Otome VIllainess Anime defy a certain common narrative.

I’ve done a post on why I technically have beef with the starting premise of the genre, and another where I explain why I do enjoy some of these shows regardless of that. 

But today I want to discuss how the history of this sub-sub genre goes against certain common narratives about the relationship between trend setters and trend followers. It’s a conventional wisdom I often personally disagree with, but I can usually still see why the OG is viewed as above the rest.

Once one big hit is followed up by a bunch of shows doing something similar, it's common to see a lot of talk about how most if not all of the imitators missed the real point of why the original worked. With the implication being that what makes them different from the original makes them more generic or less artistically interesting or "deep".  I'm often a contrarian on that, but I can still generally see why it can seem that way.

The Otome VIllainess genre started with My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Sometimes called HameFura for short. I liked it, well I liked season 1 and never finished season 2. But it’s hard for me to imagine even people who love it much more than I do, who may personally still like it the most of them, being able to argue in all seriousness that it has a depth its imitators have hollowed out, that by default they are more shallow. No matter how much you love it, HameFura is objectively the most shallow take on this premise.

I stand by my conviction that it was never common for Otome Games or Shoujo Manga to treat an OjouSama character as a completely unsympathetic one dimensional villain. But there is still legitimate social commentary that could be made by exploring this hypothetical archetype. Or even without touching on the politics, just many interesting ways to play around with it. 

HameFura is the show least interested in doing that. When Katerina’s memories of her Japanese life awaken her “villainess” personality is just completely overwritten, there is no engagement with asking the question of why that person became a “villainess” or if she were really as one note as she seemed.  The story is solely about the Japanese High School Girl who unintentionally stole her life with no acknowledgment of how existentially terrifying that is. 

The strictest definition of this genre is it being the Villainess who the reincarnator reincarnates as. Of those, the one I like the most is definitely I’ll Become A Villainess Who Goes Down in History, commonly shortened to Rekiaku from Fall 2024. 

I’m The Villainess, so I’m Taming the Final Boss aka Akulas from Fall 2022 is a show where I liked the first three episodes, but then episode 4 felt liked it rushed to the end of the first LN when this arc should have had six episodes like the adaptations of the first LNs for Haruhi and Index. 

Both those shows have in common how in different ways the MC embraces the Villainess role becoming a sort of Antiheroine rather than just being comedically the opposite of who she was supposed to be. 

Then there's The Heretical Last Boss Queen where the protagonist is morally unlike the original Villainess characters but has a fear she could become like her anyway. 

The other two of my personal big three for this trend are adjacent examples where the villainess isn’t the person who's a reincarnation of a player of the Game but completely still herself. 

I’m in Love with The Villainess shortened to WataOshi from Fall 2023 (it seems like the gems kept dropping in Fall, yet I didn’t catch any in 2025). It’s a Yuri and is great, it’s the one I most hope gets a season 2. 

The third is MobuSeka which I talked about in one of those prior posts. Its second season is about to come out and I know enough spoilers to know things are getting pretty interesting.

Twist Pilots are my least favorite Anime Pilots

I’m referring to cases where the first episode of an Anime ends on a twist revealing even the genre of the show wasn’t exactly what it was precented as for most of the pilot.

They are often pretty entertaining the first time you watch them, but when I rewatch a show I find myself wanting to just skip it and start the show with the first episode that actually represents what the show is. 

The more I like the rest of the show the more the fact that they start with these kinds of pilots annoys me. Because in an online culture obsessed with treating not spoiling something as a moral value, these become shows you are supposed to recommend to people without even accurately telling them what genre they are getting into. 

School-Live! is the ultimate example of this, its mere inclusion in my posts recommending Horror Anime to watch during Halloween month is technically a spoiler, but it shouldn’t be.

The impact of watching the School-Live! Pilot blind without knowing you are actually watching a Zombie Apocalypse show works only if you like both Cute Girls Doing Cute Things and Zombie Apocalypses as genres (which I do), someone who only likes the former will be upset you got them into that show only to take it away, and someone who only likes the latter will be annoyed they had to sit through a Moe show for 20 minutes.

Maybe some will argue it's good to filter out the Slice of Life haters in the pilot because it is still structurally largely a CGDCT show even after the Zombie shoe drops. But as someone who is an enjoyer of vanilla Cute Girls Doing Cute Things shows I think it’s perfectly valid that some people can enjoy those antics with a Genre element mixed in but not on their own, I have no desire to Gate Keep the joy of School-Live! from people who can’t also enjoy Lucky Star and K-On. 

A more recent show where this applies is Quality Assurance in Another World. I haven't rewatched this one yet at the time I’ve started writing this but I’ve been planning to, and I keep wondering whether or not I should just skip the pilot and start with episode 2.

In both cases there is an artistic/narrative reason for starting the show this way beyond just shock value,  that it’s important to sell a certain character’s perspective. But that really doesn't take away its lack of rewatchability. A single 20 minute episode of Anime doesn't have a lot of time to do anything that truly feels interesting to rewatch knowing the twist. The twists in Anime that have a good set up and pay off are the ones that span multiple episodes.

I said the more I like the rest of the show overall the more I dislike it starting this way, so let’s look at a reverse example.

Talentless Nana’s twist pilot works pretty well. But my excitement for the show early on did not maintain itself. 

This was hyped by some of its fans early on as being an example of “Death Note but better” because Death Note has a certain type of hater, people who want an Anime with its basic appeal but where the female cast is treated better. I’m no Death Note fanatic, I’ve never called it one of my personal favorites and I too prefer Anime that are more feminine at their core. But in the case of Talentless Nana watching it while comparing it to Death Note does not do it any favors. 

Some people complain about Misa in Death Note being a Chaos Factor that made Light’s defeat unfair.  But she does not show up as early as people are making it sound when they say that.  Light had already made the key mistakes that made his downfall inevitable, L was already treating Light as effectively his only suspect. A Chaos factor is kind of what the show needed at that point to keep it from getting boring. Seriously everyone who says they wish Misa wasn’t in the show, what do you think it could have actually done without her?  

Talentless Nana actually does what people falsely accuse Death Note of in this regard. It introduces way too many not remotely foreseeable factors way too early. I think the show would have been better if it took two cours to cover what it wound up covering in only 1.  {And I’m saying that as someone constantly annoyed at how often people online are saying that about every single cour show lately.) Or even just did a few more simpler scenarios before starting all the mini arcs. 

The Executioner and Her Way of Life is a debatable show to include here because the equivalent twist happens more like half way through the Pilot. I feel like this show I might have convinced myself I liked more than I really did originally out of some obligation to it being a Yuri. But the truth is I kind of want more Yuri Isekai that are the same as regular Het Isekai in how the Romance is integrated instead of always having some other quasi subversive element to it. 

