I’m in Love with the Villainess

I’m in Love with the Villainess is a five volume light novel series, dating from 2019. The first volume, and the first four chapters of the second volume were turned into a 12 episode anime released in the Fall of 2023. I’m going to be reviewing the anime…well, a mini-review. There will be spoilers.

WataOshi is an isekai, the story of Oohashi Rei, a typical overworked Tokyo OL, who suddenly is transported into the body of Rae Taylor, the protagonna of her favorite otome game, Revolution. No reason is given for the change. She isn’t hit by truck-kun, doesn’t die at her desk, and there’s no intermediate meeting with a goddess. She’s just suddenly sitting at a desk in school, inside the body of Rae Taylor. No indication of what the original Rae Taylor thought of all this.

Rei/Rae, it turns out, isn’t interested in men. While Revolution presents a series of handsome males for the main heroine to romance, that’s not why Rei played it. Instead, she played it because she was infatuated with the villainess of the piece, Claire Francois. Waking up in the middle of the game, with no cause or explanation, she promptly accepts and assimilates what happened and what it implies, declaring her love for Claire within four minutes of the opening scene.

The rest of the anime is a yuri rom-com that runs through many of the standard isekai tropes. Magical school [√], magical duels [√], magical monsters [√], multiple crown princes [√], bullying of our commoner heroine by the noble girls [√], and finally, of course, introduction of Japanese food to an otherwise bland isekai diet [√][√][√]. What makes it a nice change of pace is the introduction of various yuri elements, including a straightforward, and as far as I know unprecedented, discussion of lesbianism that takes of most of the second half of one of the episodes.

The dramatic peak comes with the visit of Claire’s old friend and semi-love interest (for a while she thought she was a boy), Manaria Sousse. Manaria seemingly makes a play for Claire’s affections, goading Rae to challenge her to enter a ‘whose love is stronger contest’ that just happens to pop up at this point in the school year. Using her deep knowledge of the game, Rae obtains a rare item that overcomes Manaria’s entry. Conceding defeat (and for plot reasons), Manaria returns to her home country, Claire realizes that she really does love Rae, and the anime ending is quite determinedly tied up in a nice neat bow.

Except that it isn’t. If one pays attention to the details (OK, and reads ahead in the novels) there’s a lot of loose ends in the plot of the anime. What happened to the commoner’s revolt? Why did Rae keep insisting that Claire should never give up? Who was that masked man? Why did Prince Yu look so good in a maid costume? Finally, why was the game called Revolution, and what happened in the rest of Volume 2?

The answer, of course, is that there was a revolution. In the remainder of Volume 2, Rae and Claire team up to save the royal family and bring the revolt to a peacefully successful end. Then and only then do they retire to a quiet suburban home to raise some adopted children and enjoy a contented yuri lifestyle, while awaiting their next call of destiny.

I really liked the books (read via J-Novel). I thought the anime was just OK. The character designs were OK. The artwork was OK. The animation was just fair. They captured most of the action of the first 1.3 novels, but they lost the nuance you can only get through reading the printed word, and they did their best to close off any chance of a second season.

Funny thing about Yu, wasn’t it?

Fall 2023 Anime Season

Normally, about this time of the year I’d publish my based-on-cover-art preview of the upcoming season. Unfortunately, this season, like last, is woefully short of commentable covers. So I’m just going to be dull and tell y’all what I plan to watch and why.

First is a group of shows that are special because they are based on light novels what I have read or am currently reading:

I shall survive using potions: 30-something Office Lady gets mistakenly killed by the gods. To make it up to her, she’s isekai’d into your typical medieval world. Bullies a dim-bulb goddess into giving her the ability to create any kind of potion in any kind of container. Ends up having to conceal her abilities from all the powerful people who want to control her.

What I liked about the LN plot was that, instead of just having this one-trick overpowered skill, she also has to work on not being discovered while she’s using it. The first episode tracked well with the LN. I’m looking forward to her establishing her first shop in a new country.

Our Dating Story: Cute and popular gyaru, who sleeps around a lot (and where were girls like that when I was in HS?) decides to date a nerdy virgin guy, who doesn’t want to have sex unless it’s meaningful (another type that I never met in my hormone-sodden HS days).

A somewhat typical popular girl picks insecure boy story. The LN only just started on J-Novel and the anime only just started on Crunchyroll, so the most I can say right now is that it’s a somewhat cute romcom that looks to be worth watching.

Tearmoon Empire: Marie Antoinette kind of princess reverts to her younger self after being beheaded in a peasant’s revolt. Works hard to avoid that fate the second time around. She’s almost as dense as her plot-cousin Bakarina, but fortunately for her, all the people around her are even denser.

I liked the LN enough that I bought the books instead of just reading it once on J-Novel. She surprises one of her advisors by spouting back is economic theories before he has a chance to lecture her on them in this timeline. He decides she’s a genius, and when you’re a genius, everybody assumes you’re playing 3D chess instead of tic-tac-toe.

I’m in love with the Villainess: Full up yuri romance about an OL gamer who suddenly wakes up inside her favorite game. Her favorite character in this otome game is the villainess, who shows a surprisingly human side.

Another title that I have the books for. Yes, it’s an isekai, and yes she’s totally overpowered by being a major fan of the game — to the point of writing fan-fiction about it — but it’s still an excellent slow-burn yuri romance.

Next, we have a trio of gaming anime, only one of which is an isekai.

16bit Sensation: Gaming industry illustrator wanders into a suspicious-looking shop (one that disappears a few hours later) and gets dumped back in time to 1992, the peak of the hentai game era.

Interesting idea, reasonably well executed, although I think the protagonna is a little too squeaky-voiced, and she could easily prove her futureness by showing them her 2023 ID. Still, it looks like it has potential.

Shangri-La Frontier : Straight up full immersion gaming. Guy who’s been playing nothing but garbage games checks into a top-tier VR game, pursued by a girl who really likes him.

Appears to be a fun program, despite the Loony-Tunes look of the protagonist.

Let Me Check the Walkthrough: Accidentally summoned to a game world as a hero, our protagonna has to train up the real hero.

Another one with potential. I like the idea. Unfortunately, the execution is a little over-the-top. This might be the first one to go.

So that’s it. Seven programs that I’m likely to see through to the end. There’s another handful or so that I’m not so sure of. They’ll probably end up in a TL;DR Real Soon Now.