Sources: [1] Casey Baseel, "Why Are There So Many Reincarnation and Villainess Anime and Manga?" 2022. soranews24.com/2022/10/29/why-are-there-so-many-reincarnation-and-villainess-anime-and-manga-manga-editor-explains/ [2] Britney Jones, "The Rise of Isekai: A Dive Into The Subgenre’s Popularity," 2023. indigomusic.com/feature/the-rise-of-isekai-a-dive-into-the-subgenres-popularity [3] Louis Kemner, "Why Are Reincarnation Isekai Anime So Popular?" 2023. www.cbr.com/reincarnation-isekai-anime-popularity-explained/ [4] Timothy Blake Donohoo, "How Isekai Anime Reflect Modern Society’s Escapism," 2024. www.cbr.com/isekai-anime-reflect-modern-society-escapism/ [5] Giovanni Tagliamonte and Yaochong Yang, "Isekai: Tracing Interactive Control in Non-interactive Media," 2021. [6] Joseph Campbell, "A Hero with a Thousand Faces," 1949. [7] Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex," 1949. [8] Maria Tatar, "Heroine with a Thousand and One Faces," 2021. [9] N.A. Bunaeva, B.S. Sosorova, and A.A. Orsoeva, "Transformation of a Female Gender Identity in South Korea," 2022. www.researchgate.net/publication/367792748_Transformation_of_a_female_gender_identity_in_South_Korea/fulltext/63dab30d64fc86063805815b/Transformation-of-a-female-gender-identity-in-South-Korea.pdf [10] Y. Yoon, "A Study of the Development of Sunjong Manhwa by Hwang Mina, Kim Hyerin, and Choi In-Sun," 2001. [11] Jaqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike, and Fusami Ogi, "Shōjo Across Media," 2019. [12] Lauren Berlant, "Cruel Optimism," 2011. [13] Leah Phillips, "Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction," 2023. [14] Linda Barlow, "The Androgynous Writer," 1992. Part of Jayne Ann Krentz, "Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance," 1992. [15] Elise Ringo, "Villainesses Required: Why the Dark Side Needs More Women," 2018. reactormag.com/villainesses-required-why-the-dark-side-needs-more-women/ [16] Sarah Gailey, "In Defense of Villainesses," 2016. reactormag.com/in-defense-of-villainesses/ [17] Eleonora Sereni, "When I'm Bad, I'm Better: From Early Villainesses to Contemporary Antiheroines in Superhero Comics," 2020. www.readkong.com/page/when-i-m-bad-i-m-better-from-early-villainesses-to-2161402 [18] Adriana Clavel-Vázquez, "Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice: What Rough Heroines Tell Us about Imaginative Resistance," 2018. www.academia.edu/36326311/Sugar_and_spice_and_everything_nice_What_rough_heroines_tell_us_about_imaginative_resistance [19] A.W. Eaton, "Robust Immoralism," 2012. www.jstor.org/stable/43496513 [20] Jessica Coen, "Gone Girl's Biggest Villain Is Marriage Itself," 2014. jezebel.com/gone-girl-s-biggest-villain-is-marriage-itself-1642978659 [21] Eleonor Botoman, "I Have Complicated Feelings About Shiv Roy, You Should Too," 2023. elliebotoman.medium.com/i-have-complicated-feelings-about-shiv-roy-you-should-too-bd49325b027a [22] Tania Sharmin and Sanyat Sattar, "Gender Politics in the Projection of 'Disney' Villains," 2018. www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5a2f76c6e2b71.pdf [23] Eva Illouz, "Hard-Core Romance: 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' Best-Sellers, and Society," 2014. [24] Vivian Graciela Chertian, "Villainess Protagonists’ Performative Acts as the Representation of Modern Femininity," 2022. www.researchgate.net/profile/Vivian-Chertian/publication/379512442_Villainess_Protagonists%27_Performative_Acts_as_the_Representation_of_Modern_Femininity [25] Sue Austin, "Women's Aggressive Fantasies: A Post-Jungian Exploration of Self-Hatred, Love and Agency," 2005. [26] Gillian Flynn, "I Was Not a Nice Little Girl," 2015. medium.com/@Powells/i-was-not-a-nice-little-girl-c2df01e0ae1
Y'know what's kind of hilarious? Modern Isekai are as you described Male power fantasies. But the older Isekai (from before SAO) that I remember off the top of my head all have female protagonists who go to 'another world'. I mean Inuyasha, Escaflowne, Magic Knight Rayearth and Fushigi Yuugi are the ones that pop up in my head right away and all have Female protagonists that get swept away for various reasons (no death required). Those are the stories I grew up with before 'Isekai' became a genre instead of a story beat.
I would agree with most of what you say though inuyasha I believe better fits the precursor genre portal fantasy often involving a young girl find an portal to another world sometimes one way sometimes not including things like alice in wonderland or coraline
@drewmarteny1495 Ah but you've missed my point! A) Isekai simply means 'another world' there Are no specifics. It does not mean you have to die, it does not mean you're trapped, it simply means you are relocated to 'another world'. Methods vary. And B) a Genre is supposed to tell you what Kind of story your about to read. Is it romance? Horror? Portal Fantasy isn't a genre it's a plot beat. A trope. It tells you something that will happen in the story but is that portal fantasy overall Sci-Fi? Is it a Comedy? Isekai too used to be just a literary tool for telling a story. But now when someone says Isekai they think of a grouping of writing tropes that while they can be played with are usually all present in some form. It became a Genre unto itself that tells you what your going to get. But the earlier uses of Isekai? Hardly fit the Isekai Genre cause they used it as a literary tool Not as a genre. I just thought it was interesting that before it became a 'genre' that was mostly male power fantasy, most of those who 'traveled' were woman. At least in the media I know of.
@DeathLadyShinigami I agree with some of your points I was discussing how these other world stories changed as a type portal fantasy was almost exclusively a for of young girl or mixed gender children other world adventure that ends with a permanent return to the 'real world' later adapting a coming of age aspect as opposed to isekais current themes shifting includ9ng an increase in permanent travel to the other world and was using inuyasha as an example of this shift of eras in sotrytell9ng similar to how magical girl became much more sentai around or post sailor moon portal fantasy had a fairly stable story structure that has faded from the current themes that isekai covers
Actually this reminds me of a comic I’m reading on webtoon called “to who it no longer concerns” where the good girl dies because she was a good girl and is sent back 5 years before her death where she becomes the ‘bad girl’ scheming and standing up for herself which get her rewarded with a way out of her abusive relationships. It’s so far a really good read and inversion of the idea that girls have to be passive and accept their abusers to succeed
@@maddiebear3041 it's on tapas, but "the fantasie of a stepmother" is one of my favorites and very popular in the otome isekai genre!! would definitely recommend :)
You hit the nail on the head on why I loved villainesses stories, though I don’t read them much anymore mostly due to reading so many of them that I kinda got bored of the trope. I am still waiting for when we can just write villainess stories without the need for reincarnations/time travel,
i noticed in a lot of fandom spaces female characters would be hated for being cunning, arrogant, confident, sarcastic, snarky, or for not acting 100% agreeable or sweet. But if a male character displayed these traits they were usually a fan favorites and greatly praised for being complex and human
Can you give examples, because I would concur with Mr. Marcel above me. I don't believe that the female characters are hated for any of these traits, at least not inherently. Off the top of my head, I can't name one.
@@atoth62most female characters are hated because of those traits because they go against the gender roles of women being pure and kind. And most of the time, they are only ever seen as these objects who are are only their for the male gaze to thirst over. They don't see them as characters like they see the male characters.
The story that comes to mind that deals with the engrained wishfullment issues: "This Isekai Maid is Forming a Union!" Both critiques the common tropes of Capitalism, slavery, and overlooking awful men by setting up a multiverse of people being isekai'd and having the protagonist be a Maid who, when she dies, is sent into the body of a maid in another common isekai story. So you get to see multiple Villanesses and even the protagonist was a villaness maid in some lives.
In my experience The whole "endure it" strategy is very physically and emotionally taxing and only leads to people treating you like an emotional crutch where trauma dumping becomes the norm.
37:30 it’s not internalized sexism, it is pragmatism. You can only be “good” within a system of control by adhering to the values of that system. I mean, what is “goodness” but a judgment based on the established rules of conduct? If patriarchy rules the land, then “good girls” will only get that label by conforming to patriarchal ideals. Put another way, “you will never dismantle the Master’s house by using the Master’s tools.” Or something like that.
you are absolutely right, and I love that quote! although some would argue that the pragmatic approach would be instead to try and increase your chances of survival in a Master's house, instead of risking your life trying to dismantle it, especially if you're not sure how to do that. even though I personally disagree with that kind of position, because if everyone conforms, we can never change things, I can't exactly blame the "good girls" for being complacent in the patriarchy or for doing their best to survive.
@@bazazilio definitely! Not everyone has the stomach (or recklessness) to go full on revolution. You will never live happily when you are also advocating for the destruction of the State, or whatever. But, I do think that simply playing by the rules will only get you ignored. Nobody cares about the “C” student. Getting the “Good” label requires some actual effort. I think that if you want to be happy, but also shape your circumstances to suit yourself, you have to be a little bit of a villain. If only for the selfishness to say, “my happiness is more important than somebody else’s moral outrage.”
@@bazazilio but then you will never truly be free from the confinement of "the masters house" if you accept that you can never escape it, hence it becomes a self fullfilling proficy as the pragmatic approach has already decided the end game is to survive as best as you can without ever truly being free. "I don't want to survive, I want to live" is a quote that comes to mind when you put it that way, the series it's from perfectly encapsulates the flaw with the pragmatic approach with this paradigm.
I would argue that most modern isaekai geared at men don’t really have self-improvement much. The powers are handed out and there is no real danger of true failure, except at the start. Also, that’s why I love queer stories, the roles are different.
I think that because isekai is so gameified self-improvement there doesn't really feel like self-improvement, it feels like leveling up in a game, almost effortless, because the protagonist has been given that OP power to begin with, so leveling up feels easy. But to me leveling up is self-improvement nonetheless, because the OP powers that were given to the protagonist do progress, but the escapist nature of the genre kind of leaves out the actual hard work part that people need to do to level up in real life. As you said, there's no real danger or stakes, but the protagonists do become more and more badass and cool as the story progresses.
And then you have something like Mushoku Tensei where, for all the tropes and flaws of the narrative, the power fantasy plays out as the backdrop to the protagonist's journey from a tangled ball of failure, regrets and psycholohical damage of his past life into a functional and semi-decent human being.
@@bazazilio Ehhh, that's why the Isekais gravitated to that's relevant nowadays are those like Mushoku Tensei or those with a sufficiently interesting premise to gather a decent following then the story is slice-of-life but dealable with. I don't think it's necessarily a lack of self-improvement that's important. After all, reincarnated as a vending machine isn't exactly much of an 'improvement', it's a silly ass premise. What mattered in its case of being a decent show was that it can drag you along enough.