A Future Delivery crew is Transported to Another World Created by the Imagination of their Malfunctioning Alcoholic Foul Mouthed Robot.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Bender’s Game, one of the sorta movies that makes up season 5 of Futurama. [Update: so Futurama is one of those annoying situations where different places number the seasons differently, I said season 5 based on Wikipedia but on Hulu they are season 6.]

It can be described as an Isekai, but not just in the way that the Pylea arc of Angel can be. By using a Game, Dungeons and Dragons, as one of its main jumping off points, by being a parody set in what can be thought of as a very generic Fantasy setting. It truly is the only work of western media I can think of that’s almost like modern Isekai Anime. 

It draws on the iconography of DnD and Lord of The Rings the same way all these modern Isekai draw on Dragon Quest and Record of Lodoss War. 

I find that fascinating since it’s from 2008, five years before this kind of Anime really starts becoming a thing. 

Maybe it says something about me that I always even back then kind of enjoyed this the most of the 4 movies while others I suspect found it the least interesting, a filler arc comparatively. And now I’m a Weeb who is one of modern Isekai’s few vocal apologists. 

I’m writing this without having yet rewatched it. I haven’t watched the whole thing since before I got full time into Anime around the same time this modern Isekai trend was taking off. I am concerned I won’t like it as much now in the context of how some of my tastes have changed and how a lot of what these “adult” cartoons were doing in the 00s hasn’t aged well. So I kind of wanted to document my thoughts here before a rewatch changes them. 

And I do also want to comment on something unrelated to the Isekai comparison. The Titanious Anglesmith persona. 

When this personality takes over Bender while they are still in the regular Futurama setting he seems very different in personality from Bender. The Comedy for long time Futurama viewers is Bender not acting like himself. But once they are in the fantasy world Titanious now is just Bender in a fantasy world and that becomes the joke. 

I could see someone else drawing attention to this making a criticism out of it, “why isn’t Titanious written consistently” DING. But Futurama is first and foremost a comedy and so this contrast is probably intentional and not an oversight, it is itself part of the joke. But given how Futurama does go for more than just comedy, I sometimes wonder if there is something philosophical in this choice?

Since I titled this post with my humorous guess at what a long LN style title for Bender's Game would be. I'll end with what Google Translates says that would be in Japanese. 

ある配送チームが、故障した酒浸りで口の悪いロボットの想像力によって生み出された、別世界へと転送されてしまう。

Aru haisō chīmu ga, koshō shita sakebitari de kuchi no warui robotto no sōzō-ryoku ni yotte umidasa reta, bessekai e to tensō sa rete shimau.

Sub Eras of The Isekai Era

I feel like I have a unique perspective on understanding this timeline of events. 

First I’m aware there is a long history of Anime that can be described as Isekai before this era.  This is about the distinctly modern trend of Isekai as we currently know it being one of the most prolific and defining genres of the current state of Anime. 

Winter 2013 through Spring 2017 is a time when there is already a visible increase in Anime that can be described as Isekai, as well as non-Isekai Fantasy Anime becoming increasingly more beholden to JRPG Gamer logic. 

But from what I recall the English speaking fandom wasn’t using the word “Isekai” all that often yet, all the AniTube videos talking about shows we now call Isekai that I’ve seen from this period did not use the word, it wasn’t in videos on relevant shows from TrixieTheGoldenWitch, Mother's Basement or Gigguk.

This was also an era when there not only were still Fantasy Anime without this Gamer Vibe but they weren't inherently less common either. Spring 2017 has two highly underrated Fantasy shows I would not even remotely classify as even Quasi-Isekai, Grimoire of Zero and WoldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?. It’s not that those kinds of Anime ever stopped, some like them still get made, but I do think this was the last time we got two in one season.

And almost every proper Isekai from this era is among those that most who’ve seen them consider among the good ones, whether it’s the highly popular instant classics like, Log Horizon, No Game No Life, Overlord, Konosuba, Re:Zero, and Tanya The Evil, or very distinct hidden Gems like Problem Children, Outbreak Company and Grimgar: Ashes and Illusions.  The most disliked Isekai from this era is Gate, which was disliked not for being seen as “generic” but for its politics, and even then Gate was still a very popular show. 

Summer 2017 was the beginning of the Isekai era in full force, In Another World With My Smartphone is the first Anime to truly have all of the vibes of a "generic Isekai” which I say as someone who unconditionally loves it. And it was while it and Restaurant to Another World and Knights and Magic were airing that I recall the English Speaking fandom first really started using the word Isekai. And that is when the state of discourse about Isekai entered the form we now know it.  

And I find it fascinating how quickly during that season the narrative became that Isekai is an overused premise people are sick of even though earlier the same year no one was complaining about it. 

I started writing this thinking Fall 2017 was the last season without an Isekai, nor did it have anything I’d call a Quasi-Isekai.  So for that reason you could argue this was still a transitional period and Deathmarch to a Parallel World Rhapsody in Winter 2018 was the start of the full non-stop Isekai bombardment. But the early part of an era can have some stumble in getting off the ground so I was still willing to start this era in Summer 2017 regardless of that.  

However I’d forgotten about Ancient Magus Bride, that show is an Isekai but is like the pre 2017 shows in how pretty highly regarded it is, though I still haven’t watched it. It’s also a Shounen Manga adaptation rather than starting as a Light Novel, so it does still feel like part of the modern Isekai discussion purely by technicality.  There was also Recovery of an MMO Junkie which is part of the undeniably connected yet distinct trend of Anime about playing an MMORPG.

And then double checking myself I saw that there wasn’t an Isekai in Spring 2018, at least not among what I watched, just the somewhat JRPG like Fantasy show Last Period. 

Either way Summer 2017 was still the turning point in my opinion.

And I’d say this era continued into the start of the Pandemic.

About 2021 is when the discourse mutated into a state where some were hoping the trend must be finally almost over while others entered resigned acceptance that this being a consistent part of each season is here to stay.  It’s also in this era that Isekai’s own Sub Genres started being defined in common use even if some of the roots of them were already there. 

Good Parodies are Affectionate Parodies

I forget where I saw this, I think it was a random YT comment or something, but I definitely recall seeing someone say "Every good parody eventually just becomes a satisfying version of what it's parodying".

In the context of Anime I feel this is particularly demonstrated by Mahou Shoujo Pretty Sammy, in particular it's 96-97 TV Anime also sometimes localized under the title Magical Project S.  It's early episodes are very concise parodies of Magical Girl Tropes, sometimes I feel like they have Sailor Moon S in particular in mind, but never mean spirited.  However by it's final stretch of episodes it's just doing a legit sincere Magical Girl story that is simply also making jokes.

Mel Brooks has said he made Blazing Saddles as an Affectionate Parody of Westerns. What killed the old school Western during this era wasn't this parody but a general shift in how Americans thought about that era of our history reflected in the more serious Deconstructions made at the time.

Even very goofball parodies like Airplane or the 90s Wayans Brothers' films are still telling a story that on some level works independent of just being a string of Jokes at other movies expense. 

