Book Club #3 - Watashi_no_Oshi_wa_Akuyaku_Reijou (I'm in Love with the Villainess)

Alright, since I see the villainess here isn't alone, thanks to @alphametroid and @Ahopiyo-_-, I think I should elaborate.

As you may be aware, in the 1970s, there was this thing called "blaxploitation." Exploitation films were movies aimed at profiting from exploiting the ongoing (at the time) complex themes without giving them much thought and instead seeking nothing but a quick buck. To quote the person who coined the original term, blaxploitation was "proliferating offenses to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes."

In my view, Wataoshi is basically the same thing, but it's about LGBT. I say this as a living, breathing, out-of-closet lesbian who was very harshly forced out of the closet back in middle school. Not a sweet story. I'll tell it if asked. Anyway.

The more I read it, the more it seemed to me that the entire thing was written by someone who learned about homosexuality from Twitter rather than from their own experience or the experience of someone they personally know. Those stereotypical dialogues about "being gay" look patronizing and, frankly, barely competent. The further inclusion of transsexual themes, which are far more complex than homosexuality, is again a stereotype clad upon a stereotype. I can't speak on behalf of transsexual people, but I sure can say something as a lesbian.

This whole thing seeks to cater to the taste of people who want to be "conscious" and "progressive" but would tremble in terror if they were exposed to the real thing and forbidden to avert their eyes, Clockwork Orange style. Touching the real thing is totally off-limits. Getting a simulacrum, i.e. a copy of a non-existent original, is way safer and not at all pressing compared to encountering things that actually happen and feelings that people actually have.

Not that I mean to say that the feelings shown in Wataoshi are totally unrealistic. I guess many different things can happen. And I'm sure we all know that the entire yuri genre isn't necessarily based in reality. But, unlike Wataoshi, most yuri works aren't explicitly didactic. They don't seek to "educate" you on those matters. Wataoshi, on the other hand, does. Oh, it so does. And what it teaches is not applicable to reality, which directly contradicts the point that it tries to make.

I understand that for many people, this whole thing matters nothing. Character dynamics is all they care about, and that's fair. To me, the whole story so far has been all too forced and predictable, but that's a matter of taste, so there's no sense in arguing about that, really.

But the subtext of this story, it's just terrible. It's a false source of entitlement. A parasite feeding off people who have actually gone through some shit in order to create some SNS-perfect picture. An LN/manga/anime that makes a profit out of completely devaluing someone else's tragedy while showcasing itself as a proud example of representation. The cynicism of this whole thing is as mind-blowing as its impudence is blatant.

As I said, I gave it chance after chance after chance. In chapter 42, I've had enough and dropped it. Nothing is worth continuing to expose myself to this hellstorm of patronizing ignorance.

Dixi.

I recently had a conversation about something similar to this but about BL instead of yuri. These tropes that are propagated in works that as readers we become used to taking them at face value. When as it turns out a lot of these things they make us accustomed to aren’t based in reality. But we are given a sense that they are as they are common amongst these types of works. This causes a type of rift between reality and the fiction that basses itself off of it. Basically there are things we accept in fictional lgbtq works as normal or expected even though in reality that’s not at all the case. And in some cases as stated above these things can actually be harmful. In the particular case of villainess I wish there was more done in regards to some of this. Unfortunately my viewpoint in regards to it is obviously limited compared to someone who has personal experiences with it.

@Ahopiyo-_- I apologize in advance for answering it as a professional editor and, well, a well-versed writer who doesn't take herself too seriously.

From a purely professional standpoint, Wataoshi has several crucial flaws that you have pointed out already. It needlessly, and I stress this word, needlessly switches between different kinds of narration. There is nothing wrong with this switching per se, and in some cases, it's a very clever move. In this case, however, it doesn't look like one.

What you have in the case of Wataoshi is basically a yuri ripoff. Compare it to, say, My Next Life As A Villainess, and, with the exception of more explicit yuri, you won't notice much difference. My Next Life As A Villainess is itself a ripoff. If we continue this line of thinking, we'll probably arrive at Konosuba. And maybe Sword Art Online. It's not about otome games as such, it's more about the very isekai reincarnation trope that finally got into yuri. And if you checked out the recent series, you may have noticed that there are several ripoffs of Wataoshi.

So, it's a ripoff of a ripoff of a ripoff and so forth.

Now, to the point. Wataoshi endlessly switches its narrative style, as you said. And there is no actual need in the narrative itself to do so. I recently reviewed a very cool manga about a yandere character, and it switches between goofy 4-koma and very dramatic traditional manga styles. In its case, this is very much substantiated. But in the case of Wataoshi, this whole thing ends up being a mess. It's like, "Now I'm serious, and now I'm not." Nothing ever calls for it. In layman's terms, it's just lazy writing.

