Carolina Sanchez is the second daughter of a powerful duke, who suffers greatly because of her incredibly callous and vain older sister. Carolina views herself as insignificant compared to Flora, who’s so magically gifted that she’s expected to become a saint. Even apart from magical abilities, Carolina doesn’t seem to have any other talents she can be proud of. All she wants is a single talent, so she can have one thing to excel at, and have one reason to be loved. But as it is now, she finds it difficult to raise any defense against her sister’s vicious insults. However, she might not have to worry about that for much longer, because for the sake of the kingdom, she’s expected to marry prince Edward Ruby Martinez, of the powerful Empire of Malcosias. This is not a dream scenario (just yet) though, because she’s unsure whether she’ll have a good life with him, especially due to his unsavory nickname “the bloodthirsty prince.” But before she leaves her home country, her father has something important to say to her…

This was a flawed start. The plot is very basic: We have a bullied protagonist, a villainess sister, and an arranged marriage with a shady prince. She’s seemingly the untalented one, but eventually it’ll become clear she’s actually the stronger one of the two. To an extent, I understand it’s fair to criticize the anime for how unoriginal this is, and on top of that I found the dialogue between Flora and Carolina in the first half to be pushing it a bit too far. Flora’s meanness and Carolina’s passivity in that scene bordered on the unnatural. This combined with the events towards the end of the episode make the relationships feel artificial, except if you interpret in a charitable and somewhat imaginative way. However, I wouldn’t say this episode failed on all fronts. In fact, the emotional moments of the second half felt genuine, despite the lack of characterization. So for me, I’m still more positive than negative about this one. If you can take a bit of melodrama, then I think this one is worth trying. Personally, I’m still interested in watching episode 2, but if that episode turns out to be mid, I likely won’t have the patience to continue.

The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power is streaming on Crunchyroll.