By Punichan and Yoh Hihara. Released in Japan as “Kaifukushoku no Akuyaku Reijō” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Adam Seacord.

I do appreciate that an author might feel that the villainess genre is played out. There have been many, many, MANY villainess books in the last eight years or so. They all tend towards specific types. Some have the villainess actively trying to change her fate, as they were reincarnated long before the “break off the engagement” event. Some have them fighting death after they’re unable to avoid that fate. Sometimes they go to a different country, where they’re welcomed with open arms. Hell, this particular author will do almost the exact same premise and first chapter in a later book – you could have copy/pasted much of the start of this book into the start of Camper Van Villainess. So I do appreciate the conceit of this book, which is “what if the villainess is an RPG nerd who just wants to be hitting up dungeons and grinding levels?” Oh wait, we had that too, with Villainess Level 99. That said, this does get the “boring as hell” part of these RPG books 100% correct.

Mitsuki loves playing the RPG game Reas Life Online, as well as its Otome Game side story game, Reas Love. When we next see her (and it’s never clear how she dies), she’s in the body of Charlotte Cocoriara, the daughter of a duke and fiancee to the prince. But this is one of THOSE games – the player is a commoner girl who the prince falls for, and Charlotte is the villainess, who the prince exiles. Expecting her to object, he’s a bit stunned when she says “OK” and bolts instead. (It’s really, REALLY just like Camper Van Villainess.) She runs home, tells her parents what happened, and leaves to achieve her dream – become an adventurer and play Reas Life Online rather than Reas Love!

There were some things here I found interesting. Unlike most otome game worlds, where the “heroine” has to be yelled at by the villainess for treating it like a game when in fact it’s real life, but here it really DOES seem like a game, inasmuch as our protagonist can see status screens, levels, etc. I also like the conceit of the otome game being a side spinoff of the main RPG core. As with Camper Van Villainess and Otome Survival Game, this is more interested in taking the skeleton of a villainess plot and spinning it off into a different genre. Sadly, the genre, generic RPG power leveling, is something I’ve tried to avoid for the last few years when trying out new books, and seeing it in a villainess book really didn’t help much. At least the RV book is meant to be more ridiculous – this is just basic. And then there’s the same problem the villainess genre as a whole seems to have – by emphasizing the villainess as good and the heroine as bad, it plays into “commoners should know their place, only noble people have the breeding to rule”. Which is not helped by this heroine being, well, a generic selfish heroine.

I’ll happily read more of the author’s other series. But as for this, if I wanted an OP isekai, I’d read an OP isekai.