Luke Wizalia Gyleberde has been reborn into the world of a fantasy novel as the arrogant villain destined for a disastrous end. But Luke isn't willing to play the hero's ultimate fall guy. Armed with monstrous abilities, he enrolls at Aslan Magic Academy with a single goal: to become the strongest student and avoid his villainous fate. However, rewriting his story and shaking up the delicate balance of character dynamics is easier said than done. Luckily, Luke's growing charisma and power make him a magnetic force, drawing everyone to his side—ranging from heroines to high nobles to even those scheming in the shadows. It seems like he may just sidestep his bad ending. But even the smallest change threatens to send the entire narrative into chaos. Can Luke rewrite his fate, or is his disastrous destiny inevitable?

The Misdeeds of an Extremely Arrogant Villain Aristocrat is written by Yukiha Kuroyuki and illustrated by uodenim. English translation by Ben Trethewey. Published by Seven Seas. (November 11, 2025)

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Luke is super duper talented. He learns advanced sword techniques with a speed that would permanently injure an actual human. His magic is absurdly rare and he crafts new spells without trying. Of course, he is excessively handsome, and his natural disdain is attractive to the sadistic girl he is engaged to, turning her and subsequently everyone else, into a subservient pawn for his ambitions, which definitely seem to be made up on the spur of the moment nearly every chapter.

In contrast, we are introduced to Abel, described as the “protagonist” of the novel, then given so little skill or power or personality that we are clearly meant to not really notice him all that much until pretty much the moment that he defeats our villain.

Mwa hah hah.

This exact form of laughter fills a book that feels like “An Overlord's First Primer” without any solid sense of what we're supposed to care about. Yes, yes, Luke is a villain and Abel is the hero (thus missing the chance for a Cain and Abel rematch), but there's never any buy-in to the why. Luke just is bad. That's it. He's an extremely arrogant villain aristocrat, because the title says so. This volume definitely feels like it's setting up something interesting but is itself not very engrossing.

But it does allow itself to be vulgar, as we watch Alice the sadist become a masochist and throw herself at Luke, and Alice's brother be even more of a masochist. Which brings me to the biggest problem of the story. Not a single character is interesting enough to care about. Because everyone except Abel is incredibly powerful and the majority are hateful, and Abel is weak and kind of one-note tragic, there's no one except the overpowered protagonist baddy to pay attention to. Unfortunately for the story, Luke is too powerful and mean in a not-aesthetic or appealing way, which makes for a story that describes its way through a volume of introduction without a single moment of “good storytelling.”

It's not the worst thing to read, but I don't care enough to find out what happens.