May I Ask for One Final Thing? Is About Evil Rich Men Getting Punched in the Nose, and That’s Pretty Neat

By Elijah Gonzalez | November 6, 2025 | 11:00am

Anime Features may i ask for one final thing?

May I Ask for One Final Thing? Is About Evil Rich Men Getting Punched in the Nose, and That’s Pretty Neat

In a seasonal anime lineup defined by sequels and known quantities, May I Ask for One Final Thing? has proven an out-of-left-field delight, a sucker punch that has defied expectations. What’s the secret to its success? A violence-loving heroine who uses her fists to viciously pummel evil aristocrats.

This story begins in an exceedingly familiar place: we follow the noble lady Scarlet El Vandimion, who, like many heroines before her, is wrongly labeled as a “villainess.” In this case, she’s accused of scheming against her fiancé, Kyle von Pallistan, the second crown prince.

For those unfamiliar, this basic plot setup has become one of the most common premises in many anime/manga/light novels: the daughter of a Duke (or some other member of the noble hierarchy) is engaged to an even higher-ranking aristocrat, an aloof jerk who is usually blonde. Then the protagonist is wrongly accused of corruption by her fiancé in front of the rest of the upper crust, as the dastardly man slanders her to pursue a different woman. Some of these are isekai stories where the protagonist is reincarnated into a visual novel as a character who actually was a scheming villainess, while in others, these allegations are entirely manufactured.

Throughout the first episode of May I Ask for One Final Thing?, we see that Scarlet has done nothing wrong. In fact, she’s been on the receiving end of Kyle’s bullying since she was a child, eventually developing an ice-cold exterior to hide her true feelings. All through it, she conceals both her anger and the fact that she’s one of the strongest fighters in the entire kingdom, gifted with powerful time-control magic and a mean right hook that earned her the nickname “The Mad Dog Noblewoman.”

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However, when the second prince attempts to publicly humiliate Scarlet, accusing her of crimes she didn’t commit in front of a crowd of sneering underlings, her carefully suppressed righteous indignation boils over. At last, we arrive at the central premise. Scarlet puts on her fingerless leather gloves and beats the everlasting shit out of every contemptuous elite in the room.

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She casts a spell on herself to speed up her movements, and then proceeds to clobber each and every one of these human garbage bags with such force that it would almost be uncomfortable to watch if they weren’t a bunch of sniveling deplorables who brag about enslaving people. The scene ends with our heroine hitting her former fiancé with enough force to leave him embedded in a stone wall.

To state the obvious, the scene is satisfying. It’s vindicating to see these horrible men get their lights knocked out by a badass woman who revels in meting out knuckle-sandwich flavored justice. Liden Films conveys the physical violence of the scene, with faces recoiling from our heroine’s supernatural strength, and eyes rolling back in their sockets. As Scarlet takes her time clobbering each and every one of them, their ruby red blood splatters on her smiling face; she’s a bit of a sicko, but her sadism begins and ends with punishing the wicked.

In some ways, May I Ask For One Final Thing? seems to be going after the same thing as many lesser anime set in pseudo-medieval fantasy worlds: power fantasy. The difference, though, is what Scarlet does with her power.

There is no shortage of isekai and milquetoast fantasy series, many of which originate from the self-publishing site Shōsetsuka ni Narō, that feature a once-loser protagonist (almost always a man) who uncovers some secret skill that makes them super powerful and awesome. Once they’ve gained this ability, either after reincarnating or while at the nadir of their incel-y self-loathing, they almost always seem to use their new skills to reinforce existing inequalities, exploit women, and often literally “buy” enslaved people (I wish I were making this last point up, but it’s something that happens in The Rising of Shield Hero, Mushoku Tensei, and quite a few more). For these men, it’s not about fixing the world that they were previously at the bottom of, but making the most of now being at the top.

By contrast, Scarlet uses her power to punch up, and after teaming up with those who are also going after the most wicked nobles in the kingdom, she gets to satisfy her desire to positively demolish horrible people while also doing some good in the process—at one point, she literally breaks up a would-be “human auction,” leaving a pile of unconscious enslavers in her wake.

It’s a welcome bit of wish fulfilment, portraying a world where the cruel men at the top of the social hierarchy get what they deserve, unlike reality, where they win elections, skirt prison sentences, and use their influence and power to exploit others. It gives the series a timely edge despite its antiquated setting.

Another interesting thread, which I’ll be vague about to avoid spoilers, is that the series seems self-aware of its place in the broader context of fantasy anime. Specifically, it’s been building up a foe who basically operates like the protagonist in one of these previously described lesser stories, as they use their newfound abilities to twist others to their will. It is a bit reminiscent of the underrated series The Executioner and Her Way of Life, which is about an assassin who kills isekai protagonists who would use their power to inflict mass suffering.

While May I Ask For One Final Thing? doesn’t necessarily deal in great shades of subtlety or ask big questions about the nature of exploitative power structures, it offers a much-needed reprieve from reality: here, the bad men who run the world end up on their asses after getting beaten to a pulp by our unstoppable heroine. Sometimes, that’s enough.

May I Ask For One Final Thing? streams on Crunchyroll, with new episodes on Thursdays.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.