So yeah, as a silly thing about a deredere lesbian and a tsundere lesbian, it's fun. As an actual dramaturgically thought-out story, it's all over the place.

@Ahopiyo-_- Let's take a closer look, shall we?

I apologize to anyone who has randomly wandered in here and found a spoiler, but since it's a discussion of a thing we all know, I don't think any spoilers are necessary.

So. Lene. Yeah, it's a nice storyline, but if you examine it closer, it's not yuri in the slightest. She had a relationship with her brother. Not sister. Not a woman. A man. Not yuri. And this line, albeit dramatic, is the strongest point of a story that is supposed to be yuri. At least when it comes to the anime.

Then, again, in the anime, there is another storyline, which is totally yuri, about that outbound princess. That, I admit, is yuri. But not only is it built on the stale stereotype about the "prince kind," which is really so typical in certain yuri works that it isn't even funny anymore. It's basically built on reiterating a century-old trope. We all have seen it countless times in different variations, and seeing it once more doesn't add much to it. That is why a het incest line is more memorable than an actual yuri line. In an actual yuri story.

If this were some other kind of anime, that would be alright. But it's not a CGDCT with a yuri bait. Hard pass on that, sorry.

And yeah, Saki's sick diary, that's the thing. I was kind of disappointed at seeing its low rating, but this one really deserves better.

@Phleet lol I love that face. Pissed off Rae is pretty great. She's over the top no matter what she is doing or feeling. I for one enjoy her eccentricity.

I'm actually not a big fan of the whole otome game villainess genre, but I did enjoy both the manga and the anime. I think the anime mostly suffered during fight scenes with a mid-at-best production on that front. Still I think the characters were fun and I appreciate an actually yuri anime, although we haven't had much payoff on that front. It's also pretty funny imo. I don't know what's coming in the manga, but I have heard mostly good things from LN readers. People in club really came out to vote for it in last months' poll, so I'm hoping to hear from some of them.

Hmm, this could be a bit long.

So about Wataoshi, it seems a lot of people are really divided on this. There are people who had problems with Rae's character right off the bat and couldn't enjoy it, and then there are people really fanatical about it to the point of memorizing all the lore and everything. Then I've seen some comments about how it should have ended at a certain point.

My first foray into this franchise was with the anime, and I remember quite liking it. I was already familiar with the otome game isekai thing since I liked the Hamefura anime already, and from manga I was sorta aware that villainess yuri was a thing, so naturally I had to watch this. Even now I have the ending theme still stuck in my head, even though it's just some random seiyuu song.

On the surface it was just about Rae being silly-goofy towards a tsundere Claire, and her struggles to game the game to win her affection. I remember when watching, that I thought that even though Rae acted silly-goofy the majority of the time, when she's serious, sometimes she said things that felt very hard-hitting (emotionally) to me. I could understand why some people would be put off by Rae's personality, but when I watched Rae's struggles and frustrations, there was a certain kind of painful that I don't often experience with anime/manga. Somehow it was these pain moments that connected me with Rae's character.

There is also the same dynamic as in other works where aggressive yuri is played for laughs, where the more silly-goofy you are, the less likely the target of your affection will take you seriously, or treat you as more than a nuisance. With Rae, her hangups were preventing her from acting serious towards Claire.

Afterwards I learned of some controversy regarding the english release of the light novels: Linky

For the purposes of this book club, I decided to read some of the LN to refresh my memory about the story. So I read the first volume plus the first chapter of volume two, which seems to be where the anime ended off at, and here are my impressions of the story up to that point.

Firstly about the "Are you what they call gay" scene, I appreciate the talk about about gayness, but at the same time, judging from Rae's outward actions up to that point, it seemed a bit reasonable to think that she may be one to do something unbecoming, gay or not.

I think the thing about whether being gay has to do with gender or not was partially made in reference to yuri works where one character will say something like "I love you, even though you're a girl," or something similar. I recall seeing others where a character will say that gender doesn't matter for them. So I think the point here is that Rae was saying that it mattered for her specifically. But also in the LN, they mentioned a stereotype in their setting about gay people going after just anyone, so a part of this conversation has to be in the context of the setting.

The way that they talked about sexuality in that conversation did sound a bit preachy to me though. When I got into yuri, I wanted to treat it as escapism, so I preferred ones that were idealized and pretty melodrama, or ones where girls loving girls was really normalized and it's not a big deal. I didn't want too much of the LGBT issues in my yuri, and I might have been a bit sensitive about its inclusion. These days I think I'm a bit more neutral on that.