I remember a similar thought to this being expressed when Trixie The Golden Witch and Best Guy Ever talked about the Rick and Morty Episode that parodies Heist Movies.  For all the jokes at the expense of the formula, it also in it's own way provides a satisfying Heist narrative twist at the end.

The truly Cynical parodies like the ones that stretched the truth about being made by the same people who wrote Scary Movie were never liked and only remained profitable because they were so cheap to make. 

In Patrick Willems most recent video on Music Biopics he talks about Walk Hard and how dismayed he is that it didn't kill the Music Biopic Genre. But that's the thing, I haven't seen that movie but if it truly is as mean spirited as Willems describes it, a movie made by and for only the people who hate the Genre it's parodying then that's why it flopped, that's why the only people who actually found it funny were weirdos with a bizarre grudge against an entire genre.

This extends to the more Internet based styles of Parody as well.  I know that the people at Something Witty Entertainment are fans of Sword Art Online and that their SAO Abridged is an Affectionate Parody and that they are annoyed every time an AniTuber makes a Video Essay citing their parody as vindication of their SAO Hate. 

SWE do not seem to be fans of In Another World With My Smartphone in the same way which is why their one shot parody of that Anime fell flat with me, it's not nearly as funny as their SAO stuff.  Another more obscure YouTube channel called Yusho Productions has done a good Affectionate IWA Abridged that I find hilarious. 

The difficult question is, can this paradoxically apply to a Parody of something that never even existed?

I already made a post on how the Otome Villainess sub genre is based on a type of Otome Game that has never existed.  And I've since learned I'm not the only one who's noticed that.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/12/i-have-something-against-otome.html

But I've enjoyed some of these shows regardless, because for being founded on a seemingly insulting misrepresentation they still are not just basing every Joke on "isn't it messed up Otome Games are like this" instead they just do what a good Shoujo Anime would do within that framing.

The show Trapped In A Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs commonly shortened to MobuSeka has gotten particular ire from those who are mad about this genre's mistaken premise. Because at least this is the one sub type of modern Isekai were the leads are usually Girls.  So using this premise to make another typical male power fantasy Harem feels particularly egregious to them.

But this happens to be one of the Otome Villainess shows I've enjoyed the most, so why?

What would be the appeal of this kind of story if it unironically existed? The appeal would be Romances that defy class barriers.  The protagonist in ModuSeka as he starts falling in love with the two main girls feels like he is unworthy of them, like they are the lead characters and he is just a background character. As a Romance it is in fact doing exactly what you'd expect the non existent genre to do only gender inverted and with a meta twist. 

I also find it interesting to think about in the context of my thesis about how much 21st century Otaku media has it roots in Boys in the 90s enjoying Shoujo Media and taking influence from it.  Maybe what guys want out of Romance and what Girls want are not as inherently different as society keeps conditioning us to assume they are? 

I also really like Luxion, of every Anime character you could jokingly compare to MCU Jarvis, he might be the best. 

Frieren and Goblin Discourse

As played out as this discourse may seem I feel like I have something different to say about it.

First, while I am of the opinion that it is problematic to have inherently evil fantasy races, I can be fine with it if it’s done passively, if it’s just there and never drawn attention to. But when you take the time to raise the question only to take the deterministic answer, that's when I’m bothered.  Freiren does do that, but it’s so far only directly relevant to one Arc of the Anime and not many more in the Manga from what I’ve heard so I can grit my teeth through those parts and just enjoy what I like.  Still doing this trope is the sole reason I can't give it a 10/10.

Freiren’s predecessor in the world of Anime in this discourse was 2018’s Goblin Slayer, that one I couldn't finish because it was too innate to the entire premise of the show.  

What really bugs me about a lot of the people so determined to attack those criticizing Freiren on this issue is not that they aren't bothered by it but that they are talking about those who are as Normie Tourists bringing Woke Politics into Anime.  Frieren and Goblin Slayer stood out to Anime fans because it is precisely in the context of Anime that this is unusual.  I’ve yet to see a high profile Western Medieval style High Fantasy Show or movie with Goblins that are good actually, even in Game of Thrones the White Walkers were soulless monsters.  It’s in Fantasy Anime where the default is to humanize even the enemy hordes. Bright is actually the only mainstream western example, and oddly enough in late 2017 it was viewed as a show the Left hated and the Right liked in contradistinction to TLJ.

Goblin Slayer aired the same season as the first cour of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime which took the exact opposite approach to Goblins, that show has 3 seasons and a spin off now and a 4th is likely coming. We see a similar approach to conventional fantasy monsters in Tsukimichi Moonlit Fantasy, as well as So I'm A Spider, So What.  Mushoku Tensei is often alleged to be in its source material the origin point of the modern form of Fantasy Light Novels, and it has a major storyline about Demons not being evil. Even in Solo Leveling, a show recently bashed as mindless trash there is an arc where the Demons are revealed to not be all evil.  Hell, even Gate, a show I see a lot of Fascism in, does not depict any race intelligent enough to speak as immutably evil. 

It stretches beyond just conventional Fantasy btw, in Wedding Peach the antagonistic society literally referred to as Devils are ultimately proven to not be inherently evil, which is exactly how the Magical Girl genre always does it.  Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's fifth episode ends with exposition about how the guardians are mindless automatons who can only obey orders, while showing us that isn't true. 

There is a lot of strawmanning of what everyone on the “Woke” side of this debate is saying.  It’s not about saying you can never have a society or tribe that is in their current state opposed to the greater good, that is after all exactly what Leftists believe about Germany from 1933-1945.  No one is saying it’s wrong to kill the Goblins that are currently attacking you or your village.

There has been talk of what Frieren does as a “Subversion of the Subversion”, that saying Demons aren’t inherently evil has become so common now that subverting that is more subversive. But a Double Subversion that just goes back to a regressive status quo is not interesting beyond the initial shock value of it. But let me tell you how I think a Subversion of a perceived Subversion could be interesting. 

I am a bit tired of Frankenstein’s Monster being made completely innocent, where if he kills at all it’s always either self defense or an accident.  In the original novel he is a sympathetic character, who is driven to his monstrous actions by how he’s treated, but he still intentionally killed a child to frame an innocent woman and cause her to be hanged, as just one example. The fact is the Creature’s characterization in The Novel is both literally and connotatively that of what we’d today call an Incel. 

I definitely want the Creature to be redeemed of his sins by the end, but it'd be nice for people to stop pretending he was without sin. 

A Fantasy World needs to feel Alive in order for me to become invested in it.

Magic Knight Rayearth is in my opinion one of the most overrated Fantasy Anime.  There were some aspects of it I did enjoy, but what really stifled my investment was how the world never felt lived in, our heroes on their journey only ever visited one village.  It really felt like the only people who exist in this world are the ones who play important roles in the story.

And that is one of the most important things in selling a Fantasy Setting to me, it’s what Tolkien and Lewis excelled at and even Game of Thrones took some time to consider.