Coming from someone who read a LOT of villainess manhwas, the problem with these villainess mamhwas is that to make us sympathize with the protagonist aka the villainess is to make the og protagonist "evil"... that's just lazy writing and feels definitely sexist. The double standards are strong. Not talking about the extreme classism embedded in these stories from slapping maids to the stupid twist of "the protagonist is extremely talented be aause she has royal blood actually and you should respect her you female peasant" There are of course good manhwas that try to subvert this shit but they're rare. My experience with fandom for Otome isekai is that if anything people would go an extreme way to defend their "babygirl villainess protagonist" and bash the shit out of the "bad og protagonist" and that's not breaking the gender norms for me. that's just sexism. Y'all can't take a morally bad woman until she's the protagonist.
Long After the Ending is one of the few Otome Isekai Manhwa that address this. The 'villainess' wasn't evil in the original story. It was her fiance that cheated on her and when she retaliated, he framed her as the bad guy. When our protagonist was reincarnated as the villainess, she does her best to get out of thr fiance's way and he still frames her as a bad guy. He performs such a horrid character assassination that her own family considers her spoilt. The OG heroine tries to reach out, she isn't aware of what happened behind the scenes and annoys our protagonist. The protagonist pulls some small pranks on the girl but can't bring herself to do anything serious because the OG heroine is the only innocent party in this. And it comes to a point where the protagonist ends up telling her side of the story to the Heroine. And what does the heroine do? She shows exactly how heroic she is and takes her husband to task and makes it so that her husband has to come to the protagonist with his tail between his legs and beg for forgiveness. Our protagonist even gets a chance to punch him in the face
Cannot sympathize, but well, everything is sexism by today's standards. What I don't tolerate very well on manwha in general is how ridiculously OP the MC almost always is, and the lack of challenge ahead in their journey. Probably on the head of the author, making the heroine evil is just a lazy way to add more spice to the drama, and if not: no wonder in cultures much more sexists than our own (at least, mine).
Yep. The roles are just reversed. There is the good girl protagonist that gets all the good things because she is behaving how she is supposed to and the female villainess who is not a good girl so deserves only bad things
Reading your comment gives me flashbacks from the Rashta vs. Navier situation. The comments would go CRAZY over how bad they wanted a fictional character to experience the most horrific death, just to later proclaim they are "girl's girls".
As someone who appreciates female friendships in media. Some of my favorite “OG Heroines” are the stereotypical “good girls” who are exhausted of the pressure, expectations and treatment that the society puts on them (ex. Beware of the Villainess with Yuri, Villainess's Pet with Lillith, Hero's Rival with Claudia, Magpie Bridge with Hestia, etc). They, just like the og heroines of other isekai, are hiding their true selves to conform to how society sees a true lady. The difference however is how they react to meeting the “villainess”, unlike other stories where the heroine is angry and jealous of the villainess’ freedom, these “heroines” instead reach out, in hopes that they can be free too. Usually in the end, with the help of the “villainess”, the “heroines” break free from the “good girl” shell and have become much more assertive with their dreams and aspirations, they won’t let society tell them what to do or what to be anymore because the “villainess” showed them that they don’t have to hide to survive anymore. I wish a lot more otome isekai's did this, it's a lot more interesting than the classic green-tea/white-lotus heroine (though a two-faced og heroine having a redemption arc would be very interesting as well)
ABSOLUTELY agree with this video. The thing that resonated the most for me, is this part 21:24 this does not get talked about at all. They always say ''we want deeply written, grey female characters!'' until they meet a female character anteheroine written as a male antihero/villain. They do not handle it well, the amount of hate i see online for these characters is crazy honestly. In archane the character of Ambessa is ...underappreciated, uncared for, ignored and hated for being a selfish and cruel character. She yearned for power, yes, she was manipulative at it, she had her fears, but she is reduced to this absolute evil by the fans. I was really surprised to see that from arcane fans since i thought they were different, as they were exposed to various characters in this show, and yet. The same goes for Mel which is really funny, since she ''redeems'' herself by the end, but still gets hated. Oh and Maddie lol im not gonna talk about her lol. In Gone Girl i felt so pleased by such actions, and the thing that was the most pleasing was that Amy is a woman. The same thing i felt for Pearl 2022. I am no way near a person like that irl, i am what they would describe me as a good girl character in media. All my life i did what was expected of me, was kind and apologetic, anxious and followed rules, protected a certain view i built for people to see me as. Yet i feel extremely bad emotionally as i navigate in life. I cant feel honest happiness for others success, others friendships or happiness. I feel bitter, but i hide it very carefully, i am extremely supportive of people around me, yet i am alone. I think this is why i love female characters that are exceptionally, unapologetically evil. I really loved Cersei, was heartbroken they wrote her to be so..bad by the end, how they wrte the shame scene, i loved Margery, absolutely adored Daeneryss, and in last season i still rooted for her, was absolutely flabbergasted the way people turned away from her by the end. How they mocked her and were happy for Jon to be the promised prince..yet i cant forgive them since today for it. I was robbed of this satisfying ending, the thing that she fought for so long was robbed, stolen from her by a man! This would be never celebrated if the roles were reversed. How dared she grief her loss and reduce to anger by the end, how dared she take her place by force! she was meant to be this pleasant hero yet she became like her father! no, i don;t like this. She had all of the ''redeeming qualities'' as a sort of hero gone bad and yet was treated like that. i fear my comment is gonna get deleted, but i loved this a lot!
I feel validated! Btw I liked Mel a lot her complicated relationship with her mom resonated with me. Though I think her story rushed in season 2 which is why people don't like her!? I think her story should've gotten more time.
The problem here is that no one liked how Daenerys's development into a villain was rushed, and of course Jon had to stop her, he's a dude with a pure heart who would never be okay with letting someone who took all of her grief on innocent peasants to rule.
Also, if you write a story where the male lead becomes the villain and he's stopped by a woman who had her own character arc alongside him, I don't think anyone would complain as long as it's well done... Attack on Titan had that ending, but because it was also written poorly, people disliked it as much as they disliked GoT's ending.
That different reaction is something I have noticed too, across media, regardless of quality of said media. It shows how pervasive these societal expectations of gender are! And since it's hammered into people's brains in a million different ways, small and large, from the earliest moments of socializing, many don't even recognize that's what it is or assume it's "natural" when it's all socialization.
Flawed female characters are my favourite. Selfish, impulsive, arrogant, impatient, stubborn - i love them so much especially as protagonists. The audience usually hates them while they adore male characters with the same traits but I couldn't care less. I love imperfect, realistic heroines dearly. Thank you for this video)
idk why but I recently became very addicted to korean manhwa "vilainess" stories. I'm a male from a country with very rigid traditional values (which saddens me a lot I would like my country to strife for more equality but all liberal opposition was destroyed here a long time ago) so I can't possibly understand everything that a young female may expirience in here teen years. But those stories do convey really well a trauma of broken families and expectations that those families put on a heroine. It is always especially satisfyping when protagonists of those stories manage (often just by being authentic to themselves) to suddenly become respected by those who often wronged her. It is also refreshing to watch stories where protagonist doesn't suddenly forgive her abusers as would be expected from a more traditional "good girl". Overall, thank you for your very informative video!
One of my favorite vilainesses is Aria from 'the vilainess turns the hourglass'. I didn't always agree with her decisions, I sometimes thought she was overly manipulating with people who were nice and didn't deserve to be used. And I loved that I didn't always agree, and thought she was going too far. And I still rooted for her, because she still deserved her happy ending. It's the same for Penelope. I always thought that, sure, she's doing bad things, but I could never blame her. Not with her life at stake, not with her past and what she thinks life is always like.
Azula is a good villian character that I actually thought was ferocious, and yet completely believable and likeable in a way. Her wit was very appealing. But you're right in that there are very few female villain characters that feel believable and likeable at the same time.
it would be interesting to compare that with how Katara and her dark side is perceived, who most of the time comes of as this goody two shoes, calm caring female figure full of hope, but is also shown to have female rage like no other character in the show.
Did you perchance read the comedy “Miss Not So Sidekick”? It taps into the tropes and cliches those type of stories have by making the main character Latte a fan who views herself as an onlooker, embracing herself being a side character while she sticks to the female lead like glue to survive. I love how they handle the OG Female Lead Ibelin here. She is a girl who is “inherently good” only because she thrived on the recognition for being good and the love she received for that reason. The author even depicts her as a stone a few times because her “flawless character” seems flat with only default answers. Once Latte receives the interest from the people around them because she is quirky and quite different - all the while being indifferent to the love the FL receives - Ibelins character cracks. She experiences the jealousy others felt over her for the first time which she recognises as foreign, making her hate Latte. It’s sending her into an identity crisis because this is something she isn’t supposed to feel, she is good and being good everyone should love HER. Unfortunately the authors writing is all over the place at times which makes the execution of this part of the story feel a little out of place and abrupt, but I still like the take of Ibelin who never knew she had a “dark side” because she was raised to ignore it, she was raised to be a good girl.
I like villainess manga cause the girls aren't taking it anymore. Most of the time they try to escape the toxic environment they find themselves in, find a better no that treats them better, or they leave it entirely to find a new identity. As someone that had severe depression "the duchess has a death wish" spoke to me better then most stories or the "lady just wants to relax" where the character leaves to pursue a career is better then putting your fate in a male lead and standing on your own feet. They remind me of the golden age of shojo in which the female lead had much more going on in her life then just trying to get senpai to notice her
16:07 "bad girls do whatever they want" reminds me of the plot of the manhwa 'The duchess's 50 tea recipes' as the reborn woman chooses to live her life to complete her dream of simply drinking all types of tea, which she didn't get to complete in her old life And she has to do it in a society where Tea is seen as a barbaric drink so she opens her own business for tea with the challenge of making it palatable to the coubtry she fell into This is what she wished for and she gets it
There is also the Villainesses Lofi Coffeehouse, the coffee counterpart that has it’s own spin. She gets the mages addicted to coffee lol, the engineering students of the fantasy world.
Thinking of isekai being escapist power fantasies, it’s fascinating to examine the way men and women view power. For men, we largely see physical toughness reflected. You’re tough when you can use your innate skills to physically dominate others of higher social standing and are rewarded for it. Through villainess stories, we see that for women, power is reflected in financial independence and social prowess. You assert dominance and defeat enemies through your position in society. This means, we often see reincarnation stories where the main character is born rich and becomes richer when she strategizes and invents capitalism . It’s definitely an idea worth exploring- the way the patriarchy informs media and our understanding of the world. Men’s power is in aggression while women’s power is in their calculated planning and social strategy.
To follow up on that idea, if you’re familiar with Joseph Campbell and “The Hero’s Journey “ there is a more recent work by a Gail Carriger called “The Heroine’s Journey”. And while Campbell is a bit problematic in his analysis, the idea that women’s journeys are different from men’s is very interesting to me. It explains why Hollywood gets powerful women wrong where manga and anime often get it very right.
There's a very interesting wanwha that has a male MC being a villain with a very villainess story, I like it a lot. It really is like watching a villainess manwha but with a man, the only thing it's missing (as far as I've read, like 300 chapters of the novel if I remember correctly) is romance xD It's called Trash/Lout of the Count's Family.
