skygiants | (no subject)

For all the obvious reasons I spent a lot of time last week trying to Be Distracted and as a result ended up watching the entire first season of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

The title is a bit misleading because really only about half the routes ever lead to catastrophe even at the start of the show, and by the time the action gets going there's really very little chance of doom getting any kind of look-in whatsoever. However, that doesn't stop our intrepid protagonist -- a nerd who died young in a car accident (as I understand is fairly standard for isekai) and then transmigrated into the otome game she was playing at the time as Villainous Mean Girl Katerina Claes -- from prepping with great determination for her Inevitable Tragic Ending.

These preparations largely consist of:

a.) befriending as many of the main cast of characters as she can so she never gets murdered or exiled for Being Outrageously Mean
b.) learning to farm so that when she does get exiled, she'll have a second career available to her in vegetable husbandry

... that's it, that's the plan! Fortunately for Katerina, Plan A is wildly successful and inevitably results in the entire cast of the game, male and female, falling madly in love with her by episode four. Unfortunately for all of Katerina's aspiring love interests, the joke of the show is that Katerina is terminally oblivious to the dedication of her harem and thus instead continues laser-focused on Plan B, 'hone farming skills to perfection.'

It's very cute! It's very silly! The boy!romance subplots cover the full array of over-the-top otome tropes from 'manipulative arranged marriage royal fiance' to 'sulky tsundere rival with self-esteem issues' to 'devoted stepbrother with inappropriate feelings'; the girl!romances, to my mild regret, all fall into a fairly similar mold of 'love to have a tea party with my beloved friend and talk about our feelings!' with a greater or lesser degree of 'TRULY wish she'd get the hint about slamming me into a wall already' thrown into the mix. (Primed by Scum Villain, I was expecting the original game's protagonist to turn out to be the main love interest, but although she's definitely in the mix she really doesn't get much more narrative focus than any of the others.)

Here's the opening sequence, which I think gives a good sense of the vibe:

Watch on YouTube

This is based on a light novel series and I'm definitely curious about the books; if anyone's read them, I'd be curious to know how much they differ and whether it's exactly the same level of fluff.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

caramarie

I haven't seen the anime to compare, but the books are pretty damn fluffy! I've read the first four, and while Katerina has started to get somewhat of a clue, I feel like at this point there has to be some plot reason for her romantic obliviousness, ha.

I'll probably read the rest, but I have to be in the right mood for it...

From:

skygiants

Over the course of the anime at least three people flat-out confess their love to her and every time she just gets a thousand-yard stare and then flees! IMPRESSIVE. I did enjoy it a lot but I also wonder just how long the premise can possibly be drawn out....

From:

umanothing

I love the villainess trope! It's my favourite trope! Most of the manhwa I read nowadays are villainess ones but I'm afraid of running out.
I'll definitely watch this when I'm in the mood to binge. I usually don't go to the books first.

From:

skygiants

I've been aware it's super popular but this is my first experience with it! Do you have any others you'd recommend?

From:

umanothing

This is a manhwa, but 'Beware of the Villainess' is scrumptious and it's on mangadex.

Edited Date: 2020-11-15 06:21 am (UTC)

From:

larryhammer

Haven't actually gotten to the light novels, though they've been on my radar for fluffy distractionability. This sounds promising. I like that kind of joke. (I've been reaching for Chinese over Japanese distractions, of late.)

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I haven't watched a ton of anime at all lately (mostly just because I don't have a lot of time to watch stuff solo) but last Monday night I was staring into the void and like 'you know what, I need some BRIGHT COLORS and PEPPY MUSIC' and here we are!

From:

gramarye1971

The manga (which is based on the books) is definitely similarly fluffy! The books, understandably, do include a few more instances of character development/backstory. I seem to remember one plot point involving the reasoning behind Katarina's game!mother's hatred of Keith -- she had an arranged marriage with Katarina's father and was very conscious of the fact that they hadn't married for love, so she felt humiliated and angry when her husband not only apparently had an affair but forced her to adopt his supposed bastard son and made the boy his heir. When our!Katarina helps clear up the misunderstanding, her parents are able to figure out that they do in fact love each other, and so her mother is able to welcome Keith into the home and treat him like her own son.

