English Dub Review: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! “Things Got Crazy at a Slumber Party…”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Catarina has successfully advanced to the next grade, though the time of her character’s judgement is fast approaching, as such she’s decided to join everyone in a slumber party to celebrate. Though while she focuses on this, her trusty maid Anne observes all active love heptagon going on around her. Still, she knows Catarina is someone of good character, most notably after Catarina defended Anne from being forced into marriage for the sake of her abusive step father. She’s a more than decent person, though she still proves to be incredibly dense as she invites all of her friends, all of whom are in love with her, to the garden to help her out with separate letters which make them each think they’re about to be confessed to. They all end up getting her new gardening sheers, leading to all of them feeling shot down. But after the credits, the bully girls gather to announce that Catarina will be judged for her crimes! To be continued…

OUR TAKE

Okay, this is getting kind of annoying. Actually, it’s getting distractingly annoying. I once watched a video talking about how this show was a perfect distillation of how to make a good harem, mainly due to how it balanced multiple genders of contestants and how Catarina was a perfectly solid protagonist in her own right instead of being an audience surrogate like most harem main characters tend to be. But a lot of that hinges on whether or not you can tolerate just how fucking stupid she is to not understand that SEVEN PEOPLE ARE ALL IN LOVE WITH HER, which only ends up meaning everyone’s development is stalled and treading water for the majority of the series the moment status quo is achieved. And that just ends up leading to moments where everyone is left feeling blueballed because she is such a phenomenal dumbass. I guess I can’t exactly blame her for being this dumb, but it sure doesn’t make me like her in the slightest. Thank fucking anime Christ that we’re finally headed back into some discernable plot for the last three episodes so that I can finally stop focusing on how bullshit this all is.

ANYWAY, let’s talk about this episode, which will be our last filler installment for the season. Besides focusing on the utter stale nonsense that I’ve already mentioned at length, this episode centers on Anne, Catarina’s stoic maid, who gets a bit of the spotlight in order to mainly comment on the weirdness around her that she’s complacent with, as well as getting into some of her backstory and how Catarina also helped her grow as a person like she did for all of her friends. I guess the main question I have about this admittedly wholesome tale is why it needed to be entirely in the form of a flashback when the part about the betrothal could have taken place in the present day instead of more faffing about. Also had to double check the guy confronting Anne’s father was actually Catarina’s father. The dude is not very distinct and has had no lines, so you can’t blame me for forgetting. But yeah, this one was certainly a better use of time than the last three episodes, but it still manages to feel like it really didn’t need to exist. Hopefully we won’t feel the same of the last few episodes, which look to be at least a bit more dramatic and not just focused on harem shenanigans. At least, I can only hope, though I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter either way.