34:50 This is so real. As someone who suffered through emotional abuse in my childhood I wish I could simply travel 10 years back in time. So then maybe I wouldnt have to deal with my fathers anger issues, or my mothers emotional neglect. I feel my childhood has been robbed by my trauma and mental health issues and I want these years back so badly, just to experience what its like to be a normal teenager.
This reminds of the manwha “kill the villainess”. The whole story shows how the women were forced to lived under the society expectations. The heroine is not a bad person, but she was told all her life to be submissive, and in comparison the villainess didn’t conform with that (the original and the mc). Not even the queen, neither the original villainess mother chose the stuff that happened to them. It shows what is talked in the video. I highly recommend to reading it.
I was thinking of Elise this whole video, too! Specially at the section about the heroine turning out to be the villain, another big bonus is the ml being so different from the usual tropes
I really love that manwha because I think it also explores how a lot of the male lead archetypes we love in fiction are really toxic. And the Villainess never tries to make amends or “fix” the story. I also like the webtoon your throne because it explores how both the heroine and the villainess are shackled in a patriarchal society,
28:27 "We wouldn't expect a male character to show a slave kindness and gentleness." (paraphrased but I feel it's accurate to what you said) I would. Male characters shouldn't be complete assholes to powerless people considered "below them" either??? In fact, male characters who keep slaves tend to be hated too? See like, Shield Hero.
I thought about it, and I think you're partially right - we would expect a male protagonist (or literally any gender protagonist) to show slaves kindness because that's usually the purpose of slavery tropes in media like this - to whitewash the protagonist and to show how everyone is an asshole, but our protagonist is a light shining in the darkness who treats slaves like actual human beings instead of things. that's why I made a note that I hate ALL slavery tropes - because I think this kind of a cheap way to show that our protagonist is a good person, unlike everybody else. It's cheap because it's rare to find anyone nowadays who wouldn't think that slavery is abhorrent, so being anti-slavery = easy cookie points. However, the thing about Penelope (it's kind of hard to explain for those not familiar with her story) is that she actually DOES treak Eckles with kindness - yes, she does have somewhat of a villain speech when they meet, but she still treats him better than literally any other character in the story. She IS kind to him, she makes sure he isn't bullied, she gets him to train to be a knight, she buys him gifts, etc - she actually treats him not that much different from how Shild Hero treats Raftalia. The difference is that Shield Hero actually cares about Raftalia, but Penelope actually doesn't care about Eckles, she treats him kindly because she wants something out of him, she wants his affection stat to reach 100 which she believes will enable her to clear the game and return to her life at home. So that's the interesting part, she actually does treat him with kindness, but because she doesn't actually have feelings for him, because she doesn't *really* care or love him, because her kindness is *fake* and calculated, readers dislike her. So I think that while we wouldn't expect a protagonist of any gender to treat slaves like crap, I think we wouldn't expect a male character to treat slaves any kinder than Penelope does, so to me it feels like the standards are different.
@@bazazilio Yeah, that's fair. I do get why she's not like, actually nice to him, well, more than shallowly nice just to use him. Since afaik she doesn't really care about anyone in the "game" until the very end of the story? They're not real to her. But still, the way she treats Eckles especially just raises my hackles. I also hate the slavery trope. I feel like it's nearly always either super shallow or downright contributing to it by -saving- buying one hot guy for _totally innocent reasons,_ never mind that he'll eventually fall for the female lead anyway.
@@bazazilio Just chiming in that even her "kindness" harms him as she basically puts a target on him with how she introduces him to the rest of the household's staff (considering he's from a defeated kingdom that's viewed as "evil barbarians") & that part didn't seem to be calculated - just careless on her part. I'd say most of my gripes with Eckles JUST being a narrative device is that his backstory is the PERFECT setup to expand on Penelope/Siyeon's life back in Korea as she too was a bastard child of a wealthy family, but her Korean life is barely acknowledged or used to show how & why she became such a hard-hearted person that she's able to immediately go into slavery auctions & manipulate people without a shred of remorse. And I don't mean like "oh she should empathize with him cuz they both suffered", I mean it was a wasted opportunity for her to double down even HARDER by secretly resenting him (who had a father who at least tried to care for him). The fact that her backstory is only dumped near the end along with the reveal that she savescummed her way through the game without paying attention to the lore/cutscenes is not a good payoff for the question as to "why did she do such a bad job at properly manipulating Eckles if she's so desperate to survive". I've seen a lot of criticism where people said they'd like her more if she wasn't so careless with him & her being a "genius archaeology student who beats her first p2w moba game in a few hours with no guides" was actually relevant to the story. Even if you ditch the genius gamer part, archaeology isn't exactly an easy field & her being an illeg child in Korea (NARRATIVELY) should have resulted in her being able to read people to some extent at the very least. Also the whole reveal that Siyeon IS the og Penelope feels poorly foreshadowed considering the whole "savescumming through the game" stuff. You'd think it'd ping her at the very least or have her be obsessed with watching the same cutscenes over & over again but unable to understand why she cares so much. I feel like the story has a lot of interesting parts but they don't all connect neatly. Siyeon becoming queen & a mother in the epilogue should have shown that she's changed from "she doesn't owe these people or this world anything" to actually want or accept responsibility for others, but then when she meets Eckles again, it's basically like she hasn't changed at all & it's like those are just "rewards" for her cuz villainess rofan. At the very least, she should have at least visited her bio mother's grave back in Korea before spiting her family by shutting off her own life support & returning to her "true" world.
Lovely video and the in depth analysis. I used to really like the Villainesses trend in manhwa, but then it got mass-produced and most of the series now don't even feature a true villainesses, but some shallow, indecisive character who (again) needs to be rescued by her prince charming and is often being abused etc etc. It also turned into a reverse-harem or some weird romance. Imo we still need to wait for strong female leads to emerge within the pop culture or anime/manga/manhwa specifically. Can't wait for your next video, keep going!
Momo from Dandadan and Amane from the old niche anime Witchblade are some prominent examples of strong female leads, shoujo is full of such characters.
@@Snormite Shounen tends to portray really strong female chars (even if heavily sexualized). I watched a few eps of Dandadan, but it was difficult for me to survive certain scenes depicting half or fully naked Momo. Witchblade I haven't seen, but I assume she may be similar to Bayonetta?
@@UnpublishedChapter Both Momo and Okarun end up with little clothing, so the anime gives both the same treatment because they are both dealing with aliens who want their bodies. You should continue watching it because the characters are fleshed out really well... As for Witchblade, you could say it's like Bayonetta? I'd say it's more dramatic, specially since the main character is a single mother.
@@Snormite wtf is dandadan about actually. ive only heard about it through people mentioning momo and okarun as SA survivors and i assumed it was like... human? i thought humans did that to them. but there are aliens involved?????
@@kichikitsu The first episode says everything you need to know, it's an over the top bizarre show with some really heartfelt moments about two teens who are united by trauma... And the source of that trauma is rooted in the paranormal, with aliens who want to use human women bodies and evil spirits who wish to possess the bodies of living humans. But even then, the motivations behind those beings is rooted in pain as well.
Something I'd really like to see more often is the ML and FL working together, rather than the FL having to suffer and make efforts alone until the ML starts loving and ultimately "saving" her.
She‘s not really a „villainess“ but a manga I really enjoy where the FL is actually very assertive and has some traits typically associated with masculinity is „My Gently Raised Beast“! Especially in the later Volumes! And the FL and the ML work together
@bored_darling Thanks for the rec! Yesterday I started "The End of This Fairy Tale is A Crazy Drama". The FL is not a villain, but I love her decisive personality and intelligence. And she really makes an amazing team with the ML. Both have their reasons to work together, and they do it well! Give it a try!
I'd recommend "Yona of the Dawn" if you haven't watched/read it already. It is not a villainess story, but Yona is a very strong female lead who has the male lead Hawk consistently fighting by her side throughout the story. She eventually grows strong enough in her leadership and archery skills to stand by his side in battle.
One thing I've noticed (in Western media, at least) is that villainesses are almost never portrayed as truly evil. It's almost always a man's fault that they strayed from the path of good. Their father or boss or lover or someone (always a man) who they had a close connection with betrayed them, and that's what made them turn bad. You almost never get a villainess who just likes to watch people suffer or doesn't care who gets hurt in her ambitions.
27:36 - honestly, i think the worst thing this series has done is just. how they handle slavery. like yes, it makes absolute sense why penelope would be treating this like a very, very serious game. to her knowledge, thats all that it IS. why would she treat these characters like real human being when they exist inside a game for her? her goal is to survive and go home. its kinda insane how many ppl (likely kids but still) complain that she uses them to survive, bc like. yeah? no shit? they arent real to her. but also... (spoilers from here on out, leading up to the most recent arc in the manhwa) was it necessary to villainize eckles like that. was it necessary to paint him as narratively In The Wrong for not being okay with being a slave? was it necessary to push him into the Slave that is Actually Evil (And Used To Be Powerful) So You Shouldn't Feel Bad trope? why were the other characters given some grace with both their trauma AND being manipulated/literally brainwashed by yvonne, but he was given none? its not even just about how penelope uses him. he does not exist as a real person to her; but solely as a tool just like the rest of them. it's about how the narrative itself encourages you to view him. man i hate it when good soup is ruined by prejudiced writing.
If I'm being honest, I got quitw confused with what they were trying to say when she met him in the dungeon, I don't think I really got it. But still, here is my interpretation. In my opinion, Eckles wasn't really a villain, he went insane and it is Penelope's fault. She didn't even see him as a human being, she manipulated him into "falling in love with her" and when she finally reached her goal, managed to develop in him the obsession necessary for a slave to "love" his master who treats him as subhuman, she realized that insane obsession would be the death of her, so she threw him away, threw away the TOOL she broke. She made Eckles go insane, all so he would "love" her, and when she finally saw the insanity she developed within him, the consequences of the inherent abuse of their relationship, she discarded him. To the very last moment, she didn't see him as human. In the end, Eckles was left a broken man. Penelope was left despondent as all her plans foiled. Eckles is just another victim in the cycle of abuse. First abused, then abusing. As was Penelope in a way.
Actually, I think (at least the way I interpreted it) the series ends up addressing one of the worst tropes of slavery in these stories, the myth of the "kind slave owner". In so many anime, manga, manhwa, you see this trope of a character who buys slaves to supposedly "save" them, and keeps them as slaves but is supposedly "so kind" to them that the story insists there is no problem and he is an amazing person because he treats his slaves so well. For fuck's sake, in some of these stories the enslaved characters literally choose to remain slaves, JUST LIKE ECKLES. The difference is that, in Villains are Destined to Die (again, the way I read it), they expose how slavery is inherently exploitative and abusive no matter how "kind" the slave owner is. A human being is being into property and stripped of his freedom and rights, all to be exploited. Eckles doesn't fall in love with her because of her kindness and then praises her virtue for being such a "good slave owner", he is manipulated by her into reducing himself to less than human. He betrays his people and lets them be executed and becomes willing to rot in a cell all to earn her favor. It is horrible, violent and dehumanizing, as all slavery is.
