King’s Proposal Light Novel by Date A Live Creators Gets Anime

The King’s Proposal light novel series is getting an anime adaptation. The announcement came during Kadokawa’s Fantasia Bunko autumn livestream event on October 25. No additional details about the anime were shared at the time.

King’s Proposal is written by Koushi Tachibana and illustrated by Tsunako, the same creative team behind the Date A Live series. The story centers on Mushiki Kuga, a high school boy who comes across a powerful witch named Saika Kuozaki at the moment she is fatally wounded. Saika transfers both her abilities and her physical form to Mushiki, leaving him to attend an academy for mages while posing as Saika, all to protect the world from mysterious entities that appear with frightening regularity.

The series launched in 2021 and Kadokawa has released eight novels in Japan, with the eighth arriving on August 20. Yen Press is publishing the series in English, with the sixth volume released on June 3 and the seventh scheduled for January 6. A manga adaptation by Nemo Kurio ran on Gangan Online from February 2023 and concluded at six volumes, with the final volume out March 12.

For those unfamiliar with the creative team, Tachibana and Tsunako’s previous collaboration, Date A Live, ran as a light novel series from 2011 to 2020 across 22 volumes and went on to inspire five anime seasons, a film, manga adaptations, and games. The most recent anime, Date A Live V, premiered in April 2024, and a new project for the franchise was also announced this year.

My take: King’s Proposal is one of those series that has been quietly building a dedicated readership, and an anime announcement feels like the next natural step. The premise is genuinely creative, and Tsunako’s character designs should translate beautifully to animation.