English Dub Review: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! “I Enrolled in the Magic Academy…”

https://youtu.be/7ne76qb90C4

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With her first year at the Magic Academy underway, the only thing on Catarina’s mind is how Maria Campbell, the protagonist of Fortune Lover, will stir up her own already existing friend group. Geordo and Keith have already made Maria’s acquaintance, which leads Catarina to believe the ball is already rolling in having them fall in love with her. This still leads to her meeting Maria herself eventually, becoming fast friends and even with Catarina protecting her from some bullies. But upon further reflection, it seems she’s once again stepped on an in-game encounter that should have happened without her, this time taking Geordo’s moment to save Maria and beginning that romance. She brushes that off by thinking this just means that it will make Catarina’s bad ends less likely, but conveniently forgets that she’s long since made sure those will never happen.

OUR TAKE

We’ve officially entered the time of the game that Fortune Lover takes place in, which means things should get more active. Since remembering her past life, Catarina has been training to keep herself from being killed or exiled in this period of time by altering her character and changing those around her. This should mean that the introduction of Maria, which this episode revolves around, should increase the tension and make things feel more dire as the moment where she might face her previously inevitable fates draws ever closer! Or at least, that’s what you might think going into this. Instead, it seems like it’s just becoming more obvious that Catarina has inadvertently made all of the characters fall for her instead, with Maria being the last to join the harem.

That’s a pretty funny outcome given where things started, but with us only through a third of the season, it makes me wonder where this story is headed or what the actual objective even is now. Should Catarina be setting Maria up to fall for one of the boys so as to fully control her own fate within this game? Or even one of the girls? Maybe SHE wants to get with Maria! There are a lot of possibilities to go with, but at the moment, we seem to just sort of be stuck in the status quo of Catarina being dense as all seven of her suitors keep trying to court her in ways that keep going over her head. We could be looking at a stalemate and we’re not even half way through the season! And I don’t typically see harems of any worth finishing within twelve episodes anyway, so it might just be doomed to sputter out from the beginning!

I don’t know, maybe I’m worrying over nothing and the next few episodes will show me exactly how things will work out for the remainder, but it seems like things have hit a wall, which is not really going to be very much fun to cover for weeks on end. We’ve got eight protagonists and eight episodes to go, so I don’t know who’s going to get enough time to flesh themselves out enough to seem like a real winner. I feel like there should be enough time to give them better character arcs, but I just don’t know for sure. Guess we’ll see in the fifth episode.