@@scug1997 ouhh it's 2am rn so forgive me if this isn't too coherent. I like your interpretation! and I think, in a way, they did unintentionally do show the true horrors of slavery/slave master stuff. but in my opinion at least I do think it's unintentional. In the manhwa, Penelope kind of realizes that her actions are what drove Eckles insane. But by the end of it it's still... The narrative still feels like it WANTS you to side with Penelope. It feels like it's encouraging you to view Eckles delving into insanity and corruption as His Own Failing more than Penelope's impact. The art direction during the confrontation scene when Eckles was imprisoned very much implies to the reader that they should be rooting for Penelope during it. I'd have to pull up the pages to give you a detailed rundown of what I mean. But. 2am. Ough.
The first villainess reincarnation manwha that truly made me fall in love with the genre is "Beware the villainess!". Such a funny and very girl's girl story. On the other side of the spectrum, "The Villainess Turns the Hourglass" really put a new standard for a villainess to act cunning and smartly to turn her fate around, she doesn't stop being a villainess, but fights tooth and nail for her happy ending.
The fact that I don't read or watch much anime, manhwa, and manga, but still know about every other one is a warning of how obsessed I'm with the Villainess Isekai genre
There is some south korean webnovel called Omniscient reader view point and it made by a marriage couple. I thing they really naild female and male character really well. I dont want to spoiled anything but this was story for love for the story itself. It look like just another power fantasy at first, but when you reach that epilog, you will find out why this story is special.
I haven't read the novel, but I love the webtoon!! (although I'm a couple of years behind haha, I need to reread and keep up) but I really am impressed with its character work. it's great and I hope the story will get even more recognition when the anime adaptation comes out.
@bazazilio oh so you have reaf the webtoon. The novel is better because ORV is a story for reading. In the webtoon, we more like using 3 person perspective meanwhile in the novel we well see the world with kim dokja POV and he is really unrealible narator. Han sooyoung maybe look like get behind kim dokja and yoo junhyuk but she actually the most importent MC. Spoiler : Han sooyoung is the writer behind TWSA and ORV itself. Yup, the story is actually written by the character itself (breaking the 5 wall). We are also kim dokja reincarnation, basically every reader is kim dokja (kim reader). Yoo junhyuk sponsor (the most ancient dream) is actually the real kim dokja who dream, what if he and the character he love is have an adventure together. Secretive plotter is actually the real yoo junhyuk from TWSA.
@@trishachandra1216 watch orv in 6 minute in youtube, you will get spoiled but actually no because how confusing it was. Trush me, you will laugh and confuse if you wach it
@@trishachandra1216 don’t worry even though it’s a big spoiler most of the context was left out, I think you would still enjoy the novel even knowing that information
I was waiting for this kind of video analyses, and you absolutely delivered with this one, thank you so much. Mentions of "Akuyaku Reijou no Naka no Hito" are always appreciated, a gorgeous novel and manga.
One of the things that irks me about the Villainess troupe is that often the 'crimes' the original villainess did is not really bad, or she was framed, and it is the people around her that hyped the crimes up to the point she was either exiled or killed because getting rid of her profited them. Often the 'crime' is being angry because the 'hero'/OML and the OMC had an affair, and original 'villainess' did not want to divorce or look the other way. One direction that the villainess troupe is going that I sometimes like is when the new/reborn mc decides to actually do bad things, because being a quiet good girl will not help at all. I think the ones I have the issue with is the ones where the villainess punishes people how has not actually done anything yet, and the person has a chance to change, but the MC does not want to give them a chance to.
The Original Villainess Stories: •Macbeth •Madea •Clytemnstra •Phaedra The Point of these stories: •Villainess starts off as a angel •It Starts off as Simple Goal(Revenge, Jealousy Etc.) •In the Pursuit of their goal The Main Character Does Heinous Acts by tempation,or mistake becoming a unrecognizable demon for the remainder of the story In the End Most current Villainess Stories Miss the Point. •Angel Becomes Demon •Demon Defeated. •If The Demon Becomes a Angel just note the Angel is haunted by the Demon creating a redemption story Most current Villainess Stories aren't actually villainess stories. •Revenge doesn't make it a villainess story •Being Framed doesn't make it a villainess story Current Villainess Stories are just a character who's misunderstood
Really interesting and well-made essay. As a long time reader of "otome isekai", it was really enjoyable to see the genre so eloquently analysed and its place in modern culture and current societal shifts. If I may be so bold, I have some sort of response/theories for a point raised during the video: Why these stories often reflect uncritically other societal problems like capitalism and classism instead of also "dreaming" of more equal societies? (Apologies in advance if this is a bit nonsensical, English isn't my first language and I'm writing this at 1am) Personally, I think that a reason for this (beyond the internal bias and personal beliefs of the author) could simply be that the fantasy of the villain is in a way a bit selfish and self contained, and that's all it wants to be. These are, at their core, the fantasy of escaping not only the pressures of being the good girl, but also just current life in general. Most importantly, due to their place of origin, these stories are mostly about escaping current life in modern South Korea or Japan and their VERY capitalistic and patriarchal societies. You already talked at length in the video about the psychological purpose of the Villainess, what fantasy it serves: both to oppose gender norms and to give an outlet or relief to common traumas and hardships modern middle-class and working-class women (and people socially perceived as women) might suffer. This, I think, it's also why they are all rich and beautiful. The Villainess fantasy's objetive is to serve as an escape for the everyday-life of the reader, but not as a dream of changing the world. The reader most likely suffers, in some way, not only under patriarchy but many other societal ills as all of them are deeply intertwined, but the Villainess story only wants to give the "dream" of fighting against gender norms and the expectations of the good girl, without also having to fight, say, capitalism (or whatever pseudo-feudalism they have going on). It only wishes to imagine *relief* for them, to fight some issues and escape others. It *could* also serve a bigger fantasy of an equal world with a focus on Villainess and starting by fighting gender inequality, but isn't that such a tall order? The Villainess needs an unequal world to rebel against, but isn't fighting the whole world and all it's problems such and endless struggle? Perhaps a bit too similar to the endless struggle of the real world. It is selfish, but it is also a bit of the whole point. It wants to offer a specific relief to more individual anxieties. Personally, I don't think it's fully a bad thing. Of course, you do have to keep in mind the more problematic ideas it replicates as a feature, such as classism, and it would be great to see some of these stories tackle more diverse issues (or simply, to tackle them more radically). On the other hand, not all stories will want to tackle such heights and, hey, who doesn't dream of suddenly becoming rich and quitting forever the daily grind of a shitty job? As a side note, I do think other reason for this (and other points brought up during the video such as the "Villainess" not being particularly morally-challenging) is that a lot of those stories are, well... not that well written. They are still products to be sold, often under crushing conditions, and as such a lot tend to be simpler or just follow trends.
i think the topics discussed in this video also applies a lot to "I'm In Love With the Villainess", which technically focuses more on themes of being queer from what i watched so far rather than gender, but i think the two are still intertwined. idk how to properly explain it, but because Claire is branded as a villainess due to her mean and self-serving nature, she doesn't fall into the stereotypical 'feminine' ideals that is imposed onto female characters. she, like the video states, is free from the pressures of being seen as an angel by society. of course there's the fact that she's very much an annoying classist at the start but the narrative still gives her more grace than the og story of the otome game she's in. at least in this new narrative, she isn't doomed. in a similar vein, Rei, the reincarnated heroine of the story, deals heavily with the tribulations in being the 'good girl' heroine. only this time it's doubled by the fact that she is a queer woman who faced being judged and rejected in her previous life solely for being attracted to other women. there's even a whole segment in ep2 going into her experiences with sexuality and her defense mechanism of fawning over Claire being the result of the pushback she faced. it's honestly a shame queer themes aren't more popular in these villainess stories, a queer person reincarnating as the hated but ultimately free villainess would go HARD. i think it's interesting seeing queer themes intertwined with gender especially with stories centered around female characters. ig that's why i'm a fan of stories like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Rose of Versailles lol.
**it's honestly a shame queer themes aren't more popular in these villainess stories, a queer person reincarnating as the hated but ultimately free villainess would go HARD. i think it's interesting seeing queer themes intertwined with gender especially with stories centered around female characters. ig that's why i'm a fan of stories like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Rose of Versailles lol.** I would agree with you there! Sadly it's almost always queer-bait at best - the villainess / regressor / reincarnated protag ends up being so assertive and bad ass that their female maids and closest confidantes become their biggest fans, sometimes even lowkey in love with them, but the stories rarely ever explore those angles and instead still opt for the stereotypical prince charming routes. (most manwa has pretty shitty men I would never want to date IRL in them if you ask me, I almost always ship the sapphic bait harder than the hetero-plot) I forget which one it was, but "the little mermaid" turns out to be able to swap genders and sex and loves the female protag without any of the typical tropes and holy goodness I wish she was a genuine love interest for our very very hetero protagonist in that story. XD
Girl I’m just popping in to say that you’re an amazing editor and script makers. It’s so impactful! Like probably some of the best on vibes alone and the points that are being made in such a digestible and yet easily understandable way. It’s scratching my brain at like 3 AM 😌
Amazing essay! It opened my eyes as to why villainess stories are so popular, a genre that hasn’t piqued my interest before. Want to give it a go now. However, it is still strange to me that in a story that is a subversion of the gender norm, a villainess is only given the freedom to rebel internally but on the outside is forced to pretend to conform to the norm, follow the rules and present herself as a “good girl”. Feel however you want, but still act according to your gender - that seems a half measure at best in redefining gender roles. At least that is what stood out to me out of the examples in the video, my only source, since I’m not closely familiar with the genre.
Aaaaa I’m getting strong Anthy vibes. While close to Utena, Anthy feels like an antagonist once you look back on a second watch through. Absolutely watch Utena!
36:58 One of the best examples of this is Rashta. To this day, I do not understand the hate towards her. I get that people may not like her "woe is me" perspective even as she makes others suffer, but are we really going to act as though, considering what she has lived through only to end up being trapped in an uncertain position that could be taken away at any moment, having no true allies in her corner, and having no where to go back to, are we really going to act as though we don't understand her motivations or why she is the way she is? Honestly, I personally am incapable of reading Remarried Empress any further because of how much the story itself simultaneously demonises and ridicules Rashta.
part of the reason why i never really understood the hype of the webtoon version of remarried empress is because, on paper, rashta is wayyy more compelling of a character than navier. if it was written better, a story about an enslaved girl clawing her way out of her station whilst contending with schemes and politicking done by all the nobles, an emperor who doesn’t actually give a fuck about her well-being, and an empress whose position is threatened by her presence would be so interesting. instead, rashta’s just meant to fail over and over again to highlight how perfect navier is. that made the webtoon so boring.
