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.

Threaded | Flat

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...

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.

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.)

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.

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!

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.

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!