Oh, no, I'm sure some of you are thinking. Not another villainess isekai set in the world of an otome game. I can't blame you. Villainess isekai has become nearly as oversaturated as isekai power fantasies, as ubiquitous as pink-haired heroines and mysterious transfer students. But please, believe me when I say that even if you're fed up with the genre, Villains are Destined to Die is worth your time, not because it's Korean rather than Japanese and therefore uses a potentially different set of tropes, but because it does something that precious few of its genre fellows do: it understands how otome games work.

Shocking, I know. But author Gyeoeul Gwon isn't just rehashing plot points laid out by earlier authors who may never have picked up an otome game in their lives. Instead, Penelope's story is grounded in both believable game mechanics and Penelope's own life in modern Korea. These two elements, combined with good writing, make this first novel (and the K-comic based on it) something more than your average villainess tale.

The protagonist of the story is Penelope Eckert – or at least, that's what we know her as. We never find out her original name, but her life influences how she understands Penelope's. The illegitimate daughter of a powerful man, she was adopted into his household when her mother died as a young teen. Not only did her father barely interact with her, making it clear that this adoption was out of duty only, but her two older half-brothers were monstrous to her, abusing her and ignoring her. When she got into college, she moved out, although her older brother took pains to ensure that her apartment was awful. Penelope, meanwhile, is the adopted daughter of a duke taken into the household because she resembled his missing biological daughter, Ivonne (the heroine of easy mode in the game). Like the heroine, Penelope has two older brothers and a neglectful father, but unlike her, Penelope expresses her unhappiness by acting out. When the heroine opens her eyes in Penelope's room, she's just been put under house arrest for behaving badly in public.

Because of her experiences, it isn't hard for New Penelope to recognize what's going on. She realizes that Penelope isn't a natural villainess; she's deeply unhappy and feels unloved. Acting out is the only way she can get attention, and any resentment she has for Ivonne during easy mode is clearly explained in hard mode, where the player takes on her role. While the manhwa, which preceded this novel into a print release, explains all of this, the novel does it in more depth, doing an excellent job of showing the depths of Penelope's physical and emotional suffering. Like the heroine, she's mistreated by her brothers, which makes her misbehave, which in turn makes them mistreat her even more. It's a vicious cycle, and New Penelope's first job is to break that, even if she doesn't see it in those terms.

That's one of the strengths of the writing. Although she understands Penelope's character on a personal level, New Penelope can't recognize that Derrick and Reynold aren't her brothers. A conversation with Reynold in the second half of the book helps her to begin to realize that these are different people than her half-brothers back in Korea, and that's part of the important recognition that while this is a game to her, to everyone else it's their real lives. The fact that she can see affection meters above all of the love interests' heads further blurs that line for her, but as readers, we can recognize that this is a way for her to better understand the people around her. Yes, in the game she needs to maintain their affections to stay alive and clear a route, but the parallels she sees between her game brothers and her real-life brothers are more important than she realizes. While there's no denying that her family in Korea made her feel unwelcome, she doesn't understand that she may not have helped.

This is a bit of a slippery slope, because her feelings of being abused and neglected are real and valid. But a scene she recalls when the younger of her brothers stops her from being targeted at school mirrors the way Reynold treats her. The affection meter makes it hard for her to misinterpret his actions, and that, hopefully, will help her to think more clearly about her previous life. There's no guarantee that she'll be able to return to Korea, but maybe her life as Penelope will help her resolve or work through some of her emotions about her biological family.

The major fly in the plot ointment is the fact that one of the love interests, the one she decides is the safest bet to pursue, is a slave she purchases. New Penelope does seem to understand that slavery is bad, but her mental bandwidth is entirely consumed by her burning desire to survive the game and to make it out safely. She's forced to act in ways that she never would have in the modern world, and the text does make it clear that she's uncomfortable with that. The way that Eckles, the character in question, reacts to her is in line with the sort of facile writing about slavery found in many lower-quality isekai works, which does feel deliberate, because Gwon's writing is otherwise smarter and better than that. Still, it's likely to be a problem for some readers, and it is uncomfortable.

Villains are Destined to Die is still one of the best-written and plotted villainess isekai series, though. New Penelope attempting to navigate the game and uncovering truths about Penelope's life that make easy mode look ridiculous is a major draw, and Gwon gets many details of an otome game right. Whether or not New Penelope ever gets to go back to Korea feels less important than what she's learning.