(no subject)
Nov. 10th, 2020 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsFor 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:
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.
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:
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.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-11 04:39 pm (UTC)(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.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-12 02:37 am (UTC)(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!
no subject
Date: 2020-11-12 07:23 pm (UTC)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.