Today I want to talk about My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Volume 9 and I think I’m probably more surprised than anyone about that. ^_^

If you are still reading by Volume 9, you know that for anything in this series to work, Katarina must remain an uncarved block and all the people around her will flail to preserve her simplicity, at any expense. That remains true here as well, but also, we get to see a new facet of our protagonist…and it kind of changes everything we think about her.

Larna takes Katarina, Sora and Maria on a mission to track down the source of the child trafficking ring that has been constantly mentioned, but sort of skimmed over as a “bad thing over there that we’re not looking at” much the same we most of us deal with, well real-world child trafficking.

In a beautiful seaport town, Katarina makes her peers fall in love with her all over again and drags a new enemy-to-ally into the harem. She forgets that she commands a powerful magical creature, then remembers, then forgets, then remembers. All is well and this crop of children are rescued and maybe, possibly we’re one step closer to finding the shadow noble / dark magic practitioner who is doing all this. But none of that is why I am writing this review.

As you know, I am firmly on Team Mary for shipping with Katarina. Sure, I like Maria, but did not agree when last year, Maria x Katarina came on top of the best couples poll for the series. Until this volume. ^_^

Maria’s no dummy. She can confess as openly as she’d like to Katarina, knowing that no matter how low she flies her banner of love, Katarina will not understand it (and, realistically, it won’t threaten anyone else, as she’s a commoner.) In Volume 9, Maria’s declarations of love are SO blatant that even Sora thinks Maria’s the best choice. In the end, I was convinced that if this were an otome game, Maria probably does have the best route end, by a single scene in which Katarina was allowed to be good at something.

The premise the readership has assumed is that Katarina is a doofus. What if…she’s not? What if you or I had actually been reincarnated as a Duke’s child and forcefed years of etiquette and arcane language classes for magic we couldn’t control? Go ahead…think about it. It’s not a stretch to imagine that I’d also have gotten into loads of trouble for climbing trees and doing shit unbecoming a young lady. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for not punishing me for climbing trees.)

So, here in this seaport town, as Maria takes over the management and cooking for a restaurant and we learn that Katarina was in her past life a *completely competent waitress,* it kind of changes everything. Even Katarina allows herself a fantasy in which she and Maria run a restaurant together…it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t work, when we can see that it most certainly would.

If you’re reading this series for Yuri, it’s only here and there in between everyone else’s gaga-ing over Katarina, but you know what? It’s there! For those of us who wish there was a full-on book just about that, our wish is coming true. My Next Life as a Villainess Side Story: Girl’s Patch is on the way from Seven Seas in May 2022.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Perfectly fine, always irrelevant
Story – 8 Predictable with a side of Yuri
Characters – 10 I’m not reading this for the intense crime story
Service – 3 Katarina being swept off her feet by Maria is service, yes.
Yuri – 4 Same, plus 1 for Sora agreeing with us.

Overall – 8

While I will never give up rooting for Mary, now I can definitely agree with the Maria groupies. ^_^

Volume 9 is available now in digital format from J-Novel Club on Amazon Kindle or Bookwalker Global. It will be out in print in winter 2022.