When I started reading the novel I liked how it reversed the roles of someone who would usually be the villain (Navier) and the heroine (Rashta). But I do think both the readers and characters in the story reduce the complexities of Rashta’s character. She is uneducated, and was born a slave, she is manipulated by most of the characters that surround her (who arguably are more evil than her). But they treat her like this big schemer that got what she had coming. If you ask me I think most people don’t give enough shit to Sovieshu who was the one who had the responsibility to respect his marriage, who if we take in the power dynamics took a slave as his lover (so basically no consent), then married her and neglected her, and got rid of her when she was causing more problems than what he was willing to overlook.
I couldn’t get past the first 30 chapters of the remarried empress for that exact reason. The whole story felt like it was bending over backwards to make the LITERAL EMPRESS be a victim and a slave be the villain for wanting to escape slavery.
In Kill the Villainess, Eris so desperately is looking for a way out at the end. What struck me as different in reading that one was the only one who actually listened to what she wanted to do with her life, no matter how good or bad she was, supported her in her wishes. At the beginning, all of the male heroes hated her for being the villainess, and when her personality and goals changed, she became something necessary that they HAD to save, whether she wanted it or not. It was a stunning degree of autonomy for me. When you fit outside those ideals, you deserve punishment and worse, and when you fit inside of them, you have to be saved. After all, why would someone who does good want to escape? Maybe they CAN be redeemed if I redeem them? In an obsession with getting things to stay in control, the Villainesses trope does break that mold! Solid video essay. :)
This was a fascinating watch as a fan of the villainess genre. I do think one of the most interesting stories in this genre that I've read is The One Within the Villainess, because of how it deals with the reincarnator and villainess relationship, and the fact that the story follows the original villainess, tempered by who the reincarnator was.
what i like about sometimes female villain characters are mostly they dont give a shit about standards they are the underdogs in most of the shows and have do redeem themself against the odds while the good girls on paper gets everything what they want but it has a massive side effect they lack of responsibility
This is a really high quality video?? I really appreciate the subtitles too. I read english better than I understand it in listening form so its helpful ^^ (not my first language)
12:37 I think hope that things can be better or the person can change is valuable. It's possibility that I am betting on. I am a man and I was in abusive relationship and I hoped throughout the relationship that she would change as person for the better. She didn't unfortunately but I don't think I was wrong to hope. I still hope she changes and becomes a better person. I would hope again in my next relationship without letting myself be abused. I think we need sperate hoping for the betterment for the person we love from stay in an abusive relationship. Kierkegaard's works of love is a useful philosophical book here. My probably useless 2 cents. Thank you for the video btw!
yes, absolutely! I think that when it comes to our specific personal life circumstances, optimism is definitely valuable and imo can even be healthy as it is something that can get you through the day when you're struggling. What Berlant specifically talks about is big cultural narratives when we're always told to chase a dream that's supposed to make us happy, but while we're chasing that dream we're suffering in the process. Like hustle culture, when you work 100 hours a day to "become a billionaire one day" and therefore become "happy" but you're obviously just destroying yourself in the process, in that case the optimism of becoming a billionaire would be hurting you rather than helping.
@@bazazilio I understand. I think her and my understanding of hope is different, that's where the confusion lies. Thank you for replying back, love your channel!!!
This was really good. I hope we do get to see more morally grey / villainous / bad girls in rofan and media in general who don’t need to regress or reincarnate to garner audience understanding.
Let me, as the biggest consumer of template fiction in the world (and therefore the average audience), make it clear: the gender of the protagonist is absolutely nobody's business (especially when they try to sell "it's a girl, she shouldn't be like that" reverse card). And in general, to be honest, our readers don't care about the protagonist's orientation, social status and so on. We just want a normal story. If you've read enough novellas on both sides, you've noticed that there's enough crap both ways. Yes, the “villainesses side” has a higher percentage of good content at the moment, but have you ever wondered why? Well, it's just that the "hero" isekai is a long-trodden path where all the moves are already written down (which is why you're sick of it), and the "villainesses" (who aren't really villains) are still a new field of experimentation where it's still not entirely clear which story will go down better. Soon, though, this too will become as dull a piece as the average isekai about a "hero", with rare glimpses of good content, and nothing will change despite the appearance of an anti-heroine who is actually a "heroine". It's just a cross-dressing game and nothing else. There's no "gray" there, everything is sickeningly "white", it's just that your eyesight is shit. They just change the scenery and cover their laziness and inability to come up with something new, with “innovation”. And you, naive people, rejoice like children. So what's the point of this video? Is it so women now can have a "wider choice" of protagonists? Oh, yeah? It's more about getting high on a new trend before it dies like all the previous did. Although, let's be honest, that too will turn into another cliché. So really, everything is going in circles, and you're all sitting around with your hands in the air.
My favorite villainess ever was this goddess from Sinbad. She just did whatever she wanted and wasn't really evil, just free and curious. I aspire to be this unbothered and chaotic haha
I think you'd like "I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History" because the villainess is... different lol. She looks at her new world and went "mm, eh. A lot of things aren't working. Let's just advocate to change absolutely all of them."
y'all should read tamsyn muir's excellent short story 'princess floralinda and the forty-flight tower'! its protag is a princess who has been taught this 'good girl' stuff her whole life. she's stuck at the top of a tower waiting to be saved. suitors keep dying to a dragon in trying to reach her, so they give up, and she has to find her own way down. she gradually loses that 'good girl' self (and makes some questionable moral choices) as she transforms herself and is transformed into the kind of person who can survive and escape--very much not the person she is expected by society to be. the basic concept ("princess saves HERSELF!") sounds a bit smug and contrarian on the face of it, but that's misleading. i think it's a really well-executed story and has some interesting things to say about fairy tales, gender under patriarchy, and the fluid nature of the self.
Thank you for this video. Ive been obsessed with this genre for the last.. 5...6.. years now? And I could never quite find the words to explain why i enjoyed it as much as I did, but you verbalized it perfectly.
The only thing i disagree is that only villainesses are destined to fail, i didn't read any of these villainesses stories so i don't know how immoral their actions are, but other villains usually lose in the end, even when they are the "heroes" of the story. Walter White, Light Yagami, Tony Soprano, they all die in the end. Even if we root for them during the story we don't want to see them go unpunished
Nah alot of ppl don't want em punished I think what she's trynna say is that villainesses are easier to hate their failure is usually cathartic Maybe idk
I think that's more like writer's morale, which is why they're awesome! But in fandom spaces, they're(characters) often seen as legends. Also a lot of people hate writers for either giving the character's comeuppance( consequences){especially Walter)for their action or killing them(Light). Just take a look at modern anime fandom spaces.
@@imaginieiotaI thought people hated the ending light got because it was not well thought out especially with how detailed it was so far. I’m not sure though since I didn’t watch the series. I saw a lot of people who said it felt out of character for them.
@@imaginieiotaI agree. It’s the writers who don’t want to be seen as “bad” people. A lot of the fandom still supports the “bad boys/girls” and don’t really want them do be punished. I wish the world instead would be punished as it’s what made those people become “bad” but that’d feel to real for people. To realize society, including them (the readers/us), is what makes people into “bad” people. I put quotes over bad because I don’t really think they’re bad. It’s just what society teaches us to see them as.. but for what reason really?
This is a really interesting and well put together video that I found thanks to someone linking from the otome isekai subreddit. One minor nitpick though: Harley Quinn gained her antiheroine traits back in the 90s. Two episodes, one involving her teaming with Ivy and the other where she actually captures Batman, showed us just how her relationship with the Joker truly is. This hasn't changed much since. (Edit: oh, and the parole episode and "team with Batman" episode show her ability to heel face turn)
I guess to be more specific, she went through a character evolution on B:TAS and TNBA, which spanned from 1993 to 1998(?): V1: Unnamed henchwoman whose design could have become a duplicated uniform for female mooks in a parallel dimension V2: Named and voiced villainess but not fleshed out or independent yet V3: Tragic villainess in a bad situation V4: Antiheroine, albeit one who leans far more towards villainess than Catwoman
I was going to say, the abuse by Joker is nothing new. He beats her and throws her out a 2nd story window because he thinks she did a bad job in capturing Batman because she had to explain part of the joke. In Batman Beyond, it's implied that's what breaks her out of Joker's grip; in the movie "Grandma Harley" has to pick up her twin grandkids from police custody and smacks them with her cane for running around the the Jokerz Gang, imitating what she used to do.
This is why I love the characterization of the MC in "so I'm a spider, so what?", she is a female protagonist in a male isekai. She's really goofy and fun when she's alone, but later on she meets people to interact with and it becomes clear that she's very selfish. But while her companions don't really like that part of her they also respect her alot for her strength. Really looking forward to seeing where it goes.
The reason that male isekai stories don't question the narrative towards power is not related to any societal issues, more of a storytelling principle. how can you make a compelling story without giving your protagonist the ability to enact change? (because that is the very deffinition of power, "Ability to enact change") If you take that away from your protagonist you will end with a passive protagonist, and we all know how good those are right?
A fitting saying: "No good deed goes unpunished." I've been writing Isekai stories since I was a kid-always about a girl entering another world with an obvious purpose. I enjoy writing morally grey characters, so it’s no surprise the villainess genre is my favorite. This video made me reflect on my current story and whether I’ve truly let my characters act freely. Did I create their trauma just to justify their actions? Honestly, I can’t say. My process isn’t structured-I start with an idea, but once my characters develop, the plot takes a backseat, and the scenes often write themselves through dialogue. I think my fascination with anti-heroes, is what led me to create an unjust world for my characters to explore morality. Themes like idealism, cynicism, and gray areas of justice driving the narrative, with my main characters clashing: "The ends justify the means" vs. "Do what feels right, no matter the cost." Both philosophies can make them anti-heroes given their experiences. I often question their reasoning, but I haven’t considered if my female lead’s ideals differ because of our gender-very interesting.
this video TOTALLY changed my view on who i want to be. ive seen so many 'docile' girls in shoujo anime, despite also reading many villainess stories. since shoujos always felt closer to being possible, i wanted to be 'good' like the main characters. this video helped me realize thats not who i am or who i really need to be.
I just realized that I stopped reading "Death Is The Only Ending For The Villainess" because of my bias. I truly felt it was a poorly written manhwa because the heroine did not make sense to me. I thought she was too heartless, and her selfishness made me extremely uncomfortable. Only now, after hearing another person's perspective, did I realize why I felt so strongly that Penelope was a poorly written villainess. I was too used to villainesses being kind AND maintaining boundaries to understand that I couldn’t handle a truly flawed and realistic villainess.
