English Dub Review: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! “I Recalled the Memories of My Past Life…”

https://youtu.be/J-PO0FzJfOo


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Bratty heiress Catarina Claes is living her normal privileged life when a sudden bonk on the head returns to her memories of her previous life. Seems she used to be a high schooler in Japan who grew addicted to Otome (female oriented dating sims) games, specifically one called Fortune Lover, where the heroine character would often be rivaled by a selfish girl named…Catarina Claes, who would be exiled or killed in any romantic route. Now fully aware of her surroundings, Catarina realizes she has a prime opportunity to avoid her character’s certain unfortunate fate. First thing, try to avoid being engaged to Geordo Stuart, as that will cause her to be exiled or killed once the heroine, Maria, takes his route. But through her absent mindedness, she ends up engaged to him anyway.

With that damage done, she instead works on her magic abilities and farming skills in order to avoid her expected villainous tendencies. This is when her character’s adopted brother Keith shows up, who later is supposed to become a route for the heroine and a notorious playboy due to his loneliness in childhood. To avoid this, she decides to become super friendly and encouraging him to use his own magic, something he’s avoided ever since he overused it on some bullies. This leads to him accidentally injuring her, but once she awakens, Catarina takes an axe to his bedroom door in order to properly apologize and tell him they’ll be together forever.

OUR TAKE

Compared to The 8th Son a couple days ago, this show seems to be a great breath of fresh air. Admittedly, I’ve probably seen enough Isekai shows for a lifetime, but what matters is that those typical tools are done well. And when it’s put aside one that seems to have not even bothered to try, this one will pass with flying colors. But even without that low bar, I’d say we’re off to a great start anyway, as we have another rather novel approach to the genre. In this case, instead of simply being taken to a generic fantasy environment, it’s one that the heroine, who I will be referring to from hereon as Catarina since that’s what she’s going to be called, knows fully well from her own previous life. And as this is the gimmick of the show, it will basically impact her actions going forward as she knows all the exact routes she does NOT want to end up at.

What she doesn’t realize is that this overcompensation is going to have some bigger ramifications for her new life here later on. Her awareness of her character’s role means that she isn’t considering that she could become the new center of romantic attention, which looks like it will be coming from both the guys on the original routes, and possibly even the heroine herself. At least, that’s what I’ve been hearing about the show from people who can’t stop gushing its praises, as well as what I could pick up on from the show’s pretty solid opening theme. Like with 8th Son, it looks like we’ll be doing some development in childhood for a couple more episodes before getting onto the main setting for the story, but hopefully this will be a lot more entertaining.

It will be interesting to see the playing out of two Isekai shows on opposite ends of the quality spectrum this season, especially since they’re two of the few anime that have managed to squeak out a complete production. This genre has definitely played out a lot of interesting and oddly specific ways, such as Kemono Michi’s pro-wrestling and animal loving quirk or How Not to Summon a Demon Lord’s slave collar angle, but seeing these two side by side will probably help to draw comparisons all the more obviously. And again, in the case of 8th Son, that’s probably not doing it any favors. Guess we’ll just have to watch to find out.