It’s almost impossible to believe that I have never actually read the Japanese Volume 1 of this series, but it is true. I had read some of it as a webnovel, when it was licensed by Seven Seas, before I had a chance to pick up the GL Bunko digital edition. I read and reviewed Volume 1 in English a year and a half ago, in fact, and then ran ahead to read the rest in Japanese, because it was that good. Until now, it was only available in digital form in Japanese.

Well, now Ichijinsha has licensed the series for a print release and, finally, I have had a chance to read the first novel in Japanese. Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. -Revolution-, Volume 1 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。-Revolution-) was just as excellent as I remembered. Company drone Oohashi Rei wakes up as the protagonist of her favorite otome game, and decides to romance the villainess, the high-minded daughter of nobility, Claire François. Rae Taylor’s actions are ham-handed, but her experience with the game gives her powers and knowledge that offers many advantages.

Having had a year to experience the entire story from Rae’s point of view (and some of the story from Claire’s point of view) I can now see many things that were seeded to be resolved later…and some hints of the Truth (TM) about the world. It’s nice to see those things being seeded way back in the beginning. I know many more will also appear in the next two volumes. The overtly queer content still makes this series stand out from a lot of Yuri work. I’ll never get tired of that. ^_^

Ichijinsha did a great job on the book, with color dust cover, color character page up front (with hanagata’s original art for the GL Bunko cover as  fold out. The cover for this edition is a new work by hanagata. All of the original illustrations are included and two extra stories. The first story is from Lene’s point of view, the final bit from Misha’s. I think I’d love to have this whole story once more from Misha’s point of view, for reasons that are a spoiler. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7 Portraits of the people, mostly, rather than the scenes
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Yuri – 7 one-sided in this volume, but…
LGBTQ –10
Service – 2 Dressing and undressing, Rae acting like a perv….

Overall – 9

This print edition doesn’t add anything new to the story, but it gives us a definitive volume for lovers of this series. If you’re still a holdout and where waiting for a print edition in Japanese, now is the time to grab a copy. Although, I won’t lie, having the Kindle translate feature makes reading the GL Bunko volumes a breeze.

It will be such a pleasure to be able to give this series more space on my shelf. ^_^

When we left our heroines in Volume 3, they were in the Nur Empire, and we have had any number of massive plot points set up. So, of course, the first half of the book deals with literally anything else.

I love the first half of the book so much. ^_^

In the first half of I’m in Love with the Villainess, Volume 4, Rae and Claire will be dealing with important things like a cooking contest, getting dresses for a grand ball, solving two murder mysteries, and opening a forbidden box. There will be discussion of rights and lives for for sexual and gender minorities. And they will, presumably, also be going to school.

And, then, in the second half of the book, our Heroines of the Revolution, will jump willy-nilly into another fraught political situation and shepherd the world to a shape we could not have predicted. But, because I am in Rae’s position (in a meta sense – she knows what will happen in the narrative up to the end of this novel and I know what will happen afterwards,) I also know that none of it may matter. But that is for Volume 5. I cannot *wait* for you to read Volume 5.

Chapters here are short and move quickly, whether they are serious of silly, which means that both serious and silly items have an equivalent weight in the overall narrative. And, indeed, some of the stuff that is silly, will come to be serious in time.

One of the major concerns I had after reading Volume 3 in Japanese was the twins. They are savants, clearly, but in different ways. Volume 4 goes a long way to sorting their paths. I hope, after inori-sensei finishes her current work, which I hope you will all be able to read in published format soon, she takes a look at the twins when they are taking after their mothers in high school, causing societal upheaval.

hangata’s art has visibly improved since the first novel, but this book still favors character over scene, so we have a lot of straight-up character portraits with little scenery.

