WATASHI NO OSHI WA AKUYAKU REIJOU.

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ComedyWatashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou.
NOVEL ComedyWatashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou.
MANGA ComedyNae Choeaeneun Agyeogyeongae: Another Revolution Story
ONA ComedyWatashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou.: Rae to Claire ni Ichimon Ittou

REVIEWS

• 

  melamuna

  70/100
  A high energy, cute, and charming series with a melancholic subtext that keeps me hooked episode by episode

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  Romance is a genre that I always get to relate to. It's that innocent feeling of falling in love with someone so much that you go crazy with them to the point where you go through lengthy obstacles just to talk to someone, and that's no better represented by the innocent feeling of anime romance genres. But romance isn't always bubbles and colors; it's an anxious, lonely journey for a certain individual, and you have this second-guessing nature about whether the one you're pursuing really likes you or not. However,there hasn't been much anime that encapsulates the empty loneliness of romance as its main concept. We have certain anime that explored that concept, such as Kaguya-Sama: Love is War, but that series played with a lot of concepts that were only introduced minimally; Kuzu no Honkai used the concept as its main theme, but that series has execution problems; and other romance series where the concept was only explored minutely.

  With that in mind, I'm in Love with the Villainess. It offers nothing special with the concepts of hopeless romance compared to what other series have done and could potentially be better, but this is the first time an anime that I have seen has used this concept subtly, and it hits the spot for me. ***

  In the anime, we follow our main character, Rae Taylor, who is madly attracted to Miss Clair, whom she admires very much. Each episode offers nothing special than other anime, just your usual buddy adventure with Ray Taylor and Miss Claire as they experience their unusual journey in their academy with a light spice of Rae Taylor constantly hyperactively engaging with Miss Claire. This anime from the very beginning has been pretty fun, and it continues to get more fun as the episodes run, but it doesn't shy away from deep topics and dramatic moments, and one element in particular is how the series handles the concept of letting go of someone you love. ***

  Rae Taylor is a happy-go-lucky person, but you can hear that subtle sadness behind her voice, and it's especially prominent when the series points it out. Her tone changes, but she still tries her best when she feels like she has been confronted with her loneliness. It is subtle, and it is brillant, and you keep hearing that kind of tone every episode, and once you hear it, you feel this gut-wrenching feeling in your chest, and you actually feel Ray Taylor’s forgone defeat through those lines, enhanced well with the voice actress (JP: Yuu Serizawa; EN: Hannah Aleya) of Rae Taylor, who delivered a wide range of voice acting while making everything subtle. ***

  It's not to say that I'm in love with the villainess; it has its own problems. The animation is Janky at best, and it doesn't explore well with other characters that are in the series; they're just there for the sake of plot convenience. But other than that, I'm in Love with the Villainess offers an entertaining tale while offering subtle sadness and contentment loneliness that no other anime has a well-executed concept offered. ***

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• 

  SoloWingGreekie

  45/100
  A cute, disjointed, half-baked mess.

  I wanna preface this by saying I have no clue as to what constitutes for a good BL/GL show. I usually don't watch those kinds of shows unless under recommendation by a friend, and even then, chances are it'll stay stuck on my never ending pit of planned shows to watch.

  That said, this show has other tropes on top of being an Isekai-GL show, and I feel at least qualified to judge the show based on those tropes, and other general stuff that is included in the contents of this show.

  And these contents are...pretty half-baked.

  The setting, while good in theory, feels pretty sloppy in practice. It's not inherently bad, but everything it does is placed under the context that it's an ikemen dating game, and presumably, a visual novel one. That in itself is fine, but then it does worldbuilding and...I kinda feel like it gets too bloated in the details? Like the amount of exposition to explain this kinda stuff makes it feel like I'm not in a game but in a general fantasy setting. It almost makes me question the validity of the game's contents with what's being explained. Is it a dating sim? Or an RPG? Or a puzzle game? Or hell, is it an MMO? It just feels all over the place without adding as much to the worldbuilding, only being there to progress the narrative. Not even Nasu's Fate series felt this needlessly deep in the lore.

  The story itself feels bloated as well, and a bit confused in whether or not it wants to be driven by a narrative or by it's characters. By the half-way point I was left confused as to what the show wanted to BE. Was it a GL show? A SOL show focusing on this magic school? An action show? It focuses a lot on it's magic and has a lot of action scenes. A romance show that focuses both on hetero and gay relationships? A political show that focuses on the disparity between classes and how it might affect people in this age of magic? I don't know, and I'm not sure the show knows either, as I don't think it makes any effort to connect these things together in a cohesive enough narrative.

  Example: In episode 3-4 (I don't remember specifically but it's early on.) the characters talk about the Rae's sexuality, but it doesn't particularly lead anywhere, and the arguments regarding that scene were divisive and led to nothing but shouting wars. It doesn't make mention nor expand on how Rae's advances to Claire could be deemed as annoying, nor the implications of prejudice against homosexual relationships, especially between commoner and high class, nor how Claire's prejudices could be deemed as bad (it is implied, but in a terrible manner like Claire is gaslit into thinking it's bad, even though Claire has been hounded against her own will by Rae.). It just kinda ends in a segue in how Rae will sacrifice her own chances of a relationship with Claire just so she can make her happy, showing her selflessness, a topic that would come back in the end of the season.

