Rivals in Otome - My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

I haven't been in the mood for much anime lately, which is strange considering that I've been cooped up at home, but one series I have been watching is My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! which I had been anticipating for a while since it's a female spin on the more commonly male-oriented brand of isekai.

As a child, My Next Life as a Villainess's protagonist discovers that she used to be a person in our world, but died and was reborn into the last game she was playing, which happened to be Fortune Lover, an otome game where the heroine goes to magic school and gets to fall in love with one of four different men. However, our hapless protagonist has been reborn not as the heroine, but her rival, who ends up exiled or killed on every route of the game.

Not content to let this stand, Catarina begins hatching a multitude of plans to avoid meeting her doom by the time she's old enough to meet the heroine in magic school.

The anime is based on a series of light novels, and it's easy to see that the writer knows their otome games (arguably better than a lot of isekai writers know their MMORPGs). I might write a proper review at some point, but today I want to focus on one particular element of the series, and that's the role that Catarina occupies: the romantic rival.

The reason this role stood out at me is that even though a rival is an easily defined role within the story, I actually had to do a lot of thinking to remember the last otome I played that actually had one and the closest I could come up with was Rika from Amnesia, which I played four years ago. Rival characters don't appear to be that common.

Part of the reason for this is that otome games by their nature tend to skew male heavy on their cast. If the audience is heterosexual female, then time and effort is better spent on providing a number of love interests than building the supporting cast. (At least for games coming out of Japan. A fair number of western developers will make both genders romanceable.)

The odd thing is that Catarina is not even the only rival in the game. Later in the anime, Mary is introduced as another rival (though as part of Catarina's messing around with the timeline, she's unlikely to ever become a rival with the heroine).

And Mary's probably the reason that we don't have very many rivals. Original Catarina, the one in the game, was an unlikable bully, so chances are players of Fortune Lover like our protagonist wouldn't feel sorry for her after forming a romantic bond with her childhood fiancé. However, Mary, according to the reborn Catarina, doesn't get vengeful or upset. Instead she wishes her fiancé well and runs away in tears when the heroine wins the heart of her beloved.

If I was playing Fortune Lover I'd probably feel like a heel. (And what's with going after engaged men? I realize they're nobles so childhood engagements aren't out of the question, but half the heroine's romance options are technically spoken for.)

But by adding another rival and having Catarina bring the sister of a love interest and the heroine herself (Maria) into her social circle, we end up with a pleasantly gender balanced central cast, which is pretty nice.

Though I play otome for the romantic aspects of the game, I appreciate having additional female members in the cast so it's not one girl and a whole lot of men. One of the best parts of Collar x Malice was Ichika hanging out with Sakuragawa and Mukai and listening to them complain about a dude at work. It felt very real and gave the player as Ichika a couple of cheerleaders to back up her romantic endeavors.

At this point in My Next Life as a Villainess (episode 7), Maria does not appear to be traveling any particular romantic route, nor are any of the men interested in her, so it's probably safe to say that Catarina is no longer a romantic rival. But her machinations have resulted in making just about everyone else in the main cast (regardless of gender) rivals for her. She's too much of a blockhead to realize it, but that makes the series light-hearted fun and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.