Forum - View topicREVIEW: An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess Anime Series Review
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FanGamer24
Posts: 328 |
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Honestly the stuff with Heronia is the weakest aspect of this series. The show wants to present her as the main antagonist for our heroes to overcome but they don’t really present her like that. She comes across as a misguided fool rather than some malicious villain. She doesn’t even do much and mostly comes across as an annoyance so when it comes time for her comeuppance it doesn’t feel satisfying just needlessly cruel because like I said she hasn’t really done anything but be an annoyance and it feels like the whole problem could be resolved by just talking to her instead of allowing things to escalate.
It doesn’t help that Heronia as a character is poorly developed both before and after the reincarnation came into play. Honestly I lost interest because of this and didn’t watch the last few episodes but maybe it ended better than I expected. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2568 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think part of the secret sauce is how being a VN isekai is essential to the story Observation Log tells. "What if an isekai was told from the game's POV?" is already novel enough and probably would've been worth a look on its own, but then it uses the concept of branching paths/endings to show how choices matter and how choosing kindness matters and IMO that's really cool move.
Bertia's voice was certainly one of the more unique-sounding I've heard |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19161 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Definitely one of my favorites (if not my overall favorite) of the Springs '26 season. The only point in the review I'd slightly disagree on is that this is a better series than May I Ask For One Final Thing?, but it was one of the most satisfying series I've seen recently.
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 897 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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I initially had a knee-jerk reaction to that remark too, then I remembered that despite May I Ask For One Final Thing?'s really strong start, it kind of fell flat over the course of it's run and didn't actually end that well. Honestly, I'm not sure which of them I'd classify as the "better" show. I felt a little more sympathetic towards Heronia. While by the end she was very self-centered and entitled, I believe her pursuit of Cecil would have started less so. She would have initially had the same motivation as Bertia that in the game, every ending where she didn't end up with Cecil was kind of a bad ending. |
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Kiwi93
Posts: 537 |
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This was a hidden gem for me and became one of my top anime’s from the spring season.
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SaneSavantElla
 Posts: 296 Location: Philippines |
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Yeah, I think I've mentioned in one of the spring rankings how delighted I was to see this creep its way to the top 10 week after week. It was truly well-deserved. It was absolutely one of my most anticipated every week and would have ended up in my top 3 if it were in a weaker season without Awajima and Akane-banashi.
Initially I also thought this one was trying to diverge from the classic villainess formula, but looking back, it's much closer in spirit to the "original", or at least the one that started this slew of villainess anime adaptations, i.e. All Routes Lead to Doom. The thing that made all the difference is that we are seeing the story from the POV of the prince, or as the comment above aptly puts, from the POV of the game. It's very refreshing to not be in the head of the protagonist all the time. I didn't expect to see a reference to "May I ask for one final thing?", but yes, I guess they do have one thing in common, which is the very one-dimensional, highly irritating and punchable heroine, but I'd argue this one is heads above in redeeming that aspect of the show by the end. I will always be bitter that the other quasi-"villainess" show of the season Always a Catch was voted in the weekly reviews over this one, for no other reason I see except its similarity to "May I ask for one final thing?" Lastly, I think the anime also made a massive improvement by not including the actual ending of the light novel/manga where spoiler[Bertia gives birth to Cecil's child, who turns out to be suffering from the same "android royal" affliction. He initially gets his entertainment from his mother (thus competing with his father the King), but then Bertia gives birth to a princess, who, as you can guess becomes his object of affection next. After reading that I could only hope for a sequel that would not end in incest  ]
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Antipathy
Posts: 57 |
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Why is everyone overlooking, reviewer included, the major polt hole that is both Bertia and Heronia, both mentioning game mechanics and no one especially Price Cecil, justs turns a deaf ear and a blind eye as to why they both think they are living in a game? Bertia has been proven right, if not prophetic on multiple accounts. And Prince Cecil has heard Bertia and Heronia use game terms multiple times. So why Is this never addressed? I already hate how the author retconned the heroine's agency in Villainess Level 99. Now we get a show when everyone just seems to not hear the gamer terms bandied about by the protag, and antag.
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minamikaze
Posts: 389 |
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They aren't actually living in a game, they are like almost all of the other shows in this genre, living in a world that is exactly like the game they played in their past life. Exceptions to this would be "From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!" and "Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte" where they are actually interacting inside those games. While Cecil intially finds it hard to believe, he does not "turn a deaf ear and a blind eye" towards Bertia's assertion that she must follow the scenario of the game which she had played in her previous life. Instead he accepts what she says and he proactively confronts the scenario throughout the entire series. spoiler[In the first episode, he uses the information about the scenario that Bertia mentioned to prevent a deadly epidemic. When Bertia tells him that according to the scenario, her father has to engage in corruption with some nobles, Cecil asks for their names and then asks Bertia's father to work as a spy to uncover this corruption. Cecil sees it as an opportunity to improve the kingdom. Later on in the series, Bertia tells Cecil that she is worried that her baby brother will die, because he did not exist in the game scenario, due to the circumstance that her mother had died in the epidemic that Cecil had prevented. In the scenario, Bertia's father adopted Courtgain because he had no male heir, as a result, Courtgain became able to attend the academy and he ended up joining Cecil's aides. Cecil allays Bertia's fears by arranging for Courtgain to be adopted by another noble so he would be able to attend the academy and eventually join his aides, in order to preserve that portion of the scenario. Cecil did that after Bertia had named all of the other students who were likely to be his aides, even though they had not yet even been decided on. As far as game terms, in that same scene, Bertia explained that she knew their names because they were all conquest targets in the game. When she went on to explain the possibility of a harem ending, Cecil found that result to be preposterous, but after hearing Bertia say that they would all be overpowered by their love for the heroine, Cecil postulated that a fairy of light's charm powers could cause that to happen. To prevent Bertia from being potentially affected by a fairy of light's charm, he explained to her that Kuro, her pet fox, was actually a fairy of darkness and then proceeded to give her a pile of books about fairies and told her to study them. Bertia went on to use the knowledge from those books to create the earrings for the conquest targets and their love interests that would mitigate the effect of a fairy of light's charm power.] spoiler[At the academy, Cecil was initially amused by Bertia's attempts to get him to follow the game scenario, e.g.: the scene in the rose garden, and the locked in the classroom incident. Later, Cecil becomes increasingly frustrated by Bertia's insistence that he would only be happy if he followed the scenario and rejected her and fell in love with the heroine. Cecil's preparations for the graduation ceremony were all made in to prevent the scenario of Bertia being disgraced and cast aside. Later on when Cecil confronts the heroine, he faults her for relying solely on the game mechanics and the scenario and not adapting and improving herself, specifically pointing out her lack of knowledge of the necessary manners and protocols for interacting in noble society despite her having being enrolled in the academy for years.] Cecil clearly did not ignore the game related references that Bertia and Heronia mentioned. All of the shows in this genre take reincarnation into a world like the game they played for granted, in the same way that reincarnation into fantasy worlds is also taken for granted. So it is not surprising that Cecil did not spend time speculating how or why it had happened. Instead he proactively dealt with the consequences of it, which was a more practical and productive (not to mention a more entertaining) course of action. Anyway, add me to the list of people who listed this show as one of their favorites from the spring season. I thoroughly enjoyed Miyu Tomita's peformance as Bertia. |
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