either exiled or killed (with a bit of time travel in the latter case). However, I've never before seen one where the villainess is so hyper-competent that she effortlessly breaks herself out. Now free from the shackles of duty and honor, Elizabeth knows she could just leave—simply disappear and watch as the kingdom falls apart without her. However, that wouldn't be revenge. She wants a hand in it—wants to make every person in the kingdom acutely aware just how much they took her for granted. And that's a revenge story I am 100% here for.

I have to admit, I appreciate the fact that this premiere teased the idea of Elizabeth putting up with all of this bull, only to very easily be convinced that she doesn't really deserve any of it. Despite the show's incredibly long and obnoxious title, the premise is pretty simple and actually very familiar. This idea of nice characters, or specifically nice noble women, finally getting revenge on people or kingdoms that have taken advantage of them is becoming quite commonplace. The appeal is in the creative ways in which these noble women are screwed over and how specifically they are going to be able to fight back. I like the idea that Elizabeth was such a linchpin in keeping this country together that her leaving on its own should be enough cause for the entire kingdom to fall apart, but the fact that she's going to go out of her way to get back at everybody for wasting her time is actually kind of entertaining on its face.

It's not just the dumb prince who pushed her buttons, and it's dumb because he could've gotten away with everything if he just wasn't an idiot, since Elizabeth was even willing to let him sleep around if he just stayed out of her way. It's also the parents of Elizabeth and the prince who seemed to treat the situation like some kind of test that she needs to overcome after being made fully aware of just how much she has to deal with. There is a lot of commentary here about how people really take for granted those who run things. What I'm most curious about is what is going to immediately happen in the next episode, because while Elizabeth is making this declaration of war, I wonder just how much she's going to have to do to get back at them. It's funny that I'm more drawn to the political fallout of the show than I am to any of the magical grimoire stuff. That was even treated as an afterthought during the final third of the episode, to the point where I honestly didn't care too much about the explanation.

Outside that, though, this premiere was really just OK. Once it's made clear what the setup is, you start picking apart all of the other things that make up the show's foundation, and it really is just…fine at best. The designs are really boring and uninspired, plus there's nothing really visually interesting about this show that makes it stand out from any other fantasy series that's airing this season. Elizabeth's overall patience with everything was funny to a point, but I think by the end of this first episode, she very firmly was fitting into a Mary Sue category. I'm hoping to get a bit more drama and maybe something a bit more dynamic by episode two, but we'll have to wait and see.

Part of the problem with tropey fantasy is that even if there is a nugget of originality at its core, we're forced to sit through a premiere that must go through all the setup that we've seen before. Elizabeth is a young noble lady who has been engaged to the crown prince since her youth. She's beautiful, highly competent, and hardworking, but the prince falls in love with an exotic girl who is hinted to have come from another world. The girl schemes to frame Elizabeth as abusive, and the prince makes a grand public accusation at a fancy party. At the bottom of a staircase, for some reason. (It's always at the bottom of a staircase.)

I understand that part of that is to set the scene: Elizabeth works so hard for the kingdom, so when even the peasants who have benefited from the social programs she's set up turn on her, she's out for blood. Instead of being banished or even just disgraced, Elizabeth is imprisoned and sentenced to death; instead of seeking a peaceful existence elsewhere, she decides she's going to get revenge. Villainess series are rarely focused on vengeance, so Elizabeth's fury is at least a somewhat novel twist, even if male-led revenge stories are a dime a dozen. Yes, sometimes changing the genders is all it takes to make me more interested in a story. I support women's wrongs.

A reasonably well-produced premiere adds some flavor to the otherwise bland story as well. The design work is standard for the setting and genre, but at least Elizabeth's dresses are pretty, and the animation is sharp with some clever storyboarding. Nothing exciting or groundbreaking, just kind of nice to look at. It's nice to listen to as well; Saori Ōnishi shines as Elizabeth goes through the emotional process of realizing the extent to which she's been abandoned, and the rage that wells up within her.

Do I have high expectations for this show? No, not at all. But at the very least, I'm not dreading watching the next episode.

I think there are a few reasons I am ever so slightly more interested in watching a junk-food revenge fantasy anime starring a scorned heroine rather than the usual Kirito-haired dweeb. For one, I just like anime girls, okay? They're much more pleasant to look at than the umpteenth failed clone of the guy from Sword Art Online. Also, since most of these women-led anime are derived from light novels and other sources aimed at a predominantly female demographic, we don't usually have to deal with the thick layer of Mountain Dew-stained scuzz that covers the self-consciously edgy trash made for teenage boys. The otome game inspired mush is just as generic, don't get me wrong, but they don't tend to get their rocks off by being actively hostile and unpleasant. Finally, even when you do get a character who seeks a more violent and aggressive form of retribution against their enemies, the rare overpowered woman that we get in these types of shows is usually held to a higher standard of actually being an interesting character to follow around.

So, with all that being said, while I wouldn't say my hopes for A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even were astronomically high, I at least held out a prayer that the show wouldn't bore my eyeballs right out of my skull. On that front, the show does its job just fine. The episode definitely takes its sweet time getting us to where our heroine Elizabeth is fully betrayed by her ex-boyfriend, locked up in prison by the conniving pink-haired villainess, and ready to bust out of lockup to exact her revenge, but it's not a slog to get there. The art, animation, and direction of this first episode are all operating at maybe fifteen percent higher quality than most of the lazy competition made for the boy weebs of the world, which makes even the duller parts of A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even basically watchable.

When Elizabeth finally does learn the truth and teams up with her trusty maid Mireille, it's an appropriately satisfying turn for the otherwise completely pleasant and amiable protagonist. She tried doing things the nice way, but she's had about all she can stand, and she can't stand any more. While I do wish that the writing and character designs were unafraid to get just a teensy bit weirder and stand out more from the crowd, what we've got with this pair's friendship is cute enough, and they deserve to make all of those dumbasses throughout the kingdom pay. To be clear, I don't think anything about A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even is exceptional. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch this show if I wasn't being paid to do so. However, the bar is buried so deep into the subterranean depths of the planet's core on account of how much truly miserable garbage we have to sift through every single season, so a show about an overpowered protagonist that is no more than adequate on every front gets glowing remarks. It's a sorry state for modern media to be in, but at least fans of anime shlock get a halfway decent show to enjoy for once.