It will come as no surprise that I love Dorothea with all my love. Competent, impatient, not prepared to suffer fools, the only thing wrong with her is her disinterest in food. That’s a fatal flaw.  Aonoshimo-sensei, the artist for the manga recently shared their version of Dorothea and I just completely lost my mind – just perfect. ^_^

So, you’re all set up now with the world as we know it. You’ve met all the players, you’ve learned about Dana, Melica and Kiko. And you are ready for them all the return home. Volume 5 does not have a release date yet, but my gut says it will be late summer, based on the release dates of the rest.

I read this on Bookwalker because I did not want to wait – the paperback will be released in late February.  Overall, it is a good adaptation but, I have one teeny weeny quibble.  Sorry. I know translators have hard jobs and I’m not angry or anything and probably no one but me cares. I just …could not cope so I made a meme. ^_^ I will keep this meme, and probably use it endlessly for the rest of my life, because “translating” itadakimasu into another not-English language is my personal path into madness. My head screams “Why!?!?” every time I see it.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – 4? Suggestive commentary, dress-up and Rae slavering over Claire.
Yuri – 10
Queer – 10

Overall – 10

Overall, this was everything was as fun and memorable as I hoped and I am now waiting for Volume 5!

What if you had the chance to remake the entire world in order to save the person you love…and learned that the world was never what it seemed?

The first thing you will note about Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 5, (私の推しは悪役令嬢。) by Inori, with illustrations by Hanagata, is that it is a large-ish volume. That is because there is a lot to get through.

We left Volume 4 with a number of major and minor plot points up in the air. Since, once again, you will be able to read I’m In Love With The Villainess, Volume 4 this winter from Seven Seas, I will not spoil those plot points, except to say that they are mostly all entirely relevant to Volume 4 and only one is relevant to Volume 5. This volume mostly takes place in the Nur Kingdom and when I tell you “the world was never what it seemed,” please consider that as much of a spoiler as you will get from me beyond the cover art, which is also a spoiler. I’m actually glad I read this on Amazon’s Kindle app, because the translation dictionaries made it that much easier to wade through some of the terminology. My Japanese vocabulary is not up to economics and finance, and other specific disciplines.

Because so much happens here – loss and gain and loss once more and salvation and damnation and eternity, it’s actually impossible to talk about it, so I will content myself with the least important thing I told Sean Gaffney as I messaged him to spoil the living hell out of it. If you are familiar with Doctor Who, you will entirely understand how everything in this book works…and how it must work. ^_^ This leads to the only criticism, if you can even call it that, I have. Because of that specific narrative structure, there was no way to give it a punchy ending, which was perfectly okay. It ended as it had to…and then didn’t end for a few more post-epilogue shorts. When you like your characters, it’s hard to let go, I understand completely. ^_^ 

Inori-sensei’s writing has evolved. Originally published as a webnovel, the chapters moved quickly, were carefree and goofy. The story began to take on a serious bent as the plot unfolded in later volumes. Through everything, the writing was very, very aware of LGBTQ+ issues in the real world. This is true through the very end of the story. What has changed is that the writing now is very visually descriptive, where before it was narratively descriptive. Inori-sensei clearly has the currently running manga and any potential future anime (which has not yet been proposed, the author’s note states) in mind. That kind of writing works very well here in what must be described as a grand, sweeping, epic finale, in a way that it would not have in the earlier volumes.

Typical of a Light Novel, the art is portraiture and serves to illustrate the characters, rather than the scene. Hanagata’s art has also improved and evolved, which is kind of fascinating, because we got to watch it in real time.

