English Dub Review: I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History “The Villainess and Working Out”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Alicia Williams realizes her current life was the favorite Otome game of her past life, so she dedicates her new life to becoming the villain she always admired.

OUR TAKE

Anyone else getting a sense of deja vu here? An anime about a girl who plays a game where she likes the female villain more than the protagonist and then ends up Isekai’d there, only to find that she’s now that villain and spends her time getting ready to be the best villain ever, but unbeknownst to her she has actually taken over as the protagonist because now she has every one of the main guys and even the protagonist herself pining for her? Oh yeah, I covered that show, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, four years ago during the pandemic! But for some reason I’m back here reviewing it again? Am I in a Groundhog Day situation? Is someone targeting me specifically and forcing me to live through this torture again? AM I ALREADY IN HELL AND THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE? Well, turns out it’s none of the above. This kind of premise just happens to be pretty popular right now, so this is likely not even a tenth of the amount of shows with this subject matter coming up in the following years. On second thought, maybe this IS hell!

Okay, okay, there are some notable differences in this show so far that are probably worth pointing out to meet this minimum word count. Well, I say “notable” when really I mean negligible. See, the main difference here is that Alicia, or at least the girl who has taken over her body, doesn’t remember any bit of her old life, whereas the protagonist of “My Life As a Villainess” at least gave hints at her previous life which became important later. Makes you wonder why this is an Isekai at all! Well, of course it’s because this premise of knowing you’re in a game, having knowledge of some version of the plot, and then trying to maintain it only to undo it entirely is only possible if you’re hit by a truck and your mind transports to this specific world. Hopefully what I’ve conveyed here is that I’m really not impressed with this show so far and I don’t expect to by the end of this series in a few months. Maybe that will change in the next dozen or so episodes but until we get those, I’m gonna remain feeling lukewarm at best about this show as a whole.