REVIEW: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Season 1 (anime TV series)

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is a fantasy comedy with romantic aspects (but, just to be clear, it is not a romance, so don't expect it to be). It's based on a light novel series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Catarina Claes is a spoiled child who bumps her head and suddenly remembers her past life as a Japanese high school student who'd enjoyed playing an otome game called Fortune Lover...which very much resembled Catarina's current reality. The only problem: in that game, Catarina Claes was the villainess, and just about every ending resulted in her either being exiled or killed. Realizing that she has only a few years to ensure her own survival, Catarina attempts to deal with as many of her future death flags as possible - if she has to have a bad ending, she'd rather be exiled with marketable skills under her belt than killed.

What Catarina doesn't realize is that her decisions have, from the start, deeply affected the story. Instead of being the villainess, she's now unwittingly the character everyone loves. But will even that be enough to help her escape her doom?

REVIEW: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (manga, vol. 1) by Satoru Yamaguchi, art by Nami Hidaka, translated by Elina Ishikawa-Curran

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is a fantasy romantic comedy series. It's based on a series of light novels. I purchased this volume.

Review:

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! stars Katarina Claes, the rich and spoiled daughter of Duke Claes. Or at least we're told she was spoiled - at the start of the volume, Katarina is 8 years old and has just hit her head, prompting her to remember her past life as a 17-year-old otome game fan from our world. She was somehow reincarnated as the daughter of a duke in a world where magic exists.

As the story progresses, she gradually remembers other important details...like the fact that the world she's living in is actually the world of the otome game she was playing before she died, and that Katarina was a villainess in the game. Not only that, but the Katarina of the game had absolutely no good endings. If the player achieved a good ending with one of the game's guys, Katarina usually ended up exiled. If the player achieved a bad ending, Katarina was usually killed. Katarina would like very much not to die. She'd also prefer not to be exiled, but if that's going to happen, she figures she needs to learn skills that will help her earn a living.

This first volume deals primarily with the years prior to Katarina turning 15, her age when the otome game officially began. Every male child she meets turns out to be the child version of a romanceable character from the game, and every female child is a character who acts as one of the player's rivals for the romanceable characters' love. As Katarina meets them, she makes friends and does her best to avert the terrible endings she knows lurk in her future.