So what can I tell you about this volume? I can tell you that a couple of times I thought the story was going to make me cry. It didn’t…until it did, and the character that did that, was probably one of two characters I would have absolutely guaranteed that you could not get me to care about. ^_^

While this book wraps up every loose end – even the ones it creates – and finishes the story as such, Inori-sensei is still hard at work. “She’s Such a Cheeky Commoner,” is the story (not entirely the same content) from Claire’s point of view. You can read the webnovel of this if you become a subscriber to Inori’s Pixiv Fanbox.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – Very little, for perfectly good reasons.
Yuri – 10
Queer – 10

Overall – 10

I said of Volume 3, that it was juggling and plate-spinning on a high wire, I called Volume 4 a “wild ride.” Volume 5 of Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. was an epic parade of the entire circus. ^_^ 

As I said of the Japanese edition of  I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 3, “We’ve already established that all norms are off the table in this series, so the plot here is a little bit of everything – school drama, romance, socio-political drama, and some other things and then the demons arrive. From this point on the book is spinning plates and juggling balls and then an axe or two on a high-wire.”

And indeed, we are handwaved into an idyll that will be shattered, trod upon, and sliced and diced and none of it – not one word – hit me as hard as the final scene in a throwaway side story. (T_T)

Former daughter of the nobility and school villainess, Claire Francois and her wife, the supernaturally powerful and gifted protagonist of the game Revolution, Rae Taylor, are living a reasonably comfortable life. Given that this life was built in the ruins of a revolution to take down a monarchy, it’s a very sweet life. Their adopted daughters are energetic and precocious. They have jobs. Why would anyone give up all that they have carved out for themselves?

The answer is of course that Claire believes in her upbringing – that, as a (former) noble, she has standards  and serving her country is the core of her beliefs. That her country is, maybe less worthy than she hoped, is a given. Instead of rethinking society into a more equal structure, all the government wants to do is create a new kind of second-class citizen of women and queer folks. That’s only just about 100% likely.

But instead of wrestling with rich men’s refusal to share power, we head off to the Nur Kingdom. At which point, I would like to digress and discuss my personal interpretation of the country names. As I see it, they are as follows: Bauer is kind of Germany; Alpes is Austria; Sousse is Switzerland. That’s kind of straightforward.

Okay let’s do Nur. In Japanese its written as ナー, so more like “Naa”

What country might that be? Hm, I wonder what aggressive militaristic country is threatening to Japan right now. It’s not hard to see that Nur is China, and Rusha (Russia) is “north” of that.

I want to note that Frieda, who affects a fake French accent here is from Melica, or, as I think of it, ‘Merika. Because ‘Xico and Nacada (or something like that) will get a mention next book and there will be reasons. So, while this is my interpretation and not at ALL a criticism of the translation, I think of Frieda as a really annoying American. For reasons.

As I thought of all this, I realized that, in the smallest and most tedious way possible, I’m kind of in Rae’s position. I know what’s coming, but I don’t know how it might turn out, only how it has turned out, when it’s over.  So gosh, how irritating for Rae. ^_^;

In any case, as with Volume 1, Volume 3 is mostly introduction and set up and I will also say that not every question posed here will be answered in V4. Which is why I stare with longing at GL Bunko’s listings waiting for a V5 to be listed.  inori-sensei has also posted all the final chapters of this arc and her story from Claire’s perspective on pixiv fanbox and I hope that will bring up the page count enough for the next volume soon.

Now I will return to reading the manga for my fix. And waiting for V5 in Japanese or V4 in English, neither of which have a date as of yet. In the meantime, we may enjoy the sweet scenes of domestic bliss, holidays and celebrations and what will pass (for now, eff you new government) as their wedding. And that’s still not the queerest part of the book.

I mentioned that the emotional impact here for me was, rather than the childrens’ trials, the final chapter where Claire experiences a Rae who does not love her and how bereft her life becomes. That one got me in the gut.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – Kind of, but I’m alright with any and all of it.
Yuri – 10
Queer – 10

Overall – 10

There are STILL questions I have even after Volume 4. In the meantime, I have one question for you – what did you think of Dorothea? I adored her, as you might imagine and need a lot of fanart of her. ^_^ Sadly she’s too cool and competent (and adult /eyeroll/) for most fan artists, who seem to prefer Lily or Philene. Sigh. Poor me.