Whether or not the world actually feels alive, feels like it is filled with people and cultures worth fighting for is more important to me than whether it actually feels “Unique” or distinct from other Fantasy settings.  

This is a factor in why I don’t get tired of the modern trends of Isekai and Quasi-Isekai Anime.  More cynical Anime critics keep mocking how they are all the same discount Dragon Quest worlds, with identical looking medieval towns and D&D Fantasy Races.  But I don’t care because even at their most generic each of those succeeded in making its world feel alive.

This is perhaps one of the most blasphemous opinions you can have in the Anime Community right now, to suggest that one of these Classic Shoujo Isekai, one based on a Manga by the Clamp Team, actually has worse world building then In Another World With My Smartphone.  But that is my honest opinion.  Even the modern Isekai that even I haven't gotten all that into beat Rayearth in this area. 

No one is more disappointed that I was disappointed in a Clamp Anime than I am.  I like Cardcaptor Sakura. I love Angelic Layer, I recall liking the TV Anime version of X and I've enjoyed Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle so far [Update: I also really want a full Anime adaptation of Angel Sanctuary].  So I really expected Rayearth to live up to its hype, but it didn’t. 

Low Church Fantasy

I’ve noticed a trend lately of YouTube videos analyzing how fictional religions in Fantasy settings often don’t feel authentic to how real Regions function, including one focusing specifically on the lack of Schisms. 

So I want to talk about something that perhaps only I care about.

Fantasy religions Aesthetically based on Christianity are always specifically based on High Church Christianity, usually quite specifically Roman Catholicism. More disorganized local spirituality in Fantasy stories are usually more inspired by Animist polytheism like you’d see from Indigenous Tribes of North America or the Sami or local Shintoism. 

This probably has to do with the simplified understanding of Christian History where there is no Protestantism till the Middle Ages are over so therefore it’s assumed Baptist or Quaker inspired communities would be out of place in a Medieval Europe inspired Fantasy Setting.  

However I have seen plenty of Fantasy settings that extend their real word inspirations into the Renaissance, Enlightenment or even Victorian period. Like all those Otome Villainess settings, or really any with a Magic Academy element.

But besides that Medieval Proto-Protestants of different kinds did exist, most relevant here would be the Waldenses/Waldensians. Talking about the Waldenses as Low Church Proto-Protestants is made more controversial than it should be because of how they factor into the imagined revisionist histories proposed by Landmarkists.  I do not believe in the core Doctrine that often lies behind Baptist Successionism theories (that being in the “True Church” requires an unbroken chain of Believers Baptism back to the Disciples), so whether or not there is direct continuity between the Waldenses and 15th Century Anabaptists doesn’t concern me. However I am convinced there is plenty of solid evidence that many Waldenses (they were probably not always all the same) were Credo-Baptists who practiced Congregational Polity. 

There's also the Lollards from English History, some of them were more Low Church then the others, Wycliff himself was certainly not a Credo-Baptist but I think some later Lollards did come to that conclusion.

But also Medieval Europe inspired Fantasy sometimes is unlike real Medieval Europe in more ways then just the Supernatural stuff. Just look at all those Fantasy Anime with Chattel Slavery as part of the setting. So who cares about the precedent, I want Fantasy Baptists. 

George MacDonald was a Congregationalist Minister who was a huge player in the origins of the Fantasy Genre being a cited influence on both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.  The way Goblins tend to be depicted in Fantasy began with him and he also arguably wrote the first Isekai. Unfortunately his influence was filtered through a Catholic and an Anglican. His position on Church Polity is not the deviation from the Established Church of England MacDonald is most well known for, and indeed Universal Salvation is also something I’d like to see in the Fantasy Genre more often.

The major impact this could have on both the Mechanics and Lore of a Fantasy Setting is the question of Apostolic Succession.  

High Church denominations believe the Spiritual Authority Jesus gave the Apostles is only truly inherited by the Clergy, while Low Church Christians believe strongly in the Priesthood of All Believers.  Today most major Baptist denominations are Secessionist on the question of the Spiritual Gifts meaning they believe the more explicitly supernatural manifestations of that authority don’t really happen anymore. However most Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations are also Low Church in form, and the Quakers have their Inner Light doctrine. 

So you could easily still have your Catholic Church like institution be the one wielding the most political power in Society, seeking to restrict the knowledge and use of Healing Magic (and other forms of what a Final Fantasy player would call White Magic) to the Clergy, even having most Adventurer Guilds refuse to give proper Healer licenses to anyone not properly ordained.  While the Low Church Schismatics are teaching that such powers can be called upon by anyone who has Faith. 

People also criticize how passively Pro Monarchy the Fantasy Genre often seems. Well I’ve written before about how Congregationists were the harbingers of modern Democracy and Socialism, so perhaps having some Low Church Schismatics is also how to bring about a Revolution in a Fantasy World?

Baptists and Quakers also have a long history of opposing Slavery, the Southern Baptist Convention were the exception not the general rule, John Brown was a Congregationalist and Nat Turner a Baptist. A Fantasy story inspired by the history of The Baptist War in Jamaica could be interesting. 

Update May 17th 2026: I've recently learned that contrary to what I'd long assumed contemporary Japan has more Protestants then Catholics. 

This completely recontextualized the matter of why most Anime  seem like they don't know non Catholic forms of Christianity exist. And the main exceptions are specifically depicting the Anglicanism of England. 

And it means that the people who write the Web novels that become Light Novels that become Manga that become modern Fantasy Anime really should broaden their horizons. Tokyo has Baptists and Presbyterians and a Non Church Movement. They do have a frame of reference for what Low Church Christianity looks like. 

Catholics get more respect because they've been there longer. But so much else in Anime is the product of post Meiji Westernization, it's time Christianity in Anime reflected that too. 

She Professed Herself Pupil of Gandalf

She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man is a Winter 2022 Isekai Anime that I gave an 8 out of 10.  I’ve watched the entire show twice and some of it more than that, all Dubbed of course.

I’ve talked before about how Tolkien’s influence on the Fantasy Genre is generally more indirect in Japan and especially Anime adjacent media.  So this show beginning with a pretty explicit LOTR reference is in fact uncommon.  The main character clearly based their Gaming character on Gandalf.  But he winds up stuck in a Cute Anime Girl form by the end of the Pilot. 

Now one could view that as a pretty surface level reference, and indeed for the most part the show and its world is clearly based on the typical Dragon Quest inspired JRPG and Record of Lodoss War references the rest of the Isekai genre is, with a brief Magic Academy subplot.  But there is something else in the early part of the show I at least think Tolkien would have appreciated.  

This also fits into the Sub Genre of Isekai where this Fantasy was once a VRMMORPG Video Game that somehow became a real tangible physical material world like Log Horizon and Land of Leadale. 