This video and the good girl archetype reminded me of the fairytale in the fruits basket anime about the traveler who gave everything he had until he was left with nothing but his head and he cried tears of joy when the creatures he allowed to eat his body finally left him with something in return, even though it was a piece of paper calling him an idiot
One really good exemple of a morally bad women character is Satō from my happy sugar life That show also totally fucks your moral compass, and makes you root for her even tho her action are bad Most character arent good in the show but she is the main character and i really like how it portrais all those issue in a way to show theyre bad things and not romaticise them, yet its sweet like candy because its what love taste to the main character and we see everything from her perspective
One thing I don’t really like about the villainess genre is these days most of the works that have been released are contradictory to the point of the genre. This is mostly done by portraying the ‘villainess’ in an extremely good light after her body has been possessed and portraying the ‘heroine’ most often in either a negative light or making her get along with the villainess. I feel like this destroys the whole point of the genre. You’ve essentially just swapped the names of the titles of villainess and herione. But the whole good always wins motto is still persistent. The issue than becomes with when they try to write the villainess as morally grey. The reason why so few good stories like this exist. Is because, well, it’s really difficult to do. To write a villainess as not all good or all evil while still having her be an interesting character. Most of the time the writers will default to all good. Or try morally grey but the end result ends up feeling like a villainess who’s needlessly cruel or does bad things just for the sake of it. It’s a very hard thing to write properly. When done well. It’s amazing. It just hasn’t been done well very often. The villainess genre is now oversaturated. Just like the broader isekai genre or in Korea the regression genre. It needs a distinct standout story that is well written and properly plays on the troupes of the genre. Which I don’t think it’s gotten yet. Great video overall. Keep making content like this!
i can name at least 5 different media where the good moral male hero has an edgier more utilitarian female love interest the fandom hates but that same fandom ships the good guy with - not even antihero - a MALE VILLAIN. this is definitely a misogyny thing. its even more infuriating to me bcz most of the time these fandoms are female dominated. if men were hating the “bad girl” i’d be like okay thats just misogyny but women doing it for yaoi purposes im like *do you hate yourself that much*
exactly! then we ask ourselves why women like to identify with bad boy characters, when bad girls are literally not allowed to exist without people immediately pointing out how wrong and horrible they are.
I'd say there's a lot of internalize misogyny and coping on that as well. But it has to do with why BL fandoms and BL ship are so big with girls and women, and why in BL ships there is usually a strict dynamic of top/bottom and character are always a bit (or VERY) feminized. I have watch some video of people talking about it. But it's basically like this. It's about being able to relate, but not to wear the character's shoes. It's escapism. When it's about a BL ships, women put themselves in "the Observer" role. They simply watch and feel with the character yet are not contributing to it at all, and thus no consequences are directed at them But it gets better, they get to CHOSE to relate only to the good part and block out the bad part. When it's a guy there's a layer of unrelatability there. It's safer to feel and not uncomfortable when the story are RIDDLED with toxic trope like r@pe, kidnaping, emotional abused, etc, because it's not directed at a girl, not ME of any girl as well. It's male on male violence, and I get to enjoy it. Its like back in the day people went and watch Rome fighters. It's exciting, and it's not their pain, not YOUR pain. Its also a form of coping with their repressed aggression, to see a male vulnerable to violence, beaten, bruised, hurt and toss away like a female do, but you will never be able to truly relate, cause that's a guy. He can go to the gym, get jacked thanks to testosterone and protein, and fight back whenever he wants cause he's a guy, unlike....me. One weak female, by nature. Or the other side of the spectrum is to see the guy trap forever in the cycle of violence. It's the same thing. Another aspect of it is male character are more likely to be respected. This is for more soft stories. It's more positive but still escapism. It's because the relationship is between 2 males, it's kind of expected that they would truly love and respect each other. Cause even if they are forever happy, they are forever unable to reproduce (I KNOW THE ABO TROPE STATE OTHERWISE BUT BARE WITH ME) You cannot make a traditional family dynamic with a BL ship, but they are still happy, right ? Not bounded by children or any value that are usually taught as needed to keep a family happy. They are also more likely to be on par with each other when it comes to physical power = more respect. Just 2 well-rounded person with like, dislike, flaws, and they're IN LOVE. Isn't it just so, dreamy ? Now, when you introduce a female, the unrelatability of a male is broken. It becomes TOO RELATABLE. It becomes, a projection. What if the male gets hurt ? No, what if that's a girl ? What if that's ME ? What do you mean SHE gets to have what she wants and I DON'T ? And that is when fear, or envy and internalized misogyny steps in. It's either I don't want to be her OR I'm so much better than her. It's when the bad parts also become relatable and you can't stop your feelings. She is BREAKING my forever unrelatable fantasies. Get out, get out, GET OUT. You are dragging me back to my cruel realities, and so you are unlikable. Either it's fear of violence or jealousy of a better relationship. BL does not directly address women issues but it makes a good enough escape to cope. And many will FIGHT for it instead of facing reality and try to fix it. Cause that hurts
@@bluemeg1787 yes but running away from reality or bad parts is not good for anyone's psyche. Also most of the population that consumes bl like horn, it's an addiction. Btw your explanation is so dope, I enjoyed it!❤
@@bluemeg1787 while i agree and this was very interesting to read, i have two things to add: none of the media i had in mind was east asian nor romance media i was thinking more 2000s tv shows and comic book movies so these aren’t the first places most women would look for escapism especially the romantic/sexual kind secondly while i get the psychological & projection aspects of the subject and i’ve been there when i was a repressed teenager, 20+ y/o women in fandom spaces writing paragraphs of misogynistic hate vents about the female character counterpart of a male character they adore is cognitive dissonance at best, i think as women we could do better and im not saying this in a “let women be evil” way either of course anyone can hate any character for any reason but i just want people to be more conscious.
An intersting question is how women feel about "rough heroine" type characters. Are their views just as bound by gender norms? What about "smooth hero" type characters? Are they seen as okay by women/men?
Another excellent video! (I will be re-watching it for years to come) I’ve been waiting for a genuine analysis of this genre forever and your video gives me so much to ponder about
This is a wonderful video that was really such an eye-opener. I've always loved villainess stories because it felt tiring to see women who couldn't hold their own and are only saved by men and those around them, rather than them changing and finding ways to rely on their selves. In my life, I've seen a lot of examples of women, who are very resilient, but unfortunately too self-sacrificing for their children and their husbands and those around them. I almost had an averse reaction to that in which I became selfish as a way to protect myself from that fate, of having worked hard and struggled most of your life with little to no reward. And it is usually frowned upon, but these villainesses were a way for me to see myself, in a way they were almost liberating. There's something very freeing about not being liked, or accepting not being liked, it is empowering almost, realizing how much people's opinions and views of you don't matter. Thank you so much for making this very well thought-out video❤
Two 'Rough Heroines' that are BEAUTIFULY💜 made and to die for✨, are the protagonists: Remilia, from "The One Within The Villainess" and Larcy, from "I Will Fall With The Emperor". Both of them could be considered anti heroines at certain points, but I personally think that, in general, their redeeming qualities and motives (which are massive), don't outweigh the, CLEARLY STATED, bad intending and remorseless actions, even when they, subsequently, generate positive outcomes for a majority, later on. They are evil and mercilessly, but we love them for it.
Thank you for the video! this talks about a lot how I feel about the genre ❤ I'd also like to add that (at least personally for me, ) I also love villainess stories where it starts *after* the villainess has done something horrible and potentially iredeemable, and has to learn living with the consequences. I suppose it is the fantasy of being understood and listened to- perhaps even redeemed, forgiven and loved after being a "bad-girl" or a "villainess" , especially with how easily and badly society reacts to a woman acting out, without ever trying to understand or help her. This has always been an aspect of the genre that appeals to me personally, especially when recovery and redemption is difficult if not impossible. (The quickest example i can think of being the spin off to Katarina's story where she returns AFTER all the harm has been done. How do you deal with the fallout? How do you deal with all the hurt youve inflicted? I honestly feel it is a much more interesting look into the story than the OG but u didnt hear that from me 😂 I also quite liked "The Spark in your eyes" when i read it a while back, where the MC is undeniably a "war hero" (later unpacked subverted ofc) and is now forced to come into terms and live with her actions or inaction and complicity during the war) Admittedly, sometimes this becomes a cop-out into Good Girl 2.0 stories, especially when someone gets isekaid to take the blame for the villainess' actions, but when it is done well, it provides a catharsis that I scarcely find in other genres. The idea that you can be "bad" and make huge mistakes but you'll be okay, you can get through this, yknow? Anyway, sorry for the rambles. Once again, fantastic video and encapsulates a loooot of my feelings for the genre ❤
the good thing about a good girl is likely the good girl is surpressive while the villain girl is the more dominant one sounds like thats how bdsm works the one is a masochist the other is a sadist
13:15 I would love to read an isekai story where the mc gets reincarnated into the 'good girl' character but refuses to be a people-pleaser and decides to pursue her ambitions. I think it would be a fun way to explore the genre and gender norms.
That beginning is exactly the moral theme and question i garner from these storys. It is what brings them intense meaning, so i love that you said that. Ive been wanting to make a video myself on this :)
Thank you so much for mentioning how otome isekai tends to glorify the idea of "the beautiful elite", and doesn't really question why the protagonists are all rich and beautiful. It's nice to see someone praise something while being able to critique it. Credit to @gaudiumwille for mentioning that more often than not, the OG heroine is used to prop up the villainess protag, often by being worse than the villainess protag. This becomes even more questionable when you consider that most villainesses tend to be of higher social rank than the OG heroine. I wish otome isekai didn't have to fully villify the heroine just to make the villainess sympathetic. While I don't mind the OG heroine being morally grey - I encourage it, even - more often than not they're just unambiguously bad and nothing more. I would also like to ask - what is your opinion on Re: Zero? I'd understand believing it to be a typical isekai power fantay if you haven't seen it, but I believe Re: Zero actually subverts the typical isekai power fantasy. Re: Zero is very much aware of its MC's flaws and openly pushes him towards self-improvement. There's also an interesting theme on how the typical isekai heroine is expected to be flawless and how that could negatively affect her (although that's more subtle). Re: Zero is definitely not your typical power fantasy imo, and anyone can enjoy it. Even though I am not the target demographic (as I'm a girl) I was still able to love the story and its characters. Sorry if this topic seems irrelevant to the video, I just wanted to talk about it. Edit: @UnpublishedChapter also made a good comment pointing out how nowadays many villainess manhwa have become slop media with bad writing, using the same tired tropes and story beats. The ML also tend to be borderline abusive in some manhwa. It's unfortunate to see that just as how male isekai power fantasy have become slop media, so has otome isekai.
I always thought that the "snow white and the huntsman" movie, should have been more about The Evil Queen, Ravenna, and her path to downfall. Not only because Charlize Theron's character it's THE MOST (and only, to be fair) remarkable and remembered character in that movie, but it would have been a much better story. The sequel only confirmed that, since The Snow Queen, portrait by Emily Blunt, was again the highlight of the movie, and even deepened the lore of her older, evil sister, Ravenna!!!! She would have been such a perfect Rough Heroine Protagonist 🥲🥲
Claire from house of cards is another good example of a "rough heroine". Robin Wright really made me like that characted even if she was quite anit-hero ish, and the whole couple felt like quite an insane dynamic (i can only speak for season 1-2 thats all I've watched) Btw I agree with your video's point, sorry for just bringing up examples, I'm just doing it to identify when is it that we like gender defying female characters and why. It can help us learn something
villains are destined to die writer is super talented, i have never seen such a complex character in this genre, and even untill s3 she's still herself, her attitude doesnt suddenly change or become more kind, she still has the same motivation same conviction, just because she understands why doesnt make her forgive, which i find is such a liberating stance, because we so often are taught to forgive, its nice to see someone not do that while still not letting it consume them.
