By Bisu and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo wa Kyou mo Hata o Tatakioru” by Arian Rose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Tom Harris.

Generally speaking, most reincarnated folks who end up in the body of a little kid do NOT act like they’re an adult. This even applies to Rosemary, the protagonist of this series. Sure, she’s talking and making decisions that are far beyond what a child her age should be doing, but her emotional maturity remains at about the right level. There are many times this comes up in the books – her inability to get that other kids are in love with her is baked into the genre, but certainly her tearful confession to her crush and the scene that follows shows her as having the easily broken heart of a 10-year-old girl. This most applies, though, when she’s dealing with her father. Who, to be fair, is the King. But the reader recognizes the type that he is, and what he’s actually doing to help her – or at least test her – and I don’t think she sees this as the tough love it’s meant to be. It makes Randolf the most interesting character in this new volume.

Rosemary is still doing her best to try and avoid the dreadful fate her country is going to be in in a year or two, but it’s not easy, especially since she’s changed things so much that she can’t rely on her memories of the game shoe once played. She needs to research the Demon Lord, who possessed the body of a young priest… who she then runs across, pre-possession. She also discovers that most Demon Lord books are kept in the King’s personal library, which means she has to ask to read them and put up with his cold, calculating attitude. And, of course, she’s still in love with the Captain of the guards, Leonhart, who is quite a number of years older than she is – and also she’s ten, yes, a fact that definitely influences her thoughts on her crush. Worst of all, if she doesn’t figure out how to be incredibly useful to the King in the next two years, he’s going to do the obvious thing – marry her off to another country’s royal.

Rosemary remains the best reason to read this, especially when we see her (relatively low) opinion of herself versus everyone else’s (very high) opinion. This comes out best in a scene with Randolf, who castigates his daughter for thinking herself stupid for being unable to catch every possibility in advance. She’s not a God, even though she does have the knowledge of the game from her past life. Fortunately, she does reveal this (in a way, she treats it as a prophetic dream) to Leonhart, so at least has one ally she can turn to. Unfortunately, she’s falling more deeply in love with him by the day. And is, as I said, ten years old. So nothing’s gonna happen, but the emotional turmoil is still there.

The ending of this book implies the next one will likely be Rosemary’s tour of various lands, as she tries to discover more about what’s around her so that she can be a better person and of use to her father. I look forward to reading it, this is in the upper end of the Reincarnated Villainess charts, despite Rosemary not technically being a villainess.

By Bisu and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo wa Kyou mo Hata o Tatakioru” by Arian Rose. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Tom Harris.

It’s no secret by now that it does not take much to make me add another “otome game villainess” story to my stack of light novels. As with isekai stories, a lot of them tend to hit the exact same story beats. Unlike isekai, though, they usually are at least trying to keep things interesting as much as possible. This story has a fairly standard premise. The title is not great. It’s relatively serious, so you can’t push it for the laughs. But, as with a couple other titles in this genre, it’s worth it for the inner narration of the title character, who has just the right amount of balance in terms of talking about her old life, and who seems to have things well in hand when it comes to avoiding her fate. Honestly, the one issue she might have is that she tends to have a bad case of self-deprecation. That said, like most villainess novels, she has a strong supporting cast to buff her up.

Princess Rosemary does have it slightly easier than other examples in this genre. She is indeed killed in a traffic accident, and ends up reincarnated in an otome game. But she was only a rival in the game, not a villainess. So she doesn’t have to worry about death or exile. That said… the game sucked. It had terrible romantic routes, and the actual nice, interesting characters were all NPCs. She absolutely does not want to deal with any of these guys when they’re grown up and terrible, so decides to fix things now while they’re young and malleable. Especially as one is her younger brother and one is her fiance. You’d think this would be easy, given she’s got a good 10 years before the heroine even shows up. But this princess is emotionally mature enough to realize this ISN’T a game… and these are real people whose fates she’s affecting. Which makes it even worse when two young sorcerers arrive… and she has to try to stop actual deaths.

As noted, Rosemary’s narration is fantastic, and great translation too while I’m at it. This book has the word fuck in it no less than five times, and each one of them is well-deserved and pitch perfect. Rosemary does have a group around her who are amazed at her, but they’re not ALL in love with her, and there is a lot of attention paid to her frustration at being a good 17-18 years younger than the guy she has a crush on. She has very sensible solutions to her problems, and they work… mostly. Some issues, like her personal guard, can’t really be stopped as much as toned down. And then there’s the climax of the book, where she is forced to act maturely even when an attempted murder takes place in front of her and the assaulter lies to her face. She can’t even be there for the climactic battle. She really is a 10-year-old royal princess who is guarded constantly, and that leads her to feel powerless… despite pretty much changing history. And it’s only Book 1.

So yeah, the usual “if you don’t like this sort of book, why are you starting another one?” warnings, but if you do like this sort of book, there’s no reason not to add this to the list. It’s a winner.