A lot of fantasies and fairy tales treat their villains more as obstacles than real characters. They're generally vile beings whose sole purpose is to cast curses, poison apples, and eventually get thwacked by the good guys. The reverse, I think, is part of the appeal of villainess isekai. We want to see what happens when bad people decide to become good, redeem themselves, and reclaim their humanity. The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen is another entry in villainess isekai that does exactly that. It is a story about a former wicked witch of a queen who's given a second chance to be kind, her only desire being to see, hear, and know no evil. In terms of quality, I can't tell you The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen exactly slays, per se. I can't tell you it's that boss either, to use an old phrase. And I absolutely cannot tell you that it's bad. That, dear reader, would be heretical.

Let's start with our protagonist. She is reincarnated into the otome fantasy game “Our Ray of Light” as the eponymous last boss queen, the lady Pride, whose wickedness causes her to get axed as the game's final boss in ten years. In the game's previous timeline, Pride was as diabolical a villainess as you can get. She ascended to her royal court's throne while committing every atrocity you can think of, her personality two-dimensionally hammed up and complete with diabolical laughter and mocking insults. A flashback reveals that Pride tricked a young boy, Stale, into slavery, ripped away from his mother, where he's forced to obey her every command, which includes not only killing his mother, but then being forbidden to kill himself out of guilt. All because Pride was bored and wanted to have fun. To say “yikes” to that is to understate things.

In this new timeline, Pride is another isekai protagonist who randomly remembers the day Truck-kun came along to crush her into her favorite otome game as the lead villainess. And so, of course, this newly reincarnated Pride learns the heinous nature of her previous self and does everything to reverse course. She knows the game like the back of her hand, which makes it easier for her to navigate through its moral labyrinth. The very characters her previous self victimized are now the people she wants to save and protect. Stale is no longer the tortured slave, but now a brother-in-law and potential love interest who Pride and the royal shower with unquestionable love. It's a nice touch, and together with Pride's sister Tiara, the protagonist of the otome game, the three make for a very loving, happy family. Stale even becomes so deeply committed to protecting Pride that he takes up swordfighting. It's charming.

But wait a second. Stale is still technically a slave in this timeline and thus still separated from his mother, who we see living her best life in another town. He also has teleportation magic, but apparently, it limits him to places he's already visited. Did he ever attempt to visit the town his mom's now in, just so he could then teleport back and forth from Pride's castle with ease? His adoptive royal family loves him now, so couldn't Stale score some PTO from them, or does his contract require him to remain by their side at all times? I guess it doesn't matter, because it's a subplot that doesn't stay in the frame for too long. Honestly, it would have been better if Stale was forced into slavery by his mother, now a cruel woman herself, and then have the royal family come to the rescue somehow, free Stale from his shackles, and then adopt him into the royal family as a nice little fairy tale ending-turned-new-beginning for him. That's just me, though.

The first few episodes are decent at best. Characters move through elegant castle halls, forested battlefields, dungeons, caverns, and, most obviously of all, the usual flow of isekai beats that every anime fan is forced to go through a thousand times over. The first episode introduces its characters and premise through heavy-handed exposition, while the second has Stale going from downtrodden slave to someone head over heels for Pride. The plot eventually picks up as more drama unfolds, although an episode or two lightly ends with Pride and her family having fun at a ball. A mission to rescue imprisoned children makes up the final act of the cour, and it helps bring home the show's secondary theme of found family. It's decent fun, even when it comes bearing animation as stale as the one character's name.

Pride's redemption arc has her fighting and saving lives instead of just using them, and the TLC she gives to nearly everyone she encounters makes you want to root for her. She becomes the best type of monarch who's willing to lay her life for her people, although sometimes she overdoes the whole redemption thing at times.

Consider, for instance, a man who led an army to wage battle with her kingdom's soldiers. In the previous timeline, Pride's callousness has her sending the kingdom's good men and women to their deaths. But now she intervenes and saves them all in this timeline. Great. That still makes the opposing man a war criminal, though. But Pride slaps him on the wrist and lets him go anyway. She reasons that this man did not commit sins as grave as Pride did in the previous timeline, and that inflicting cruel punishment is against her moral code. But that was then, this is now. Pride has a clean slate in this timeline, so there's no need to be “but I'm actually the worst person in the room” about things. The anime redeems him as an unfortunate victim of circumstance, developing a tragic backstory coupled with children he wants to protect just as much as Stale wants to protect Pride. Cool stuff. If only he didn't have a foot fetish. But that's another story. Anyway.

Speaking of protecting Pride, another character, Arthur, comes into the frame early on. Like any good fantasy character sharing the namesake of an ancient British king, Arthur wants to become a knight. Specifically, right after the aforementioned almost kills his father, who also happens to be the leader of the royal knights. After a moment of helplessness leads him to tears, Arthur swears to take up his father's mantle to protect Pride, her family, and her kingdom. Arthur is then made to compete with Stale. What starts off as a rivalry deepens the more the story progresses.

This is where the soundtrack comes in. It's mostly simple fantasia that transmogrifies into orchestral bliss during key scenes between Arthur and Stale. They have heart-to-heart exchanges in between swordfight practices that are riddled with the type of been-there-done-that dialogue of getting stronger to protect the ones they love. Had the soundtrack been cheap, these scenes would have fallen by the wayside. Yet it delivers with a stirring swell of woodwinds, strings, and pianos so rich that they evoke feelings that we wouldn't otherwise have for these characters: loneliness and togetherness, pity and strength, patheticness and admiration. As pretentious as this will sound, I can't help but quote what Roger Ebert said about the score of The Godfather Part II: we become moved by operatic arias that are utter nonsense.

Watch the anime subbed, or watch it dubbed. Karlii Hoch does a fine job handling Pride. She sounds elegant and moe as the good version of Pride, and is absolutely over-the-top as the bad Pride in the flashbacks. You can tell that Karlii had a lot of fun with the role, especially in the moments where she diabolically cackles at people's misfortunes. James Marler as Stale is good too, although he admittedly sounds a little too old for the role at first, considering how Stale is but a wee eight years old when we first meet him. The dub has other weak moments here and there; Pride breaking down and crying in the first episode isn't that convincing, and a few lines from another character, Gilbert (here played by Adam Gibbs), sound a bit rehearsed. Don't let it get in the way, though.

I find myself becoming more smitten with villainesses as I delve further into the emerging subgenre. No, I don't quite get otome games, but in the case of The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen, the good news is that I don't have to. It's an anime that's pleasant to watch, even as it waffles between being a villainess story and another story about bonds and family.