Princess Anisphia may be the oldest child of the royal family but she has no interest in ruling a country, especially since that would involve marrying a man and she likes girls, not guys! But after stumbling in upon her brother publicly breaking off his engagement (seriously, who does that outside of an otome game?!) she snatches up his now ex-fiancée Euphyllia to become her assistant in magicology research; both in order to give Euphie a private place to sort out her feelings on the dissolution and a chance to recover her personal image by introducing Anis’ magical inventions to the world. And Anis certainly wouldn’t mind if Euphie fell for her instead — after all she is a beautiful, now-eligible, young noble woman, but that wasn’t actually her main reason for all of this, it’s true!
Most stories with a denounced “villainess” treat the event in one of two ways: it’s a future event that the main character is striving to avoid at all costs (like in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! or Cross-Dressing Villainess Cecilia Sylvie) or it’s an event at the very start of the story that the main character has to get through before things can really begin (as in I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming the Final Boss and Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends: The Figurehead Queen Is Strongest At Her Own Pace). The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady takes a slightly different tack by yes, having Euphie “fall from grace” right at the start of the story but the story also indirectly asks why, why would an event that sounds so fantastical that you’d expect to only see it in a game actually happen?
Neither Anis nor Euphie can think of why Anis’ brother Prince Algard would make such a dumb political move, his friends/supporters don’t normally seem like the kind of wooly-headed sycophants to go along with such a crazy idea, and Euphie’s supposed victim, Lainie the commoner, doesn’t appear to have spread lies slandering Euphie either. Combined with the fact that the king and queen seem more interested about having Euphie as a daughter-in-law who was raised to be a capable queen and less concerned about which of their children she marries (which brings to mind Prison Life is Easy for a Villainess, although everything there was played for laughs) and you have a story where the “denounced” character actually ends up closer to the other characters than before and not the other way around.
While Euphie isn’t a boring main character in the slightest, she’s reserved but finding the strength to follow her convictions and beliefs, Anis is a VERY fun main character and the fact that she lived her past life on Earth doesn’t actually play much into the story. Much like Dahlia, Anis uses her memories of Earth to inspire new objects she invents (like a witch’s broomstick or the magical equivalent of an electric kettle) but she’s not trying to say, introduce mayonnaise to the kingdom or commit other acts of isekai colonialism. Since Anis remembered her past life so early in this life, those memories are a part of who she is but only a part. She is a bit of an overpowered protagonist however, so it’s a good thing she isn’t the sole main character otherwise the internet would be filled with people calling her too OP (what with all of her inventions, up to and including magical doping so that she doesn’t just go toe to toe with the best mages and fighters in the kingdom, she can do what they can’t). But between having Euphie as a dual lead and the light hearted tone of the story everything manages to not feel like a power fantasy, yuri-themed.
My biggest issue with the series so far is that sometimes it can be hard to tell what character is speaking in a conversation if the character tags aren’t present. I don’t know if this was equally difficult to differentiate in the original Japanese or if it’s something brought about by the localization, but I shouldn’t have as much trouble as I did following Anis (a young lady with eccentric memories of another world) and her father (a seasoned king who approaches problems with pragmatism) having a conversation together. The story does switch points of view between Anis and Euphie as well which is usually easier to follow but that’s strictly through context clues, again the actual “voices” feel very similar.
As I finished the second volume I thought that this arc was neatly wrapped up and that it’d even be a good place to finish the whole story, only to be told by other reviewers that volume 3 actually closes the arc and doesn’t feel tacked on at all! So I am looking forward to finishing this arc of MagiRevo, either in light novel form or in the anime adaptation; the series is ongoing so I am curious to see what Piero Karasu writes once the initial conflict is defeated but with main characters like these I’m sure it’ll be a fun time.