The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess

Episodes 1-3

Villainess anime may not be quite as played out as MMORPG-based series, but that doesn't change that they've been stale iterations on a theme for years already. And yet, here I am, writing a review of The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess that – spoiler alert! – will be glowing. I'm rarely interested in anime that are about repeating the current popular trope du jour, so just what makes this one special?

Cringe. Cringe is what makes it special.

When Konoha Satou was a teenager, she wrote an epic adventure story starring a virtuous, beloved maiden named Konoha Magnolia. She was convinced that one day she would wake up in that world herself, and that the protagonist's story would become her own. Did she think of it this way as a defense mechanism against a world that rejected her adolescent weirdness? Well, yeah. Still, she grew up to be a functional adult until one day, Truck-kun claimed her as yet another victim while she was talking to her mom who just found her boxes of notebooks in her old closet. However, instead of being reincarnated as Konoha in her story, she wakes up as Konoha's scheming younger sister Iana, who had just opened a cursed tome that caused its reader's personality to collapse.

I immediately appreciated that the story gave a reason for Konoha Satou's personality replacing Iana's, rather than the standard bonk on the head or just waking up that way. It sets the pace – while Satou's story was filled with deus ex machina and happenstance, this will not be. When things happen just for the sake of making them happen rather than for reasons that make sense in the world, it's an intentional part of the satire. And while Iana's wickedness may have been displaced by Satou's more kind-hearted personality, it takes some time before the others catch on to this. Thus Iana is sent away for a three-month exile, where she will be cared for by the butler Sol, who intends to protect his beloved Konoha by assassinating Iana.

Iana wasn't meant to survive the exile; she died in the prologue of Satou's book. She manages to live because of her own foggy memories of what's supposed to happen. She also remembers when Konoha and her fiance Ginoford go to visit their uncle, he attacks them, leaving Ginoford in a coma but allowing Konoha to awaken to her saint powers. She manages to prevent this, but that leaves Konoha defenseless against the other trials to come.

What makes The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess truly work is its satirical edge. Satou's story was heavily informed by her id, channeling her adolescent preoccupations into fiction. Her mingled fascination with and fear of sex became a lupine “carnal beast” that kidnaps Konoha. Her bitterness over not being invited to the festival resulted in her writing a ball scene where Konoha gets invited to dance by a multitude of handsome suitors because “balls are better.” Though she initially wrote Konoha's companions as devoted good boys, she created the dark-hearted Yomi Blacksarana after discovering the allure of hot men who want to kill you. However, since Konoha's gentle nature and lack of current powers have left her unequipped, Iana must try to remember the plot in order to protect her elder sister.

As a person who once wrote 3500+ words about how Fushigi Yugi was a reflection of Miaka's anxieties about growing up, this story is basically made for me. It's essential that Dark History's manga runs in LaLa, a long-running shoujo magazine, so the humor is more affectionate ribbing than mean-spirited mockery. If anything, its consideration of the raw psychosexual impulses that inform the way some people write stories is a celebration of problematic fiction, rather than a castigation. Let she who did not write embarrassing fiction starring herself, fan or original, as an adolescent, cast the first stone.

However, that satirical tone comes with a downside, and that's thus far, the cast outside of Iana feel like the ciphers she originally wrote them as. Iana weeps over the hurt she's caused her characters in the name of drama, but it's hard to really feel that when Konoha's personality is all sugar and no spice, and Ginoford may as well be a ginger plank of wood. Much like Iana, I have the power of foresight, by which I mean I've read a good chunk of the manga and the characters have yet to feel much more fleshed out. There's just more of them.

Rating:

Caitlin Moore has been a fan of shoujo isekai since she borrowed a VHS of Fushigi Yugi from her friend in seventh grade. She also writes and edits for Anime Feminist and spends time rambling on her Bluesky.

The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.