The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!

Kenzaburō Tondabayashi is a 52-year-old public servant who one day gets into a traffic accident. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself reincarnated into a fantasy world's academy, reborn now as the haughty Grace Auvergne, daughter of a duke.

From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is based on a manga series by Michiro Ueyama. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Thursdays.

Woe betide the reviewer who must explain their reaction to a comedy. It's so simple: either you laugh, or you don't. What tickles one woman's funny bone leaves the other cold—and nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it. So instead, I will offer you simply this: From Bureaucrat to Villainess made me laugh, often and loudly. It had me when the protagonist, Kenzaburo, reflects on generations of ringletted rivals, and instead of the names and titles being beeped out with a sound effect, he just replaces syllables with the word “beep.” It's the funniest take on the villainess genre in years, slightly parodic but in an affectionate way as Kenzaburo navigates his new life as a fifteen-year-old noblewoman in an otome game.

One of the most crucial things that makes the episode work is that Kenzaburou, despite being a 52-year-old man in the body of a 15-year-old noblewoman, has a fondness for the genre as something he's encountered through his teenage daughter. Before he was hit by a truck rescuing a child in the street, we saw that the two of them had a great rapport, affectionately ribbing one another and chatting about nerdy stuff. It made me like Kenzaburo immensely straight from the get-go—and my affection only grew as he offered game protagonist Anna Doll fatherly advice and his experience in Japanese business etiquette translated into comportment as a young noblewoman.

Aside from the perfect script, the production is strong from top to bottom. One of the failings of the villainess genre is that ever since its incepting series, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, they've tended to have weak animation. Not so here—ajiado has turned out a top-tier production, staying true to the genre's stylistic conventions but with detailed character animation. Every gesture is smooth and naturalistic… except maybe the over-the-top bouncing of Grace's five waist-length ringlets. The voice cast includes the likes of Kikuko Inoue as the narrator, Kenshiro Inoue as Kenzaburo, and M.A.O, in what may be my favorite performance from her yet as Grace.

The villainess genre has already become the stuff of tired, trope-driven retreads, less than a decade after it was born. But From Bureaucrat to Villainess is special stuff, breathing life into tropes I thought I had given up on years ago.

This anime was one of my picks for the most anticipated of the season. I've read the original prototype doujin and the serialized manga that came after so I knew what to expect going in. What I didn't expect was the anime to be the definitive version of the story.

From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated! is built around a single joke: a 52-year-old man reincarnated into the body of a teenage villainess. While this could easily be mined for humor all on its own, there are a few extra layers to it that keep the laughs coming.

The first of these is that our hero, Kenzaburo, is an otaku. However, he is largely ignorant of Otome games—and what little he knows about this one comes from talking with his daughter about it. This makes him the wrong genre-savvy most of the time—misunderstanding what's going on with the people around him. The other additional source of humor comes from the fact that Kenzaburo is a doting father. Even when he's trying to be a villainess (a role he only somewhat understands), he tends to respond as a dad by instinct—utterly ruining any “evil” acts he was planning to pull off.

What elevates this story from the manga versions is the voice acting. Kazuhiko Inoue and M.A.O are having a blast playing the dual role of Kenzaburo/Grace. Through their acting, we get to see the contrast between Kenzaburo's thoughts and how they're interpreted by Grace's body. It's hilarious—and the animation supports their acting perfectly. Even better, his inner/outer personality difference is a core aspect of the plot. It's presented as a kind of isekai cheat skill—one that doesn't feel overpowered and works towards the most important aspect of the anime: comedy.

Honestly, this episode was a joy to watch and I was bummed out when it ended. Part of why I enjoyed this so much is no doubt my love of villainess stories in all their forms but I think I would have liked this show regardless. It's light-hearted, clever, and uses its premise to maximum effect. What's not to like?

Out of all of the dead-horse subgenres that have been well and thoroughly pulverized by the merciless whipping of an industry driven mad by profit margins and quick turnarounds, the “Reincarnated as a Visual Novel Antagonist” subgenre is the one horse corpse that doesn't make me immediately turn away in revulsion and fear. This is probably because these cheap cashgrabs are at least capable of feeling enough shame to incentivize bringing some meager twist or shakeup to their take on the formula. Take From Bureaucrat to Villainess as a perfect example of this. Is the premise of a middle-aged father being reincarnated into his daughter's favorite otome game the sort of idea that is going to set the industry aflame and set trends that will last for generations to come? No, but for God's sake, it's at least the kind of small demonstration of respect for the audience's intelligence that would secure a full-season run for a flimsy family sitcom back in the 1970s around these parts.

