English Dub Review: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! “The Moment of My Doom Arrived… Part 1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The bully girls attempt to swarm Catarina by accusing her of “evil deeds”, including bullying Maria, which she realizes is exactly how her character’s judgement scene occurred in the game. However, this time, the conquerable characters come to her defense, saying that the Catarina could never do these things…because she’s too stupid. While knowing that stings a bit, it also means she’s been able to finally avoid the doom flags she feared. Yet, all is not resolved. The bully girls seem to be emitting some dark aura around them as they run away, which Maria tries to look into, but as she bids goodbye to the rest of her friends, Catarina narrates that was the last time any of them saw her (spoiler: it wasn’t).

She then goes missing for a few days, with Catarina and the rest going on a manhunt, sadly not turning up anything. Even stranger, it seems the girls who accused Catarina don’t even remember doing so OR putting together the accusations. Geordo theorizes that they might have been under the influence of Dark Magic, which can control people with negative emotions and make them unaware of what they’re doing. It seems there’s a Dark Magic user who is targeting Catarina and Maria might have been taken because her Light Magic can detect it. Catarina is exhausted with grief about Maria, eventually running into Sirius Dieke, the student council president. It’s then she remembers her friend from her previous life, Aachan, describing a secret conquerable character like Sirius and realizes he’s using Dark Magic and took Maria. Catarina confronts him over this, so he panics and knocks her out, revealing himself to be the culprit.

OUR TAKE

Yeah, I don’t know why they said that was the last time they saw Maria after that scene. Again, it’s not, we’re definitely seeing her again in the last two episodes of the season, and itt seems like a really cheap way to build tension and drama. Same with the cold open where they try to make it seem like Catarina might actually be doomed after the accusing. We know that Catarina’s pretty dumb, but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to extend to the audience, who should know full well since the end of the last episode that there’s no possible way things should go the same way for her now that she’s changed so much. What it does reveal seems to be that Catarina truly has usurped Maria as the protagonist, seeing as she’s even taking Maria’s secret route and ending. And I gotta say, it’s times like that which I feel a bit weird about this story and how it is handling its take on visual novel mechanics. I can understand a bit of an altered timeline given how Catarina changes events with her knowledge, but sometimes it also seems like this really is still a game instead of a world full of people, just with things shifted just enough in a certain way.

That aside, this episode starts bringing us to the climax, revealing the true villain all along! It’s a bit of a jarring shift, considering how much of the story up to this point didn’t really involve things like Dark Magic or Sirius at all. That’s not to say there wasn’t some foreshadowing here or there, so it’s not completely out of left field, but I do feel like we needed some more build up to the reveal than “oh right, let me conveniently remember that my friend told me about this character who could be the villain!” You could argue that it would have spoiled the surprise ahead of time if it was mentioned at any other point, but then that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been hinted at in any other way. Not that it’s my job to make this story’s mystery work, I just think this couldn’t have possibly been the only way to handle it. But regardless, we’re down to the final two episodes of the season, and next week sees us put a lot more focus on Sirius and his route as everything comes to a head. Or rather, starts and ends coming to a head. This story is really unevenly paced.