So there is a question at first as to whether now that adventuring in this world is in fact dangerous if our protagonist will take the risks entailed to help deal with the Crisises it is facing. Or consider this world that began as a mere game worth taking such risks for. It’s not all that explicitly asked but the subtext was clearly there.

There is a scene in episode two where the protagonist stops to look at some flowers, observe how pretty they are and that they smell nice and decides that this beauty is what is worth protecting. It may be just a coincidence but to me that moment is very Tolkien.

Shun in Spider Isekai is NOT a Deconstruction

So I'm A Spider, So What! Is an Anime where I like all the characters, it has a great cast.  It’s currently the first time I’ve ever listed a show’s Title Character as one of my favorites on Anilist (the others I’ve considered are all Spin Offs, so main protagonists who started as supporting characters).  And it’s also now the first time I’ve ever listed any Male character as one of my favorites, much less the male lead.  Those are two different characters in this case. 

In my recent watching of YouTube videos covering this series I’ve seen at least two different people describe Shun as a Deconstruction of the Hero Archetype.  And this just shows how watered down the concept of Deconstruction is in modern Internet Discourse.

I don’t agree with people like Study of Swords that Genre Deconstruction doesn’t exist and can’t be a valid reading of any Anime. I oppose viewing Madoka Magica as a Deconstruction but I do think some Anime can be viewed that way, not this one however. 

It is not unusual at all for a Hero to make mistakes that have consequences, or for them to have spent much of the story unwittingly working for the real villains, or for other characters to chew them out for their Naive Stubbornness.  But in Anime especially, that Naive Stubbornness is often vindicated in the end, and now that I know all the spoilers for what this Anime hasn’t gotten to yet I can say with confidence that is where Shun’s story is headed. No one thinks Frieren is deconstructing Himel because of how the child Demon plot played out.

Kouki’s storyline in Arifureta especially in season 3 would be much more legitimate to describe as a Deconstruction of the typical JRPG Anime designated Hero.  But to me personally it doesn’t come off as an at all meaningful Deconstruction but more having the official Hero fail just to subvert expectations (even though it's exactly what I expected) and make the protagonists look better by comparison.  I enjoy much of Arifureta but I’m not gonna list it as a favorite. 

How inclined one is to read what happens with Shun in the Anime so far as a Deconstruction says more about the viewer than the story.  It tells me you're probably the kind of Nerd who thinks Batman’s No Kill rule is stupid and that Superman is boring and unrelatable. The kind who care a little too much about Aragorn’s “Tax Policy”. 

A lot of this obsession with reading Shun as a Deconstruction is tied to how a certain very vocal kind of Anime Fan simply doesn't like him as a character.  Indeed I maybe should have included him in my prior post about disliked Male Anime Protagonists but I’m glad I didn’t because I now have a more distinct perspective on him I want to share here. 

For what is right now still most of my life I saw myself as a Cis-Het Male, and even after I started seriously questioning my Gender Identity I remained only attracted to Women or at least very Femme Presenting individuals. But in the last couple of years I have come to realize that my orientation may be just as fluid as my identity, that I can be attracted to certain men in a very Androphilic way, or at least certain male Anime Characters. 

So any claim that it’s inexplicable or unbelievable how many girls like Shun will not fly with me because I am attracted to Shun, I like his personality and how he looks (in the Anime the LN art I’ve seen of him isn't the most flattering) and I specifically like him over any of the other Cis-Male characters in this series or most from other series more conventionally considered the Hot Guys of Anime. And I’m attracted to him in a very Feminine way, I don't fantasize about being a Seme bending him over I fantasize about being his Oneesan Mommy Dom (Which is conveniently a role none of the Girls in his canonical Harem fill).

How my Anime Fandom has shifted

There were a few times back in 2016-2019 when I would question if how All In I'd gone on Anime might wind up being a phase.  I can now confidently say it hasn't, it's here to stay.

What I have become is less motivated to keep up with currently airing seasonal Anime.  I'm down to only three for Spring 2025 and there's really one 1 confirmed to be airing then each from Summer and Fall I'm planning to watch, Rent-A-Girlfriend season 4 and Spy x Family season 3. And I was starting to sense this trend during 2024 as well.

There is no active dislike for anything, I do not intend to start saying that Anime is bad now.  

No I've simply build up a big enough frame of reference that I now chill out on feeling the need to up my numbers on the Database sites, for now Anilist is my default.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

I will continue to expand what I've seen.  There are up coming shows I'm excited for.  And older shows I haven't finished yet I want to add to when I find time. But I'm now ready to focus way more on revisiting what I'm already a fan of deepening my familiarity with them.

It's not that nothing has changed about the state of current Anime, things are always changing, and I do think there is a good chance I will in the future be seeing the Fall 2023 season as either the first or last season of it's era.  But rather then viewing them as changes for the worse they are just changes to a state I'm less personally engaged by, for now at least.  I'm happy for all the people who think now is the most exciting era to be into Anime in ages.

What's interesting though is how even the Isekai coming out I've become more selective of what to check out.  I was one of the biggest apologists for the Genre at even it's most "generic" and still am for everything I have seen, but maybe now I'm finally feeling the fatigue with the Genre so many others were feeling 8 years ago.

Another thing I remember about 2016-2018 was how I was a big advocate for the Slice of Life and Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre in it's purest most strictly defined form.  I talked about how something like Lucky Star is what I've secretly always wanted to write even back when I didn't know it was already an existing genre.  And the thing is I still do, but at some point I stopped actively watching those shows.  Part of it was them becoming less common as it felt like the first half of 2018 was the last time we had a bunch.  But I also failed to devote any rewatch time to Lucky Star (A show I for a time labeled my second favorite Anime) or Yuru Yuri, and instead found myself spending more time with what are simply the Anime versions of more conventional Genres.  And now this season I was watching Mono but put it on hold.  A number of things I put On Hold I'm likely to return to, but no guarantee. 

So that is something I plan to return to.  Though first I want to devote a good chunk of June to Queer and Magical Girl Anime.

My brief thoughts on the Anime of Winter 2025.

There are 7 Anime that aired during that season I watched to completion. 

Some I already talked about a lot on different posts.

Zenshu I initially gave a 9 but I'm thinking of upgrading it to a ten.  If I had to recommend only one it'd be that. 

The third seasons of Re:Zero and Arifureta were both hype, I look forward to season 4.

Magic Maker is perhaps doomed to be the most overlooked.  For one being so easy to dismiss as disposable Isekai Trash I found it pretty great. 

The possibility still exists I could watch more from this season in the future. But even if I don't I'd still say I'm satisfied with what it provided me. 

Update Aprils 30th: The new Rose of Versailles movie came out in January in Japan.

It's good, but my basic concerns with trying to retell this story as a single Film remain vindicated.

Compared to the other attempt I've seen to remake this as a movie, the Live Action film from the 70s, this one definitely ends better. Lady Oscar should die on Bastille Day.

This new one makes other different decisions on what to skip as well, this movie basically enters he last act of the old Anime less then half way through. It's also a bit of a Semi-Musical.