I'm trying to outline an otome styled isekai that deals with the question of the protagonist's original identity. My main character is a closeted trans man who replaces the heroine of the webnovel he's reading. Where he was meek and scared to disappoint his mother by depriving her of her only daughter (she stopped trying after having him, following 4 sons). Because of his choice to remain closeted, he chooses the familiar but uncomfortable skin of womanhood. He convinces himself that he can do it, and even romanticizes his trapped position, and tries to enjoy femininity through fantasy and a sort of masochism. That is, until he becomes the fraught heroine of his novel. Something breaks within him as he lives the gilded nightmare of marriage to a powerful, seemingly heartless man. The distance makes him begin to live a double life as a man, something he was terrified to try in his former life. He then learns that his cruel husband was also living a double life when he unwittingly starts an affair with him with his new identity/truer self. I just thought that these protagonists slip too seamlessly into their new identities, and it would be interesting to show the power of the phantasic self in self discovery. What webcomics would be good to read to understand the tropes better?
op i just want you to know that this is such a cool twist on the concept of the usual otome isekai and i hope that one day your ideas will come into fruition. it’s such an interesting exploration of the “fake/disingenuous” heroine by exploring how confined and suffocating fitting into the mold of the “good girl” is, especially from the perspective of a closeted trans man! as for the part about webcomics that explore similar tropes, from the top of my head is one called Kill the Villainess, though i only read a few chapters of it a long time ago. but i heard from other people from this comment section about how it deals with suddenly being reincarnated as a fictional character with an MC that just wants to go home, and i heard it gets really good too.
This video perfectly summed up all my thoughts and feelings about why the genre connects to me so much, your editing style and range of sources from across media is amazing :D keep up the work, I can't wait for you to blow up in popularity!!
Wonderful video, when I saw those neat animated segments, paired with a thorough analysis, I fell in love with your channel! I can't wait to hear more of what you have to say next 🧡
I don't have the presence of mind for anything more eloquent right now, but it was an interesting listen! Thank you for the cool analysis! (I laughed a little at the mention of the Duke of the North because YEAH there's like one in almost every manhwa haha)
This was a wonderful perspective of the emerging genre. You voiced concisely my internal thoughts of my attachment to the genre. I look forward to future videos!
YESSS I LOVE VILLAINESS ISEKAI MANGAS!!! I was so eaxicted to see Penelope from "Villains are Destined to Die" on the thumbnail, I like the story a lot and how it uses video game mechanics and how our MC acts. This was a really good video and gave me some good recommendations for new manga in this genre!
The good girl and bad girl thing really hits me as a trans girl, being told about these narratives and wanting to be a girl, it gives me a perspective of the problems women face and the problems in the world, but regardless, even if I end up a "bad" girl, I'll be unabashedly myself, that much should be enough, if there isnt a happy ending, I'll make a happy ending for myself if I have to, because all girls, good, bad and all in between, deserve a happy ending
I hope others see this and are helped by this, being a girl doesnt always mean you have to be a good girl, to all of you who are here, it'll be ok, we love you all! 🫂💜
This was great! You’ve given me food for thought, that’s for sure :) it’s really interesting how the media we consume reflects society’s views at the time of their creation and invites for critique if you look beyond the cover. Even if the author didn’t intend for it, we can look further. For me, the beauty of art and creation is in the opportunity of interpretation each of us can make of it in our own little bubble. As a side note, it was an instant subscription for me. It felt like a nice conversation with a friend on an interesting topic. The mood, designs and even fonts used were easily enjoyable aesthetically for me 😊 thank you for always citing your sources as well ! Great work! Thank you for your efforts and I’ll see you in your other videos :]
My one gripe with these stories is that our leading lady is also always a capitalist of the worst order, often emulating some of the worst corporations from our world. And I can see why that's part of the power fantasy, especially with cultural context, but they're also usually born into powerful noble families. They're handed a silver spoon and a golden handshake at birth... and then they turn around and make inherently exploitative money printers.
Sadly, it is because capitalism, or rather more crudely monetary gain, is one of the common ways women throughout the ages have been able to rise above and succeed. Money and titles have also been taught and marketed to women from birth as sources of security, freedom and power. "Marry/be born rich and/or work/ to get financial independence" and you'll live somewhere safe. Men get all the underdog stories in the world because they've had the capacity to rise above. Women had or still have harder upward mobility. We are both born facing walls but ours are harder and taller to climb. Heck, I can hardly think of any female historical underdog that didn't fail or die horribly. Unless they were born rich.
Villainess isn't only spreading to female protagonist novel. Crazy thing is it is spreading into male protagonist novel. There is a lot of male protagonist reincarnated into villainess novel.....
One of my favorite things in media is how it iterates on each other. Here you have OG female isekai, which was very action packed. Then the next iteration is male isekai as people know it, basically drifting towards fanfiction, bc let's be real, if we read SAO as a fanfic we'd call the protag a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. Then, the women come back with the Otome Isekai. Some early ones still lean heavily into the endurance, women bein reborn as heroines and needing to go through some hardship. And then the villainesses arrive on the scene. And they start directly attacking that legacy. Melissa razes down all the suitors and [spoiler] so Yuri doesn't HAVE to endure! Penelope acts in total self interest, survival mode 24/7, and yet shines bright whenever her true self gets to peek through (like when she tells Winter off for rationing the food strictly in the slums). And now, we're beginning to get iterations on that! "This Maid is forming a Union" responds to the Otome Isekai genre to in turn examine all the ways even those authors are still a product of their cultures. Going into cruelty towards servants, the fear to touch on same gender relationships, the tension between privilege and allyship and between personal survival and knowing of a better world that could be created. I love seeing this. It's like a cycle of the seasons, with each spring bringing a new and exciting bunch of blossoms that resemble the old ones, yet shine with something new!
I love the stories where the main character remains a villainess or just follows a key interest (villainess level 99 is levelling and theres another where the main character wants a healthy body)
Villainess Isekai is my favorite genre of manga/manhwa by an _enormous_ margin. It's certainly hit or miss, but its propensity towards focusing on politics and economics is always so fascinating to me. My favorite one right now is probably _The Villainess Lives Twice_, but I've also been enjoying _I Will Change the Genre_. The former is just an excellent story where the MC's enemies are mostly highly intelligent people. The latter is substantially lighter, but the people within it are intelligent, thinking humans who have their own motives and opinions. I love that this genre is a thing. It's so absolutely fantastic. There are no genres of manga/manhwa I actively search for except for this one. It's so rich with incredible stories. Also, check out Ascendance of a Bookworm if you haven't already. It's not a villainess story, but it has a ton of the same qualities that make villainess stories so fantastic. At least in my opinion.
I'm nonbinary and if I was Reincarnated as a Villain/ess, my story would be about embracing societal rejection, taking up more space as I express myself more fully, exposing systemic flaws, and fearlessly fostering profound connections with others. Oh well, guess I'll just have to work on being a villain/ess here. Also, in our lives, we are baited into hating each other. Yet we are also taught that aggression is never the answer, that if we just ask nicely enough, we MIGHT earn the same amount of dignity as others. So we are taught to be hateful, yet complacent. On top of that, vulnerability is treated as a danger, a weakness. So we end up hateful, complacent and isolated from others. Sounds like a recipe for a villain origin story if there ever was one. So be compassionate, but fight for your dignity and dare to be vulnerable.
omg fantastically made video essay!! i absolutely love the style & structure, plus TYSM for including all the songs you used in the description!!!!!! i never see people doing that and it drives me crazy when i can't find the song playing in the bg cause they get credited as "from epidemic sound" haha
Oh hell no she labeled Rezero as a male power fantasy 💀. Oh no oh noo no no. Thats anything but power fantasy Like No way in hell would i want to suffer like subaru fuck no Dude doesnt even have any powers constantly dying in the most horrific ways possible f no. ☠
For context, I really only watch the animes, so I can't really comment on the broader genre as it exists in manga/LN/WN. (The one exception was Bookworm, I really liked that, but not a villainess story even if some of the themes/plot beats/settings/characters are adjacent to the genre.) You briefly touch on it at the end, but I wanted to talk a bit more about the class dimension to this. In a lot of the villainess anime I've seen, the villainess is a rich noble, often in high enough social standing that they're at least in consideration for a marriage into royalty. On the other hand, the heroine is often a commoner girl who is whisked into the world of nobility because of some aptitude or special power. She becomes the focus of affection in the original story by being such a good girl she breaks through the barrier between commoners and nobles. The commoner heroine absolutely needs to employ that survival strategy because she's an outsider and inherently disposable to the people around her. Or if not disposable, only tolerated because of the special power she brings to the table to be exploited. Her place in society is entirely conditional on the good will of those with power over her. The villainess, on the other hand, is born into wealth and power. Perhaps her role in public noble society is contingent on acting the good girl, but her place in the household isn't. Just because of the luck of her birth, she gets to be served by common people, often other women, who, like the heroine, have no choice but to stay in the good graces of those in power, and they don't even have something special about them to elevate them beyond their station. In this context, the villainess is someone who has been made so untouchable by an unfair society that she can act cruelly to the people beneath her with impunity. They just have to take that abuse and live in fear if they don't want to lose their jobs or worse. It's only when that cruelty becomes directed at the object of affection of those men with more power than her that she faces any consequences for her behavior. And not because she was cruel to a commoner, but because it's someone the nobility likes. So then in comes the Isekai protag, a regular ass person who even if they aren't especially overly nice, doesn't have the indifference or disdain for people that comes from a life of inherited privilege. Everyone becomes confused at the change of character and instantly starts liking her because she's suddenly showing basic human respect and kindness towards people like a normal person. It's not to say that there's no gendered aspect to this, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't take feminine endurance/submissiveness to be a better person than a fancy power tripping leech. On the subject of those "rough heroes": At least from the American perspective, I think what makes these characters so compelling is that they essentially embody a more twisted, but honest and accessible, version of the American Dream. We're told that we could be successful if we just pull ourselves up by our boot straps, work hard, start a business, and start exploiting people. (The last part is unspoken.) What is a Mafia or meth empire if not a business success story? The fact that their business is illegal and puts them in closer proximity to the exploitation and violence they're responsible for just comes down to a matter of power and privilege. CEOs get to kill people with the stoke of a pen because they have thousands of employees and the protection of the state to do their dirty work and they're largely insulated from the consequences of their actions. A mobster needs to get their hands dirty and either evade the law, or do a more direct form of bribery than big corporations do to make the state turn a blind eye. But fundamentally, this is the honest version of what's glorified by the myth of the American Dream. It's aspirational. The viewer might not exactly want to be a criminal, but that certainly seems like a more realistic way out of poverty than working your way through an entrenched power structure. But you're right that this is mostly portrayed as a male thing. It's hard to think of any media I've seen that fits the same mold with a female protagonist. I don't really know to what extent that translates over to anime though. Japan has different cultural norms and expectations, but it's also been heavily influenced by the West, and specifically America in it's modern history. Besides the post-war reconstruction, there are heavy cultural influences from consuming Hollywood movies and TV. I suppose Bookworm might actually be a female bootstraps kind of story, although not a rough hero one. Also, I'm not sure what it says that the endpoint of success for Myne's endeavors as a commoner isn't to become independently successful, but to become adopted by nobility. There's still that fantasy of being lifted from the grind of the real world and put into a life of luxury due to something other than pure merit. (Myne might have used money to get into the temple, but she was only adopted because of her massive mana capacity.) EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot another relevant thing: At least in some stories I've seen, the rest of the nobility ends up chastising the protag for extending this kindness to commoners. So being the "good girl" for society only applies to people who matter. There is no obligation to place the needs or feelings of those you hold power over before your own. I hope this wasn't too rambley. The video was pretty interesting.