(Also, without getting too deep into novel spoilers, Prince Geordo is more than a little terrifying in his single-minded devotion to Katarina, and Keith has every right to find him 100% sus!)

I also wish they'd been able to give the female characters more romances plots, but considering that in the Fortune Lover game they weren't supposed to be more than clingy jealous rivals (Mary in Alan's route) or plot points to unlock (Sophia in Nicol's route), the fact that both of them fell so hard for Katarina is kind of cute to me.

The later volumes of the manga and novels (after Katarina "beats the game") are doing some things with the dark magic stuff hinted at in the final episodes of the anime. So it's still ongoing, though I don't know at what point there'd be enough of a plot arc to make a satisfying second season.

From:

skygiants

lol, that's one of the things I was curious about -- there's like a one-line comment in the show about how Katarina fixed her parents' marriage and got her mom on board with Keith, and I'm like, "SURELY this is a longer plot in the books?"

(Even without novel spoilers I feel safe in saying that Geordo is extremely sus!)

It's definitely cute that all the other girls fall so hard for Katerina and I support all of them, I just wish there was a little more variety in the way those dynamics play out ... let's get some Tropes for the lesbians!

I think a second season has been confirmed with ambiguous timeline; deffinitely curious to see what happens next!

From:

gramarye1971

Haha, yes, the fixing of parents' marriage really could have used another scene or two for clarity. There's another sweet backstory bit about how the Claes family gardener (Tom) loves Katarina because of her care and attention to the gardens...which helped Tom deal with the grief he felt over the death of Katarina's grandfather (the current Duke Claes's father), who also had loved and cared for the gardens. So Tom becomes a surrogate grandfather to Katarina, in a sense.

Thinking about it a little bit more, there's something really sad in Katarina's obliviousness in that it's partly her ditzy personality but also partly out of existential, deterministic fear. The idea that obviously no one could really fall in love with her, because she's supposed to be the bad guy, right? That she can't entertain the idea of love for even a moment because it means a Bad End. I haven't really gone looking for fanfic, but I feel like it's an angle that demands fic writing.

From:

littlerhymes

This sounds amazing lol.

I've had a few villainess c-novels on my to-be-read list, love the confirmation this is a flourishing genre!

From:

skygiants

I really feel I need to broaden my knowledge of tropey transmigration tales, right now all I've got under my belt is this one and Scum Villain and that's ... a RANGE.

From:

phoenicity

This is a really cute series. The manga is better, imo--fleshes out the characters more, and I felt the anime tended to flanderize Gerald, Mary, and Keith especially. Also the manga and light novels tend to go a little harder on the girl/girl romances so there's that too. Maria comes across as a much stronger contender there. Poor Nicol kind of gets left out in the cold in all versions, possibly because they decided his canon backstory was too dark for this series.

From:

skygiants

The one I'm really curious about (from Wikipedia) is the 'hard mode' version of the manga where she doesn't get her memories back until she's a teenager -- have you read that one? What's it like?

(lol yeah there really is NOT much there to Nicol in the anime. What's his canon backstory?)

From:

phoenicity

Not everyone likes Verge of Destruction, but it's definitely a really interesting look at the original game universe! The most interesting relationship dynamic by far is probably Bakarina with Keith as original Keith has...Understandable Issues with her. You also get to learn more about what the original Katarina was like and that she did have a couple redeeming qualities, like she's still very close with Anne and even has a real friend.

RE: Nicol's backstory(TW for CSA!!):

So this is only referenced a few times in the Light Novels/Manga and immediately dropped for more ANTICS, but Nicol has been suffering harassment and outright assault at noble parties since the time he was a child, causing him to withdraw emotionally in order to discourage his admirers, not that it worked. It's kind of vaguely implied that the reason he fell for Katarina is because she appreciated him without making him feel like an object. It really felt to me that the author realized that they bit off more than they could chew and hastily erased any more than passing comments about Nicol's backstory at the last minute leaving him with "pretty" and "likes his sister" and sometimes "angst about crushing on his best friend's fiancee".

From:

eglantiere

made me binge! god, that was so silly and ssssssssssso sweetly satisfying, omg. poor katarina has a brain consistency of a turnip, but she was so adorable, and seeing her poor harem suffer was great. i vote she keeps them all!