It's a decent experience when you already know the full story. but I would not recommend it as a first impression.

The problem with Ranking Anime

I use Anime Database websites like Anlist and Anime-Planet mainly to help me keep track of what Anime I have and haven't watched for my own sake.  The thing I’ve increasingly noticed is how I feel compelled to score an Anime on an at least Semi-Objective out of 5 or out of 10 scaling system doesn’t correlate well to how often I feel compelled to revisit one or talk about it. 

It honestly feels more useful to put them in categories rather than mathematical rankings.

First there are my Favorites, the Anime I would unambiguously start with when trying to summarize what my taste in Anime is, as well as what I consider masterpieces even when they don't entirely conform to my general tastes.  You can get a taste of these by looking at what I list as Favorites on those Database websites, but on those sites I try to list only one entry per franchise, the truth is most any franchise that produces one Favorite of mine probably also has many other entries I could have listed.

Then there are shows that I like and consider worthy of how successful they are, but wouldn’t call a personal favorite and probably wouldn’t talk about as much as I do if they weren’t among the most well known Anime, a frame of reference I can be confident most people into Anime at all will somewhat understand.  

Examples would include Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, Mushoku Tensei, Vinland Saga, Frieren and Delicious In Dungeon. Those are all shows from the last 15 years, certainly there are older shows I could put in this category?  Cowboy Bebop is probably the clearest 90s version of a show I feel exactly this way about.

Maybe the more of an Old Classic something is, the harder it is for me to even be self aware how much my own praise for it is because it has that Classic status.  Revolutionary Girl Utena and Serial Experiments Lain are shows I feel like I rank higher than any of those I just listed, yet I rewatch them less often, maybe that’s just because they are such uniquely Dense and thus intellectually exhausting shows to watch. 

Then there are shows I like about as much as the second category but may seem more enthusiastic about because of how much my talking about them exists in the context of defending them against the hate they receive from the online Anime Community at large. Rent-A-Girlfriend, Future Diary, a number of Isekai.  Of course some stuff in the second category does receive similar hate in certain contexts, (in fact several years ago I’d probably have placed SAO here but the intensity of it’s hate seems to have died down).  But I don’t talk about them so defensively because their vocal unironic fandoms are pretty visible.

Then there are shows I like about the same as those two categories but indeed I don’t wind up talking about much because it often feels like I’m the only one even aware of them. When they are talked about on this Blog it's because I’d currently or recently watched them or they’re relevant to some specific topic I’m talking about.  But even within this category there are some I’m more likely to actively recommend to others when I feel like they are the kind of show someone is looking for but hasn’t found on their own.  Engage Kiss is one example as are most shows I mentioned in the Anime Neo-Westerns post, as well as the shows I like to recommend as Fantasy Anime that in no way feel like Isekai even though they came out during this Isekai era like Grimoire of Zero and it’s spin off Dawn of The Witch, or Tales of Zestiria, WorldEnd and Manaria Friends which are also from 2017 or the film Maquia.

And then there are shows I have significant issues with, but also have something I find fascinating about them, about what they could have been, that has me thinking about them more than many shows in the fourth category.  Wonder Egg Priority is placed here, a lot of people seem to feel this way about that show but my opinion is more overfall positive then most peoples.  But arguably the show the character I use as my Avatar comes from is in this category.

And then as perhaps an Evil Counterpart to the second category are shows I failed to enjoy that I would have never thought about again at all if they didn’t become super popular, if I didn’t feel like I was the only one to watch it and not like it.  I don’t want to be a person who hates on things others enjoy, but sometimes I can’t help myself and need to say my piece. The lead Anime in this category is probably Revue Starlight.

Thing is, while I’m pretty sure every Anime I have any strong opinions on at all are in one of these categories, I’m not always sure myself which one.  Like I certainly can’t confuse the first two categories with the bottom one, but in between those is a lot of fluidity.

YU-NO and The Elixir of the Hero's Journey

The thing about discourse around Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth is that it’s based on a bunch of observations that I’m not even sure he intended to claim universally applied to absolutely all stories as much as it often seems like he was.

Even when we take the observation that the Return Section involves three mutually exclusive options that can’t coexist in a story with only one timeline thus moving the total number of bullet points down from 17 to 15, you’ll still be hard pressed to find any story that actually does all 15 without the analysis being forced to really stretch some parts, even in the stories most said to be directly intentionally following Campbell like Star Wars.

However that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and fun to notice the points that apply intentionally or not. And I also want to note that the different Story Structure models we talk about aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as we sometimes paint them.  So for example a Japanese writer who’s been influenced by Western Stories can write in the Kishotenketsu structure and still have pieces of the Hero’s Journey influencing beats within those Acts. 

One aspect of the Hero’s Journey that rarely happens in modern stories in a remotely straightforward manner is the idea that there is a Boon or Elixir in the “Other World” that the Hero has to find and bring back to his world for the benefit of his world. I’m calling it the Elixir mainly because of Blue’s video on the topic on the OverSarcastic YouTube Channel.

The desire to apply this to Star Wars or LOTR or Narnia or The Matrix or any number of Superhero films requires highly abstracting all of it. Now that the “Other World” isn’t actually a completely different world or even always a different part of it geographically speaking is fine actually, it’s everything else that I find kinda funny how you have to really force it to apply. 

One exception is the 1984 Supergirl film, I remember on IMDB back in the day at least one poster really invested in saying that film is the most perfect encapsulation of the Hero’s Journey, and I do see why they would feel that way.  In the case of this topic the Omegahedron is the Elixir. 

I also recall Leonard Nimoy talking about this in the Audio Commentary for Star Trek IV The Voyage Home where in that film the Elixir is the Whales. 

But what I really find fascinating in this context is the 2019 TV Anime adaptation of the 1996 Adventure Game titled YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It really turns out to be a fascinating fusion of Kishotenketsu and the Hero’s Journey. 

First of all the fact that in Kishotenketsu the “twist” happens close to the halfway point is perfectly represented by how the actual transportation to the Isekai world happens a few episodes into the Second Cour. 

But in this context the Elixir is the Saikite that Takuya needs to save Kanna.  That he’s doing it for one Girl instead of the entire world fits in with common Otaku Media tropes quite well actually.

The last point is a difference from the original game however, I imagine it’s a change many fans dislike but for me it constantly proves to be a crux why I find the Anime so incredibly good and underrated. 

Individualism in Anime

Japan is a much more Collectivist culture than The United States of America is at its baseline, a fact that is indeed relevant to understanding entertainment media made in Japan.

But people with a Collectivist ideology (in both its Right Wing and Left Wing forms) do exist in America and do sometimes make art to reflect those values.  So I have no doubt there are likewise Individualists in Japan.

So I do think people analyzing Japanese Media in the West make a mistake in assuming by default it’s always intended to be read as Collectivist and refusing to consider even the possibility that one could be Individualist. 

