In a world where monsters menace humanity, there are saints—women with the sacred power to fend off the monsters. They are considered essential to national defense. The Kingdom of Girtonia has the greatest saint ever, Philia Adenauer. However, she’s unable to smile, and everyone considers her charmless and arrogant; they also grouse that she disrupts people’s livelihoods by solving problems that others might have been paid to work on. Girtonia actually has two saints, the other being Philia’s younger sister Mia, who is widely beloved. Philia finds the situation baffling; no matter how hard she works, people find fault with her. She attributes their abusive parents’ favoritism toward Mia to her own inability to smile, and she decided at a young age that she would “have to work very hard to ever be loved.” She thought her engagement to Prince Julius meant someone had finally come to appreciate her, but no. Julius negotiates with her parents to break off their engagement and says he’s gonna marry Mia instead. They haven’t discussed this with Mia yet, and to get Philia out of the picture and make sure Mia accepts the engagement, Julius has negotiated a deal with the country of Parnacorta, which lacks a saint. In exchange for a sum greater than Girtonia’s entire annual budget, he’s sending them Philia. Julius can run the show despite only being second prince because his father is deathly ill and the first prince, Fernand, has withdrawn from any public role due to Julius’s strongarm tactics. So, off Philia goes. To her surprise, upon passing through the border gate, Philia is met with an honor guard.
What really intrigues me with this opening episode is the portrayal of Mia. We’ve seen these Cinderella-esque stories of a mistreated child before. In them, it’s common that the non-main-character sibling is a two-faced schemer, putting on a charming front while stabbing the protagonist sibling in the back. But I think maybe we’ll see a subversion of expectations here. It’s hard to be sure, since Mia only gets a couple scenes, plus what we hear other characters say about her…but I got the feeling that she might genuinely love and adore her older sister. It sets up the possibility of some really interesting fallout when she finds out what their dastardly parents and the prince did to her. That alone is enough to make me want to see more. Besides that, I’m sure the inevitable story of Philia learning about love and finding meaning in a new place will be heartwarming, and while the animation was average, there were some really pretty backgrounds and strong music. I recommend trying this one.
The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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