You know, like how Cheers was essentially “Taxi, but at a bar”? Or how The Funky Phantom was “Scooby-Doo, but with a Revolutionary War veteran ghost for some reason”? Bureaucrat to Villainess is just “Reincarnated as a Villainess, except the main character is a goofy old man who barely understands what is happening.” It's just formulaic enough to avoid ruffling any advertisers' feathers or justifying any pay raises at the animation studio, yet. Just creative enough to fill the twenty-three void in your evening that exists between doing your laundry and eating a quick dinner of instant ramen before bed. That's television, baby.

It probably sounds like I'm giving Bureaucrat to Villainess a backhanded compliment, but I genuinely respect a silly little comedy that remembers that it needs to tell actual jokes in order to justify its existence. It's charming as heck to see Kenzaburo have a cute, nerdy relationship with his cute, nerdy daughter, and the show mines a lot of decent gags from simply having Grace act like a doting papa to all of the waifu candidates. That contrast between Kenzaburo's inner- monologue and Grace's heightened existence in a world of dating game ditzes is the kind of low-hanging fruit that even a total amateur could make decent comedy out of for an entire season of television.

Am I personally planning to go out of my way to check out twelve straight weeks of From Bureaucrat to Villainess? Probably not, but I could definitely see myself binging a handful of episodes if I was home sick one day and needed a pick-me-up. Again, that might not sound like a compliment, but that's pretty much exactly how I ended up powering through all eleven seasons of Frasier back in high school. I don't need every anime that debuts each season to strive for high art or subversive spectacle. A teensy bit of effort is all I really ask for, and that is something this anime has no problem delivering.

Villainess isekai has become so prevalent lately that it can be easy to think that the subgenre's all played out. This show is here to prove otherwise. Yes, it's still about someone from our world being hit by everyone's favorite motor vehicle and being reborn in the world of an otome game as the villainess. And yes, this reincarnator is remarkably bad at being villainous. But the twist here is that the reborn person in question is a fifty-two-year-old dad, and regaining his past memories means he's now thinking like a dad instead of a teenage girl.

His status as the father of two daughters undeniably has a bigger impact on his new life than his age at death, and that's also my favorite part of this episode. He may make token efforts at being the original, unpleasant Grace Auvergne, but Kenzaburou is much more likely to be parental towards his new unplanned-for bestie, the original heroine Anna. He's very much aware that he's now in a teen girl body, but his soul is that of a parent, and he can't help himself from dispensing fatherly advice, which comes across as incredibly mature to everyone, but most specifically to a dazzled Anna. Grace/Kenzaburou makes her feel safe and comfortable in the way that a parental figure can when you're out of your depth, and that's both entertaining and just plain nice. At one point, Anna notes that Grace is saying exactly what her parents have told her, and we can see how that puts her at ease.

Of course, “familial” may not be the way Anna actually feels about Grace. Every time Grace does something that really touches Anna, there's a burst of sparkles from her, and as a seasoned visual novel and otome game player, that looks to me an awful lot like the rise of an affection meter. Is Kenzaburou also inadvertently seducing the heroine? Since he still plainly feels like he's a fifty-two-year-old man, that doesn't seem like something he'd be happy about, but that doesn't mean that the possibility doesn't exist, and he is very much aware of how otome games are supposed to work. In fact, his daughter Hinako played the very one he's now living in, and how that will affect him going forward remains to be seen.

Even with those reservations, this is a lot of fun. The use of dual narration for Grace/Kenzaburou helps to highlight the ridiculousness of the story, as does the habit of having Kenzaburou's face hovering in the air, semi-transparent, beside Grace. The animation may not be amazing, and the art does that annoying anachronistic school uniform thing that always bugs me, but there's more than enough to make those feel less intrusive than they otherwise might. This is a delightful twist on the villainess subgenre and just a good time in general. It's definitely worth your time.