Anime, or more so the mediums that are the frequent source material of Anime, are very Niche even in Japan.  And Niche in a way that makes them attractive to a variety of different people outside the norm of Japanese culture in different and sometimes mutually exclusive ways. 

Make no mistake, most Anime is still presenting an ultimately Collectivist worldview, especially the Anime that are among my favorites like Robotics;Notes and the entire Magical Girl Genre.  If I'm recommending something as an expression of my Leftist ideology it's safe to assume I read it as collectivist.

However I have spotted the occasional Anime I think does have an Individualist Message in rebellion against the Collectivist norms of Japanese society.  Interestingly they mostly seem to be Light Novel adaptations.  Not all LN adaptations however, Durarara!! Has a very Collectivist ethos as do most that got an Anime even before it did.  

It’s mostly in those very LN trends that have dominated LN based Anime since like 2014 or so. Isekai, Magical Academy shows and so forth.  Not even all of them ultimately, maybe not even most, but enough that I find it notable.

Take the 2011 show Ben-To which I found very fun but did notice a few points where it’s moral seems to come from that “if everybody wins then nobody wins” mentality.  Shield Hero I know has appealed to the Randian Objectivists in the Anime Community and Log Horizon has also been described as preaching Libertarian ideology.  C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control is an even more economically Libertarian Anime but it's not a LN adaptation though.

Another interesting, indeed to me annoying, trend in Isekai is how whenever its premise involves an entire classroom being Isekaied it’s always initially about the MC being separated from the rest for much of the story.   I really want to see one that’s from the start about the entire Class working together without there even needing to be a singular protagonist.

This is paralleled by how those Magic Academy shows always star a main character whose special ability completely dwarfs everyone else or fundamentally breaks the world's magic system.  The very aspect of the _____ ______ formula one would expect a more Collectivist Culture to remove or at least downplay they instead double down on. 

Among Americans who strive to be Collectivists there are still elements of Individualism that passively remain in our thinking because of that being our culture’s baseline.  A lot of Internet Leftist Infighting is Leftists accusing other Leftists of being Individualists while being blind to the Individualisms in our own thinking.

And the same frequently happens in these Anime I have alleged to be ideologically individualist.  Anime named for a single Chosen One protagonist often wind up doing better at depicting teamwork then American Superhero films named as being about a Superhero Team.

I am aware that not all forms of Collectivism are good (Fascism is a collectivist ideology though many Breadtubers are in denial about that), and a lot of Japanese Collectivism can be very Conservative in nature.  So critiquing that isn't inherently incompatible with Leftism.  It's a tricky subject. 

Those entire classroom Isekai premises I complained about before do inevitably reunite the Protagonist with the rest of the class, how long that takes varies.  The recent Loner Life in Another World that I’m watching the currently airing Dub of on HIDIVE is perhaps the most subversive of this trend as much of the comedy is the protagonist being prevented from fulfilling his desire to be left alone.  In fact at times it seems like its thesis is that a “Loner” is the best mediator between the various Cliques. (Actually the most surprising thing about the show is how it opens on a whole “break down of all the High School Cliques” scene that I usually only expect in American High School Dramas.)

A similar idea is at play in Detective Conan.  We have the typical trop of the official law enforcement agencies investigating the Black Organization being hesitant to work together.  But since Conan is trusted by everyone as an informal ally he's able to be the mediator between them. 

And then there is Classroom of The Elite, a Light Novel series with a contentious Anime Adaptation.  Long before I had any of the other thoughts I’ve based this post on, I've suspected that the key to understanding Classroom of The Elite may be that it is exploring the tension between Japanese Collectivism and Capitalist Individualism.

Anime Year 2025-2026

I’ve decided to make another try at doing weekly Anime Updates for a Year.   

This year will be defined as April 2025 through March 2026.

And weekly is a rough estimate, they probably won’t come out consistently the day of the week, and if I’m slow in having interesting thoughts about any I may take 2 or three weeks. 

To start with I am continuing the Simuldubs of 

Ameku M.D.

Loner Life In Another World

Guild Receptionist

And I’ll be bringing the last 8 episodes of Re:Zero season 3 once all of it has been Dubbed.

As far as Winter 2025 shows I finished before March ended, I may post final thoughts on them separately. 

I’m very unsure what I’ll be watching for Spring.

I’ll be checking in on Detective from time to time but probably not consistently.  The most recent new episodes have been Anime Originals and now it’s returning an old 3 parter from the 500s that I can’t remember at the moment if it’s among the ones I’ve seen. 

Haite Kudashi, Takamine-san is one I’m considering, believe it or not. Shows labeled as Ecchi are often contrary to my tastes, but one bold enough to use that as its main promotional image is worth giving a shot. 

Rock is a Lady’s Modesty I’ll probably give a shot to.

The Shuiji Family Children I’ll give a look to.

Witch Watch and Once Upon A Witch’s Death interest me.

Oh and there’s 300 Slimes season 2

As usual though, my preference for waiting for Dubs means I’ll be behind, and so this series of posts will not actually finish what it’s meant to cover until deep into April 2026.  And also means it’ll be a few weeks before we really get started. 

Shows that have been announced recently I'm hoping will air within this timeframe include.

Fate/Strange Fake

The new Nanoha show

A Certain Darkside Item

A Certain Scientific Railgun season 4.

Rent-a-Girlfriend season 4

Skeleton Knight Season 2

Classroom of The Elite season 4.

The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat season 2

Spy x Family season 3 is currently scheduled for Fall 2025.

Movies I’m waiting for include the Dubs for Princess Principal Crown Handler part 3 and the most recent Girls Und Panzer Das Finale episode.  The upcoming Madoka Magica Film.  And the new Detective Conan film coming out this month I probably won’t be able to watch till November or December. And maybe even hopefully the next Prisma Illya Movie.

I should also mention that I have stopped using MAL and am now using Anilsit and Anime-Planet.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages, Anime-Planet doesn’t include Hentai so that’s much of why my number is smaller there.  

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

https://www.anime-planet.com/users/KuudereKun888 

How many VRMMO Anime are actually about VR?

In shows like Sword Art Online and Quality Assurance in Another World the being literally unable to log out plot device is enabled by it not being Virtual Reality but rather more like your Brain is literally plugged into the Game. And it seems like it functions the same way in BOFURI even though it doesn't have a similar plot point. Infinite Dendrogam is another one of these.  "Full Dive" is sometimes the term for it and there is an Anime with that term in the title I didn't watch much of. 

Then there are shows like And You Thought There Is Never A Girl Online and My Love Story With Yamada-Kun where the Games being played are just regular contemporary MMOs, the way the In Game world is Animated is an artistic liberty for the benefit of the audience, it’s not meant to be diegetic.

The various Isekai about a Game world becoming real in some form presumably were actual VRMMOs but that’s not what they’re experiencing anymore.  These would include Log Horizon, Land of Leadale, She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man, and kind of Overlord.