  The thing is though, even if the show made the scene's message that homosexuality in this setting is frowned upon and that Rae should be careful, it would make no sense under the context that it wasn't implied upon in earlier episodes. Nor would it make sense that Claire has prejudices against a homosexual relationship because for one, the show made it clear she's in love with a boy, two, Claire has been hounded time and time again by Rae, and three, she herself hasn't shown any prejudice towards Rae whatsoever, just discomfort. So this leaves this seemingly divisive scene...with absolutely nothing. It's just a disjointed, non-cohesive scene that adds nothing, because it can't, and unfortunately, that's something that's going to repeat itself.

  Speaking of characters, unfortunately it doesn't get better here folks. The side characters, while inherently without fault, lack substance. Given the setting is an otome game...the show does absolutely everything in it's path to not make you interested, given the subversion of it's setting focusing on GL. To it's credit, the caricatures/personalities of the characters aren't bad, but they never feel anything more than that. They just feel like reactive sort of characters that are reactive only for the sake of the narrative and that's...frankly disappointing because it has shown that it can make side characters with depth, but doesn't expand on it.

  Rae herself feels stale as a protagonist as well. While I find her back and forth behavior with Claire cute, and her love is full of compassion, she herself doesn't feel compelling as a character. Her encyclopedic knowledge and unnatural competency in problem solving and as a fighter (despite she herself having no experience in combat in her past life) make her feel like a Mary Sue, and she herself doesn't face any conflict that affects her heavily, until the final few episodes, which I find especially hilarious, given the Mary Sue feels heavily inadequate...against another newly introduced (and pretty terribly written) Mary Sue.

  Claire herself doesn't feel like much a character aside from her trope as an ojou-sama. While yes, she does develop somewhat as a character, her development at times doesn't feel natural, especially in the halfway mark. Her romance subplot at the end is pretty much forgotten because the show reminded itself that it's a GL show, and therefore needed to focus on that. And it's so weird at the end for Claire, because she feels so static for no reason. She has no individual agency whatsoever while two of her closest friends are fighting against one another, and it just comes off as weird and terribly executed. It's character assassination, and it sucks because it really feels like it invalidates any development for Claire, and by extension, Rae too.

  Overall, I think this show would've greatly benefitted from having 24 episodes instead of 12. Perhaps it gets better as it goes along,but with how the show is structured, it doesn't allow itself to show how it gets better, and that's shown with how sloppily the show ended. There is of course sequel bait in an after credits scene, but I feel like it's a band-aid solution rather a true conclusion.

  I can't say much besides that. If you turn off your brain, you might enjoy it for what it is, I know I certainly did, since I found myself enjoying the back-and-forth dynamic Rae and Claire have.

  But if you're like me where your brain can't help but think, you'll find a disjointed mess from a show that's trying to be too many things, but never one thing that it's really good at. Which is a shame.

  People often refer to a "Jack of all trades, master of none" to something or someone that isn't focused on one specialty, but they often forget the rest of the quote, omitting what follows after.

  A jack of all trades, master of none, is better than a master of one.

  Unfortunately, this show isn't better in this case.

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• 

  Angielicious

  100/100
  A love story, and it's as sweet as crème brûlée.

  A beautiful queer story for the ages.

  I'm in love with the villainess despite being late to the otome isekai in the anime sphere is one of the progenitors of its genre in its light novel source material. You can see in the inspiration that certain stories took from it to create their own works while watching Villianesse so I won't be focusing on that.

  What I am here to talk about and what I would largely like to focus on is who this series is for. The otome isekai genre is largely meant for women and despite certain claims the demographics for GL stories based on censuses from magazines that focus on it in Japan is largely women and girls. So I would be remiss in not offering the perspective of not only a woman but a lesbian woman.

  Villainesse is not afraid to touch on the elephant in the room. It's not afraid to establish that for our heroine Ray the gender of the person she's attracted to does matter. It's not just that she happened to fall in love with Claire for the amazing person that she knows is there underneath. It's that she only could because of her being a woman. We're early days in the anime but it covers that brilliantly as early as the 3rd episode along with touching on some preconceived notions that a lot of hetero people have about gay people that shows Claire her internalized homophobia, another issue that the story handles brilliantly. As Claire herself isn't magically "turned gay". Claire has always had repressed feelings for women and looking at how many both gay men and women divorce after having children and realizing that they're queer late is a huge issue of compulsory heterosexuality in our world much less the pressure a noble like Claire would feel to marry a man. There's so much more to unpack here but looking at the 12-episode length I realize that it's unlikely that we'll get deep into the many other facets of queerness it explores. It is somewhat hinted at when the 3 "princes" are shown in the opening if you know what to look for wink wink.

  Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that this story isn't "generic otome isekai gay edition". It understands and explores the struggles that most people face while not being completely unrelatable for the heteros. I think Rae's unwillingness to be truly genuine with Claire early on stemming from her fear of getting hurt. Her fear of complete and utter rejection to the point of losing her current relationships while maybe not something most people have to face the same way queer people do is still something that a lot of people can relate to, albeit to slightly less disastrous consequences. Rae is ultimately a person so she's not perfect. She's flawed, however, she's often called out on it and is the type to learn and fix her behavior. Rae grows as a person when it's pointed out to her that sometimes she goes too far with Claire and makes her uncomfortable and this touch on consent is something I've rarely seen handled so maturely in anime.

  For those uninterested in romance, I don't really believe this story is for you in regards to the anime itself. The world-building in this show as well as the magic system which I noticed seems to be a sticking point to some does actually get a very large development later on, sadly the anime's length won't make that possible unless multiple seasons are made. Mostly the magic system as the world-building does at least massively ramp up at the same pace as the romance if the cut-off point is what I think it is I would still say it will massively disappoint if you're watching for just that though.

  This is ultimately a love story, and it's as sweet as crème brûlée.

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