English Dub Review: I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History “The Villainess Sits This One Out”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Alicia trains for years to reach Level 90, her underlings carry out her work and Liz continues to grow her influence.

OUR TAKE

So, was anyone else kinda surprised when someone mentioned this episode took place over the course of a couple years? Honestly, without that being pointed out explicitly, I would’ve thought this happened over six months at the most. But uh, no, this whole episode contains within it a full time skip training arc…which would actually make it the second in the series since the first three episodes also ended with a jump to three years later. During that point, I just assumed it was basically a prologue and the shift to an older Alicia would mean the real story was now starting, as no major story moments or plot points had occurred at that time. Well, that was KIND OF true, but now we have definitely had some major moments happen, which makes the decision to jump ahead like this even more perplexing. Last episode established that Liz, whether intentionally or not, is somehow gaining a rabid mob of fans among other students and either lacks the self awareness to control it or is actively malicious in how she IS managing it. With a growing and increasingly obvious threat like her there, having Alicia vanish from public life for TWO YEARS seems like a bit of a miscalculation, in my honest opinion.

Only…if this episode is anything to go by, Liz doesn’t really end up doing much of anything anyway during these two years. Like yeah, she’s not able to win over Duke much to her disappointment, though that’s as much due to her behavior as it is him having been in love with Alicia for awhile now, but…other than that she doesn’t even seem to have gained more hordes of supporters. She’s just going to class like normal and spouting her vapid rhetoric. It’s mentioned that she’s already pretty strong and she does have that handy ability to use all forms of magic, but she’s also never really used that anyway aside from last episode, so whatever threat she poses is a bit vague at the moment. Apparently it’s so ineffectual that Alicia can afford to just sit this one out as the title states, making her supposed glorious return fall a bit flat. Also her two minions are helping out in that village where she found them, that seems like it’ll come back and be of consequence at some point. We’re past the halfway point now, so let’s see if any of this starts going anywhere.