At the end of last year when I finally started watching some old .Hack Anime it kinda hit me how different it is because it is in fact actual Virtual Reality.  The ability of whatever the given plot is to trap people in the game or harm people in real life is presented as seemingly Supernatural and I don’t think is fully explained in any of what I’ve watched yet.

It’s mostly very small things, but they become in hindsight quite notable, like the references to someone using graph paper to help them navigate.

It’s not just an Anime thing, SciFi is often skipping the Virtual Reality phase for some more truly Transhumanist plug-in, like in 2009’s Caprica.

It might have to do with Virtual Reality being technology that does already exist, and has since the early 90s at least, it’s just not widespread and normalized and cheap enough yet to be the standard way Video Games are made to be played, and perhaps it never will be.

Or maybe Virtual Reality is a broader term then I’m treating it and does technically apply to what SAO depicts.  But you know what I mean.  These “Full Dive” things are not something I think I’d ever want to do, but standard VR might be fun to try some day.

Update October 2025: I had forgotten when I first wrote this about the Netflix Anime Good Night World which I watched when it first dropped in October of 2023.  I rewatched it this month and noticed it's Game is an actual VRMMO.  It is in a few ways perhaps the most like ,hack of any modern Anime.

Sequels have an advantage in MAL ratings.

Why is because most of the people who really disliked season 1 and gave it very low rating or even a mid rating probably didn’t bother with any further seasons.  So a sequel would have to really drop the ball pretty hard for anyone who overall liked season 1 to give it a very low rating.

We see this with In Another World With My Smartphone, where even its season 2 has a higher rating than season 1. I have interacted with other Smartphone fans on Reddit and the disappointment with season 2 isn’t just me, most everyone agrees it rushed through too much too quickly and thus is a downgrade as both an adaptation and an Anime compared to season 1.  So season 1 having a lower rating is all because of the haters of “generic’ Isekai who watched it just to clown on it and then forgot about it.

However, Smartphone season 2 only has a slightly higher rating.  For sequels who have more substantial leads over earlier installments you really shouldn't dismiss that as just this phenomenon at play.

The beauty of Anime lies in part in how many sagas produce their best content 3 or 4 or even 5 seasons in, or 100s of episodes in if it’s all still one MAL entry like Detective Conan. This is not an artform where the popular perception that everything is only good early on then it runs out of ideas fast applies.  The shows that I do feel have a central gimmick that got stale fast couldn't keep me for even a single season.

Rent-a-Girlfriend is a show I enjoyed even in season 1, but season 3 was a massive elevation, and a lot of the most hated qualities of the series are muted drastically during that season.

And even with Smartphone it’s an adaptation issue, fans who know the source material better then I do are confident that if the content of season 2 had been fleshed out to fill 2 or 3 seasons it could have equaled the quality of season 1 or even surpassed it.

I have something against the Otome Villainess Genre

I enjoy some of these shows, but there is still an issue I have with the premise at its core.

I remember in one Lindsay Ellis video she said she couldn’t enjoy Frozen because she fundamentally disagreed with its perceived critique of prior Disney Princess films.  The problem is the message that you shouldn't rush into marriage with someone you just met is objectively a good one to teach young people, it doesn’t need to be some metatextual commentary on prior works in the same genre or from the same corporate brand to work, it simply does, it's a plot that will make sense even to people watching it centuries from now divorced from it's original Pop Cultural context.

However that same defense can’t be made of this Reincarnated as an Otome Villainess genre, and its other variants. As a subgenre of modern Light Novel Gamer Isekai the perceived commentary on prior works of fiction is explicit in the Text not mere Subtext.

Is there a single actual Otome Game that fits the generic framework all the hypothetical Otome Games imagined by this Genre share?  A Magic School in a Victorianish setting where the protagonist is the only commoner attending and her romantic options include The Crown Prince and her Ojousama Rival usually experiences some horrific Bad End alongside the Heroine’s Happy Ending?

I admit I’m pretty Anime Only when it comes to all these Genres, but none of the Anime I’m aware of that are adapted from real Otome Games are at all like this.  There is usually not both a Reverse Harem and a Romantic Rival to the protagonist, that’s a bit too complicated for a truly generic Dating Sim to handle.

I feel this is a cynical perception of not just Otome Games specifically but Shoujo media in general held by Men and NLOGs who've never actually consumed any of it directly, or what they have they've chosen to remember through a biased lens.

Classic Shoujo Anime and Manga are in fact always by default very sympathetic to the Romantic Rival and/or Ojousama character (they aren’t always or even usually the same person), and so I refuse to believe an accusation that Otome Games made for the same demographic were ever any different.  

Sometimes they are way more sympathetic to Bully characters than a lot of Western fans can handle.  Take Peach Girl who’s “Villainess” is the Trope Namer for the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, even she is given an arc and becomes a good person by the end.  In Pretear the Ojousama character is mostly comic relief but shows her own heroic qualities in the climatic episodes.  There are even Shoujo where the Protagonist outright admires her Rival and actively ships her with the Prince she has a crush on like Princess Tutu and Shattered Angels, I would critique those examples on their unwillingness to go for a Poly Resolution not how they present the rival.

There are also Shoujo Manga as old as the 2000s where the Spoiled Rich Girl is the Protagonist like Pink Innocent. 

I talk a lot about how part of what I love about Otaku Media is how often Saving even the Villain is explicitly the goal.  Well that’s a Value modern Otaku Media inherited from Classic Shoujo, it comes principally from the Magical Girl Genre.

One YouTube Video I watched on this Villainess trend says it’s a “dead unicorn trope” which he thought meant it may have been a thing in the past but isn’t anymore.  But I doubt even those old ones ever treated these characters so unfairly. In actuality “dead unicorn trope” means it never existed unironically, like "The Butler did it". 

Amelie Doree has a video on a Game that can be considered the Ur Text of the Otome Game genre called Angelique.  And while it does have somewhat of a proto Ojousama Rival character she is not treated as a “Villainess” at all.

Isekai Rewatches

Lately I did some rewatches of a few Isekai shows, some of the most disposable and forgotten about Seasonal Isekai of recent years.

In The Land of Leadale which held up great as a chill spiritual successor to Smartphone season 1.

She Professed Herself the Wise Man's Pupil which is still a fun show that got me to thinking about a few things.

The 8th Son show is also still good.

Saving 80,000 Gold Coins is still Amazing as well.

So I think I'm gonna try to do the same with some more, like maybe Skeleton Knight before it's season 2 comes along.

As a true unironic apologist of this genre I wanted to test that the ones I like weren't just a passing in the moment enjoyment.

I also finally watched all of season 1 of Log Horizon, it's first handful of episodes I'd seen before but in my prior attempts to watch it I got bored when the Economic stuff started.  It's a good show and so I do intend to get to seasons 2 and 3 eventually.

Isekai is fun, not every fantasy setting has to be super unique to tell a neat story.