So I feel as if my perceptions of this series might be a bit different than what has been expressed by others in this thread so far. The very first impression that this series gives off of it being just a lighthearted funny show didn't last very long for me. Right from the beginning, the author already likes doing a lot of worldbuilding, and it seemed to me that they were hinting at possible instability and decline in the setting.

About Rae, though she was initially presented like a haha-funny gag character, that mask came right off after the gay conversation. Turns out Rae is someone who's really hurting, and puts on a front as a defense mechanism. In her dialogue I can sense her being very calculating. In the commoner rebellion arc, whenever the conversation gets political, and the mood becomes heavy, and Claire is about to get into something she may mentally stumble upon, Rae often turns it around. Claire kept complaining that Rae couldn't read the mood, but Rae was actually intentionally changing the mood to make things more comfortable for Claire instead.

If I were to describe Rae based on my impressions of her so far, I would say that I see her as a kinda-jaded maybe-a-bit-depressed yuri antihero. The parts where Rae was laughing at herself as a defense mechanism, but no one else was laughing along were really characteristic of her early on. In the beginning it was also clear that she didn't believe her love could ever be requited, despite what she says in silly-goofy mode, like she already accepted that she was doomed to fail (like always, at least in her mind). I feel like her hangups are a big part of her characterization. She has this weird thing about having to bring things back to "normal" in terms of mood and interaction, at least with respects to Claire. She was really afraid of changing the status quo. Also she really abuses her knowledge of the game setting really hard, and never bothers explaining anything to any of the other characters.

So just from Rae's disposition and the almost constant emotional heaviness (or is it bitterness) that I feel from the story, I feel this is very different than other otome game isekai stories (like Hamefura or Villainess Level 99, both of which I sorta follow), even if you leave out the yuri aspect. Also with the way that the worldbuilding was written in, I feel an eagerness to go into a lot of stuff, even towards the beginning of the story.

Claire is also not exactly what she seems at first glance. Yeah, she's a cute spoiled tsundere, but towards the beginning she kept putting herself down, and also sometimes she seemed more like the classical hero (that Rae had no interest in being) even though she's supposed to be the titular villainess.

I'm not sure if it's my memory failing me or not, but while reading, there's a scene that I don't recall being in the anime. When Rae and Claire were trapped in the warehouse, and Rae created a toilet stall with running water using her magic, and then surprised Claire by using the bidet on her.

I felt that Lene and Lambart's story was pretty interesting, but for me it didn't take away from the slow burn(?) between the main pairing.

About Misha, she seemed like a really cool character, but then quickly lost relevance? Maybe she'll get more parts later on in the story?

So about the scales of love arc, this one was pretty brutal for me. I felt like my mind was so entrained on Rae's thoughts and feelings that every time Manaria did her provocations, it was like an attack on me personally. I felt so much frustration, I was probably shaking a bit. With all this emotional buildup as I was reading, I actually cried a bit, and I remember that I also cried a bit back when I was watching this part in the anime.

So my favorite character so far? Given how much I've been talking about her, probably Rae?

Not exactly a "favorite," but possibly the most memorable scene for me so far? Probably the frantic desperation immediately followed by the dread of futility in the duel with Manaria. She was saying something along the lines of her having to act fast to stand a chance.

So reading up to this point, which coincides with where the anime ended reminded me of why I liked the anime. One of the challenges these otome game isekais face is "well what happens after the game's scenerio?" I'm kinda curious to find out what happens in this series, but also a bit afraid that it might lose its luster, which seems to be what some people are suggesting. In an afterword for Hamefura, the author said that they had originally planned to end it with the second volume, and look where that one has gone, haha. Anyways, I do plan on reading on, and I'm assuming there will be more pain.

Sorry for long.

And now for the notion mentioned by YummyLunches, the one concerning "I love you even though you're a girl." It is very true. There is a lot of yuri manga featuring this notion. Or the aforementioned "gender doesn't matter if you're in love."

This whole thing was explored in just two pages of Omoi no Kakera by my all-time favorite, Takemiya Jin. I'm sure you've read it at some point, so the following is just a refresher.

The protagonist, a bitter lesbian schoolgirl who can't find any solace, discovers that one of her classmates, a very handsome and popular with girls boy, is actually gay. They randomly meet in the gay district and make friends because they share certain problems in life. The boy happens to be a bit stupid, but that doesn't matter here. In this gorgeous scene, on just two pages, Takemiya-sensei lays out the entire issue with perfect, painful clarity. Just look at it.

That's for the famous "are you what they call gay" thing.

I can't speak for everyone, but I totally subscribe to what she said.