The Light Novel Series That Went Off The Rails | I’m in love with the villainess

You would think that a Light Novel series with around a 4 star rating across the board would be good, right? Coherent throughout all 5 of the novels? Especially when you get recommended this series by your friend with personal raving reviews. Well, throughout my year long journey of reading all five (long!) novels, I cannot for the life of me figure out the hype.

“I’m in Love with the Villainess” is a story that was originally only 2 novels long. It told the tale of a Japanese office worker, Rei Oohasi, who was obsessed with a specific otome game, and after dying, awakens as the player character, Ray Taylor, in said game. The twist of the book is that instead of going for one of the three romanceable princes, she is determined to win over the villainess, Claire, who is Rae’s favorite character.

The premise of this story is Rae needs to use the knowledge she gained from playing the game over and over, and reading every bit of information that could be found on the internet about this game, to save Claire from her scripted death. The two meet by attending the same academy where Rae is relentlessly bullied by Claire every time they interact, something that Rae eats up.

In order to keep a closer eye on the villainess, Rae becomes Claire’s maid. This allows the two to be close throughout the rest of the series.

These first two books sets our eyes on the relationship surrounding Ray and Claire. With coming from opposite social classes, Rae must help Claire see the way the lower class citizens are treated to ensure she will be on the winning side of the upcoming revolution that may result in her death.

Throughout the progression of the revolution by the commoners to overthrow the noble class, Rae transforms Claire’s view of the world into a more knowing one. This allows for her to get on the good side of most of the people in the Commoner’s Movement before the overthrowing of the nobles start.

When putting together information for this video, I wrote down my thoughts and then went to Goodreads to see if my opinions lines up with other readers. A lot of Goodreads comments on the first novel point out the obvious actions of Rei that could easily been seen as harassment towards Claire and how if this was a man doing these things to a girl, people would be upset by it. Also the fact that she was a grown adult who is now fussing over a 16 year old girl. Just because she is in the body of a teenage girl, does that make this okay?

Many comments say the books felt rushed for the wrong elements, and there was not a lot of focus on the romance for a romance book. Too much focus on the side characters and not enough on the development between Claire and Rae. Multiple comments saying too much is happening and nothing is explained enough. A lot of telling instead of showing. For books so thick, I felt the movement was slow and there was too much description of non-important information the reader didn’t need.

A lot of drama surrounds these two volumes, but the main focus always seems to be on Claire’s character development and the growing relationship between the two girls. The events of the revolution act as both a push for the girls to become closer, and to test the strength of their new bond. But that alone is the story. They end up falling in love and as the revolution comes to an end, they get their happily ever after.

Parts of the books felt really long winded. I feel like there was some filler that could have been cut and the overall thoughts on the book would remain the same. A lot of worldbuilding and side mission information are overshared, especially in book two. But, this is not where the series leave my potential favorite series list.

The main problem, is the next three books that were made due to the positive engagement of the original two. A quick run down of the next three books include Rae and Claire adopting twin girls with a blood curse, temporarily moving to a kingdom that is preparing to attack their home nation, and fighting demons that were only just now introduced.

After settled in their happily ever after, Rae and Clair are called to attend an exchange student program with the neighboring country in order to help find a way to prevent an attack on the still recovering kingdom of Bauer.

Once in the new kingdom of Nur, problems arise with the realization that the Queen who rules the land only seems to want to conquer those around them. Not long after arriving, demons are introduced, and it is found out that Nur borders this dangerous demon territory that wants to end all human life. Now the story shifts to everyone defending Nur from the on slaughter of wave after wave of low tier demons with three Great Archdemons leading the way.

The last three books in the series stray so far from the original plot line. These final books lack a focus on the relationship between Rae and Claire, and instead develops the world in what seems like an unnecessary amount of detail.

With the progression of the demons threatening all of humanity, the ruling Queen of Nur is busy trying to fight demons head on and fight with her own daughter. The family drama includes the daughter being shipped off and faking her own death, the Queen introducing the fact that there is an all powerful Demon Queen who want nothing more than to end humanity and will stop at nothing to achieve this goal, and even the Queen sending herself into her own death and leaving her daughter to take over the entire kingdom right before the main face off with the Demon Queen.

My main gripe with the way the story was written is the way I would be invested in a scene and all of a sudden the main character would have some self insert thought about how her love interest is hers and hers alone, or how cute her love interest is, or how much she loves being bullied by the love of her life. Not only do these moments happen often throughout all five of these books (and honestly I didn’t have a huge issue in the first two books as it kinda felt appropriate with the light hearted themes and otome vibes that it held, but it started to feel out of place in later books as they are facing more serious events and are supposed to be more mature), they also break any flow that the scene was creating. And it might just be me (it probably isn’t) but it feels like something that would be more at home in a Wattpad release from the early 2010’s.

And now we get to the fifth and most out of left field book in the series. The final book jumps out of the idea that Ray was transported into a brand new world of her favorite otome game, but instead discovers that she never left her old life.

The Demon Queen announces that her only goal is to kill Claire, but she herself cannot do it. This starts the downward spiral of information getting thrown at you as it comes out that both Claire and Ray started out as scientists who have been tasked in saving the human race from the results of a dying planet.

With Earth on the brink of death, Ray is brought in with the idea of moving human consciousness into a non-physical form and shift Earth’s society. This becomes the “Loop System” which allows one lifetime to run a society powered by science, collect all the souls, then restart a cycle with a society powered by magic crystals.

So, to add more confusion, the Rae that has been narrating four whole books, is not the true Rae, she is a copy of the original Rae that is also the Demon Queen.

Turns out, the original Rae has been living through lifetime after lifetime, falling in love with a new slate Claire, and sadly, restarting a new relationship with a blank canvas every 50 years can take a tole on someone’s mental state.

With the mental turmoil of single-handedly keeping the human race going, Rae finally decided that it is time to end the cycle. The only thing that is keeping that from happening, is Claire. No matter how much Rae suffers, she cannot end Claire’s life by her own hands. This is what leads to the Demon Queen creating three archdemons in hopes that they would kill Claire themselves.

In typical romance fashion, the two lovers cannot be separated so easily. With the power of love (ie. Tandem Casting) Rae and Claire are able to overthrow the Demon Queen and save the world in order to be with each other after the Rae that we’ve been following professes her love for Claire and belittles the Rae who has been suffering for centuries.

As the series progresses, I feel like it loses the original plot. It goes from following the lives of two girls who fall in love during a revolution and they save it using the power of love and magic, and it turns into a sci-fi story of two scientists who have saved the whole planet from humanities demise by transforming souls into quantum and setting the world through a cycle of a science-based society and a magic-based society. Only to have their love fall apart and now the prospect of the continuation of humanity is at stake of withering away.

I have no idea how we got to this point, in no way when I started reading this series did I think that we would be seeing Demon Queens and clones of a scientist admin who is trying to end the life cycles of all of humanity because she fell out of love with her born-again girlfriend.