The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked

Miya is the illegitimate child of a prominent family. When her mother dies and her father's estate agrees to take her in, she's convinced she knows what awaits her in her new home: a life of servitude and misery at the hands of her wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Yet when she finally meets the women, she expects to treat her like dirt, but they actually end up being...sweet.

My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked is based on the manga series by Otsuji. The anime series is streaming on REMOW's YouTube channel, Prime Video, Viki, and Tubi on Wednesdays.

At first, My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked tries to play the whole thing straight. After living a life of poverty with her recently deceased mother, Miya is the archetypal orphan doomed to a life of misery and neglect in the home of her absent father and his “other” family. The dour colors, overwrought score, and genuinely melancholy tone do a decent job of selling this atmosphere of gloom. Provided, of course, that you somehow found this series without ever reading its title.

Yes, as Miya almost immediately discovers, her stepsisters Marika and Arisa are the bubbliest and most welcoming new siblings imaginable, taking to pampering and praising Miya without a second thought. Even with this stroke of good fortune, though, Miya knows that their imposing, stone-cold mother, Teru, must surely be the cruel baroness she has been afraid of all along—okay, yeah, I know you all get the point by now. Teru is also a sweetheart who has no problem tossing all of her idiot husband's stuff into storage so her new stepdaughter can get a nice room to call her own in their lavish mansion.

The sudden-if-predictable pivot to the overwhelming niceness of Miya's new family does make for a decently funny joke, at least the first few times. The new women in Miya's life are all nice and likable, obviously, since the whole premise of the show would fall apart if this weren't the case. The main issue I have with this premiere is the unsurprising point of diminishing returns these jokes reach. Miya thinks that Miya will judge her for being illiterate, but no, she's just excited that her new bestie will get to read the coolest books ever for the very first time once they provide Miya with a proper education. Miya is sure that her sisters will be ashamed and angry at having to teach a girl their own age the basics of reading and writing, but no, they're totally excited to spend such quality time together. Later, after working hard to clean Miya's new room, Teru seems to disapprove of the girls' work, but no, she's just worried that all of this agitated dust is going to upset Miya's lungs, so it's off to the guest room while the main room airs out. And so on, and so on.

None of this is bad per se, because the family dynamic is heartwarming enough to be at least mildly entertaining. Still, this show is the very definition of a one-trick pony, and the problem is that the one joke that it has depends entirely on Miya acting borderline delusional. It's one thing for her to be shocked by the niceness of her new family at first, but for her to be just as surprised by Teru, Marika, and Arisa just does not make any sense at all. It isn't like the show is creating complex situations where you see the ugly parts of the women's personalities start to show, which might dull the repetition of the bit somewhat. Miya's new sisters and mother are just preternaturally kind and patient people. It's as simple as that.

Despite my misgivings about the sustainability of this premiere, I do see hope for its success as a long-term story. The interactions between Miya, Arisa, and Marika are cute enough, especially once we get past the obligatory “Eeeeeehhhh? They're so nice!” reactions and can just let the girls banter. It is also heartwarming to see the family stand up to the other people who live all around them and who aren't so improbably lovable. If the series can just cool it with Miya's goldfish memory and introduce more characters to round out the cast, I think My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked could develop into a genuinely solid summer comedy.

As the title suggests, My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked is a parody of Cinderella-type stories in which the main character finds herself living among an affluent adoptive family under tense circumstances, except her step-siblings and step-mother are actually super chill and supportive! I don't know if this gag has enough gas in the tank to entertain for a full season, but the joke certainly hadn't gotten old by the end of this first episode. That being said, this premise does rob much of this first episode of any kind of tension or conflict, with any potential problem resolving itself almost immediately. This makes the premiere of My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked a fun and breezy watch, but not all that interesting.

Opening on the plucky and diligent Miya, a young girl who has to work in what seems to be early 20th-century Japan to care for her ailing mother and aged grandmother, tragedy quickly strikes, and Miya has to move in with her half-siblings and their mother after her own mother passes away. The illegitimate child of the patriarch of this well-to-do family, Miya expects to be treated with disdain and abuse as proof of his infidelity. However, her new stepmother and step-sisters are super cool and welcome her with open arms, even as their character designs and mannerisms are rooted in cliches around this kind of storytelling. At the end of the episode, Miya's worried maternal grandmother offers to take her away from what she assumes is a tough situation, but Miya chooses to stay and enjoy her new, cozy, cushy life with a family that is ready and eager to support her.

While the central premise of My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked is more novel and entertaining than I expected, with production values higher than the average gag-focused anime, this premiere doesn't exactly inspire me to watch more. While this will certainly become a cozy, popcorn watch for a fair number of people this season, I felt like I had experienced everything this series had to offer by the end of the premiere. I don't want to discourage anyone from watching this show as there's a lot of joy and validation to be had in seeing an anxious smol bean come up now that she has the material resources and support system to do so, but I don't think this show is for me.