Open any digital comics portal — Tapas, Webtoon, Tappytoon, Manta — and you’ll be bombarded by comics depicting shiny-eyed girls in elaborate, vaguely-pre-Industrial gowns and jewelry, often being embraced or carried by large men. Most of these comics follow the same setup: a girl is reincarnated as the villainess in a fantasy romance novel, and has to change the story she ends up in to avoid a tragic fate. When you’re working with a formula as popular as the reincarnated-as-a-villainess Webtoon, you have to be able to hold your own against everything else in the subgenre. So when the summary for Manta’s I’ve Become a True Villainess landed in my inbox, my first thought was, “But what’s the twist?”
I’ve Become a True Villainess
Flowing HonEy (original story), Bokyung Kong (writing/adaptation), storyboarded by Gyeranppang (storyboards), bumho (art), SERU & HaeWon (colors), Woo (background art), Katherine Stuchlik (translation)
Manta Comics
11/30/22
As of the first three episodes, there really isn’t much of one!
I don’t often get asked personally to review comics, so I was extremely flattered when the message from Manta came in. And I did love Semantic Error (show and comic) so I figured there was a good chance the now-familiar story was simply very well executed by the creative team (who I did not see credits for.) But I was mostly hoping there was more to the story besides the surface summary.
In Tapas’s Beware the Villainess, by Berry, Blue Canna, and Soda Ice, now-villainess Melissa Fodebrat ends up in a poorly-written novel, and the male leads romancing the heroine are all various shades of horrible. That’s an interesting twist. In Webtoon’s How to Survive a Romance Fantasy by sing-nanda, the villainess, hero, and heroine are all reincarnated Korean youths, and they work together to avoid the plot of the original novel because they don’t feel like doing all that work. That’s another interesting twist. In I’ve Become a True Villainness, the classic premise of “ordinary modern girl is reincarnated as a villainess in a romance novel and needs to avoid getting executed by the male love interests” is followed to a T… with one exception.
An average college student finds herself in the body of Seria Sterne, certain that she doesn’t want to die. So before the main character of the story shows up, she focuses on getting rid of her potential enemies, just like Catarina Claes in the light novel series My Next Life As a Villainess did. Except while Catarina used her unintentional charisma to pull everyone else into her delightful orbit, as of the start of this story Seria’s only managed to attract one accidental admirer: her fiance Callis, who is now spending an awful lot of time with Lina, the novel’s female lead.
I think this is supposed to be the hook here: as of the first three episodes, the heroine, Lina, is coming across as manipulative, calculating, and secretly power-hungry and cruel. So the twist is that the “villain” is the morally upstanding one and the “heroine” is the real villain of the story? But this isn’t really working for me. Seria isn’t likable enough for me to care what happens to her yet — not charismatic like Catarina or badass like Melissa, or smart like other reincarnated villainesses I’ve seen in other stories. I think if I’d had more time with her before Lina showed up, her place in this novel’s world would feel more earned and Lina would feel like a more credible threat.
I’m also wondering why Seria and Lina haven’t bonded over being dimension travelers. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but Seria says the novel she’s in now is about a “dimension-jumping heroine named Lina” who is given saintlike status for traveling between worlds. Maybe she’s not from the same world as Seria? Maybe Seria really wants to keep her reincarnation a secret for some reason? But still, it seems like an obvious point of connection between them, and maybe then Lina would be less inclined to ruin her life.
Artistically, the comic is without fault. Everything is drawn and rendered and lettered to the highest degree of technical competence one can see in a Webtoon. The faces, colors and backgrounds are seamlessly readable. But so far, nothing really stands out as exceptional. It’s as good as every other comic in this genre I’ve seen, but not better. Seria’s hair is green, which is pretty unusual! But that’s it. The magical worldbuilding in this world is a little interesting, but we don’t get to see much of the actual magic at work in the first three episodes since it’s still being set up.
After writing this review, this comic went live on the Manta app and website, where I learned there was in fact a whole prologue that was not shared with me for review that recontextualizes some of the events of the first few episodes! The prologue shows that Seria ends up marrying the male lead of the original novel while Callis desperately tries to win her back, which I think is a logical endgame from what the first few episodes set up. It still leaves me wondering what exactly is new or outstanding about this specific iteration of the now-endemic villainess concept.
I feel like there must be more to this story than I’m getting from these first three episodes, but if so, the opening isn’t doing the best job at reeling me in to read the rest. I want an interesting main character who has interesting interactions with the rest of her surroundings, and so far, she hasn’t distinguished herself in any significant way. If you’re already a fan of the villainess genre, you could probably add I’ve Become a True Villainess to your rotation. But if this is your first encounter with the trope, there’s better options out there.
Advertisem*nts
