I’m in Love with the Villainess (Volume 1) – Romancing the Rival
Rae Oohashi woke up to find herself living in her favourite otome game, Revolution. There are three princes in this game, each a potential love interest, however, Rei only has eyes for the villain, Claire Francois.
I’m in Love with the Villainess (Volume 1) – Romancing the Rival
What happened?
Her character in the game went by the name Rae Taylor and she was a student at a school for magic where she found herself brushing shoulders the height of nobility. However, some of them didn’t like brushing shoulders with a lowly commoner. One of those people was Claire Francois, Rae’s rival in the race to win the hearts of the three stunning and accomplished princes. However, Rae felt nothing for the princes as her heart had already been stolen by Claire.
That might work out if Claire didn’t hate Rae with every ounce of her being. She made it her mission to teach this upstart commoner a lesson she would never forget. So, as you do, she challenged Rae to a duel, however, this would be fought on three fields. There was an exam about culture, one about etiquette, and finally magical ability.
Claire was so sure she would win that she made a bet with Rae. If Claire won, Rae would leave the school. If Claire didn’t win, Rae would be allowed to request one thing from Claire. Of course, the exam was something that Rae was prepared for. She knew the answers by heart, although etiquette was a little harder. Finally, with magic, she broke the device that measures magical potential. Rae got to stay with her darling Claire and to make things even harder for Claire to escape, Rae became her maid. Now, there was no escape.
What did you think?
While this was a perfectly fine story, it didn’t do anything that grabbed my attention and demanded that I jump into the next volume. Reading so many stories simultaneously allows me to get an idea of how invested in the story I am. I’m in Love with the Villainess just kind of wanders along doing its own thing. As I said, it was fine and I will read the remaining two volumes. Hopefully, it will improve enough for me to want to rave about it, but I somehow doubt that.
I did enjoy the way Rae masochistically enjoys everything that Claire throws at her. However, it too kind of got old after a while. There just wasn’t anything that made this story stand out against the others. Hopefully, the next volume will spend more time delving into Claire’s past and showing how these two end up together. I’m assuming there will be a happy ending for Rae and Claire.
Volume highlights
Other posts in the series
- Series Review
- Volume 1 – Romancing the Rival
- Volume 2 – Just What Are You Thinking?
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Oh, I was actually looking forward to reading this one. When I read the summary of this manga a few weeks ago, I thought it had some potential to be a really funny comedy, too bad it kind of fell flat. Thanks for the review! I think I’ll have to reconsider if I want to buy this or not.
Yeah. It wasn’t a bad read. It just didn’t spark my imagination. I will still read the rest, but I’ve definitely read better.
I’ve yet to read the LN original source though I can assure you avid fans keep on saying that the social commentary on real-life issues are present in the story (note: I still got a feeling the otome game’s male characters will become part of the antagonists’ cast), but that can only happen if the anime adaptation has a second cour which unfortunately has no announcement of it.
Of course I’m tuning in for the element of surprise on the female leads’ relationship’s development towards each other since that part becomes one of the factors of said social commentary. I can understand that we recommend this series to avid Yuri fans and/or anyone who want to watch a female protagonist, what more who is a lesbian, doing what she wanted to do in her reincarnated life.
For sure, this has it’s target audience. I think it got unlucky with the other stories I was reading at the same time as this one just didn’t blow me away. I do have the second volume sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to read it so it’s not like I’m going to abandon it.
I think it will be interesting to see the male characters start to turn into antagonists when they aren’t getting the attention they would have expected as the love interest option from the game. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next volume.