Sources:
[1] Casey Baseel, "Why Are There So Many Reincarnation and Villainess Anime and Manga?" 2022. soranews24.com/2022/10/29/why-are-there-so-many-reincarnation-and-villainess-anime-and-manga-manga-editor-explains/
[2] Britney Jones, "The Rise of Isekai: A Dive Into The Subgenre’s Popularity," 2023. indigomusic.com/feature/the-rise-of-isekai-a-dive-into-the-subgenres-popularity
[3] Louis Kemner, "Why Are Reincarnation Isekai Anime So Popular?" 2023. www.cbr.com/reincarnation-isekai-anime-popularity-explained/
[4] Timothy Blake Donohoo, "How Isekai Anime Reflect Modern Society’s Escapism," 2024. www.cbr.com/isekai-anime-reflect-modern-society-escapism/
[5] Giovanni Tagliamonte and Yaochong Yang, "Isekai: Tracing Interactive Control in Non-interactive Media," 2021.
[6] Joseph Campbell, "A Hero with a Thousand Faces," 1949.
[7] Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex," 1949.
[8] Maria Tatar, "Heroine with a Thousand and One Faces," 2021.
[9] N.A. Bunaeva, B.S. Sosorova, and A.A. Orsoeva, "Transformation of a Female Gender Identity in South Korea," 2022. www.researchgate.net/publication/367792748_Transformation_of_a_female_gender_identity_in_South_Korea/fulltext/63dab30d64fc86063805815b/Transformation-of-a-female-gender-identity-in-South-Korea.pdf
[10] Y. Yoon, "A Study of the Development of Sunjong Manhwa by Hwang Mina, Kim Hyerin, and Choi In-Sun," 2001.
[11] Jaqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike, and Fusami Ogi, "Shōjo Across Media," 2019.
[12] Lauren Berlant, "Cruel Optimism," 2011.
[13] Leah Phillips, "Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction," 2023.
[14] Linda Barlow, "The Androgynous Writer," 1992. Part of Jayne Ann Krentz, "Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance," 1992.
[15] Elise Ringo, "Villainesses Required: Why the Dark Side Needs More Women," 2018. reactormag.com/villainesses-required-why-the-dark-side-needs-more-women/
[16] Sarah Gailey, "In Defense of Villainesses," 2016. reactormag.com/in-defense-of-villainesses/
[17] Eleonora Sereni, "When I'm Bad, I'm Better: From Early Villainesses to Contemporary Antiheroines in Superhero Comics," 2020. www.readkong.com/page/when-i-m-bad-i-m-better-from-early-villainesses-to-2161402
[18] Adriana Clavel-Vázquez, "Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice: What Rough Heroines Tell Us about Imaginative Resistance," 2018. www.academia.edu/36326311/Sugar_and_spice_and_everything_nice_What_rough_heroines_tell_us_about_imaginative_resistance
[19] A.W. Eaton, "Robust Immoralism," 2012. www.jstor.org/stable/43496513
[20] Jessica Coen, "Gone Girl's Biggest Villain Is Marriage Itself," 2014. jezebel.com/gone-girl-s-biggest-villain-is-marriage-itself-1642978659
[21] Eleonor Botoman, "I Have Complicated Feelings About Shiv Roy, You Should Too," 2023. elliebotoman.medium.com/i-have-complicated-feelings-about-shiv-roy-you-should-too-bd49325b027a
[22] Tania Sharmin and Sanyat Sattar, "Gender Politics in the Projection of 'Disney' Villains," 2018. www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5a2f76c6e2b71.pdf
[23] Eva Illouz, "Hard-Core Romance: 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' Best-Sellers, and Society," 2014.
[24] Vivian Graciela Chertian, "Villainess Protagonists’ Performative Acts as the Representation of Modern Femininity," 2022. www.researchgate.net/profile/Vivian-Chertian/publication/379512442_Villainess_Protagonists%27_Performative_Acts_as_the_Representation_of_Modern_Femininity
[25] Sue Austin, "Women's Aggressive Fantasies: A Post-Jungian Exploration of Self-Hatred, Love and Agency," 2005.
[26] Gillian Flynn, "I Was Not a Nice Little Girl," 2015. medium.com/@Powells/i-was-not-a-nice-little-girl-c2df01e0ae1
Hbomberguy would be so proud
"Good girls go to heaven and bad girls go wherever they want" DAMN dude you are fire, time to follow
That's kind of the problem, though.
Y'know what's kind of hilarious? Modern Isekai are as you described Male power fantasies. But the older Isekai (from before SAO) that I remember off the top of my head all have female protagonists who go to 'another world'. I mean Inuyasha, Escaflowne, Magic Knight Rayearth and Fushigi Yuugi are the ones that pop up in my head right away and all have Female protagonists that get swept away for various reasons (no death required). Those are the stories I grew up with before 'Isekai' became a genre instead of a story beat.
Even before that you have Wendy in Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Dorothy in OZ.
Kagome of Inu Yasha, too.
I would agree with most of what you say though inuyasha I believe better fits the precursor genre portal fantasy often involving a young girl find an portal to another world sometimes one way sometimes not including things like alice in wonderland or coraline
@drewmarteny1495 Ah but you've missed my point!
A) Isekai simply means 'another world' there Are no specifics. It does not mean you have to die, it does not mean you're trapped, it simply means you are relocated to 'another world'. Methods vary.
And B) a Genre is supposed to tell you what Kind of story your about to read. Is it romance? Horror? Portal Fantasy isn't a genre it's a plot beat. A trope. It tells you something that will happen in the story but is that portal fantasy overall Sci-Fi? Is it a Comedy? Isekai too used to be just a literary tool for telling a story. But now when someone says Isekai they think of a grouping of writing tropes that while they can be played with are usually all present in some form. It became a Genre unto itself that tells you what your going to get.
But the earlier uses of Isekai? Hardly fit the Isekai Genre cause they used it as a literary tool Not as a genre. I just thought it was interesting that before it became a 'genre' that was mostly male power fantasy, most of those who 'traveled' were woman. At least in the media I know of.
@DeathLadyShinigami I agree with some of your points I was discussing how these other world stories changed as a type portal fantasy was almost exclusively a for of young girl or mixed gender children other world adventure that ends with a permanent return to the 'real world' later adapting a coming of age aspect as opposed to isekais current themes shifting includ9ng an increase in permanent travel to the other world and was using inuyasha as an example of this shift of eras in sotrytell9ng similar to how magical girl became much more sentai around or post sailor moon portal fantasy had a fairly stable story structure that has faded from the current themes that isekai covers
the thing with Penelope is what happen when hard, cold realism meet absurd fantasy - a cruel joke of fate and webtoon
Actually this reminds me of a comic I’m reading on webtoon called “to who it no longer concerns” where the good girl dies because she was a good girl and is sent back 5 years before her death where she becomes the ‘bad girl’ scheming and standing up for herself which get her rewarded with a way out of her abusive relationships. It’s so far a really good read and inversion of the idea that girls have to be passive and accept their abusers to succeed
That ones kinda mid tho
@JGTtodayreally? It’s the first one of the genera I’ve read. What do you suggest I try?
@@maddiebear3041 it's on tapas, but "the fantasie of a stepmother" is one of my favorites and very popular in the otome isekai genre!! would definitely recommend :)
@ thanks!
@@maddiebear3041 im not really into webtoons so i dont got anything sorry
You hit the nail on the head on why I loved villainesses stories, though I don’t read them much anymore mostly due to reading so many of them that I kinda got bored of the trope. I am still waiting for when we can just write villainess stories without the need for reincarnations/time travel,
We do have a lot of that /but in my opinion those suck, I never find a good one 😕
ARMAND PFP
Super agreed
Especially because of how the story completely discards the Isekai aspects a lot of times
✨your throne / to be you for a day✨
@Cinnamon_Bon yess I love that manhwa
i noticed in a lot of fandom spaces female characters would be hated for being cunning, arrogant, confident, sarcastic, snarky, or for not acting 100% agreeable or sweet. But if a male character displayed these traits they were usually a fan favorites and greatly praised for being complex and human
"cunning, arrogant, confident, sarcastic, snarky" you kind of just described hermione
Can you give examples, because I would concur with Mr. Marcel above me. I don't believe that the female characters are hated for any of these traits, at least not inherently. Off the top of my head, I can't name one.
@@Cecilia-ky3uw Maybe for being cunning or arrogant. But male characters will equally be hated for being cunning or arrogant.
Women ate usually blamed for suffering, so a bad girl fits the archetype.
@@atoth62most female characters are hated because of those traits because they go against the gender roles of women being pure and kind. And most of the time, they are only ever seen as these objects who are are only their for the male gaze to thirst over. They don't see them as characters like they see the male characters.
The story that comes to mind that deals with the engrained wishfullment issues: "This Isekai Maid is Forming a Union!" Both critiques the common tropes of Capitalism, slavery, and overlooking awful men by setting up a multiverse of people being isekai'd and having the protagonist be a Maid who, when she dies, is sent into the body of a maid in another common isekai story. So you get to see multiple Villanesses and even the protagonist was a villaness maid in some lives.
Oh my gosh I absolutely love that webtoon
I've been thinking about a Manhwa like this for years I knew I have to wait cuz it was about to happen
Oh this sounds like a great read!!! I’ll have to check it out :)
I need to read that now.
Oh my. That's the good stuff
In my experience The whole "endure it" strategy is very physically and emotionally taxing and only leads to people treating you like an emotional crutch where trauma dumping becomes the norm.
37:30 it’s not internalized sexism, it is pragmatism. You can only be “good” within a system of control by adhering to the values of that system. I mean, what is “goodness” but a judgment based on the established rules of conduct? If patriarchy rules the land, then “good girls” will only get that label by conforming to patriarchal ideals. Put another way, “you will never dismantle the Master’s house by using the Master’s tools.” Or something like that.
you are absolutely right, and I love that quote! although some would argue that the pragmatic approach would be instead to try and increase your chances of survival in a Master's house, instead of risking your life trying to dismantle it, especially if you're not sure how to do that. even though I personally disagree with that kind of position, because if everyone conforms, we can never change things, I can't exactly blame the "good girls" for being complacent in the patriarchy or for doing their best to survive.
@@bazazilio definitely! Not everyone has the stomach (or recklessness) to go full on revolution. You will never live happily when you are also advocating for the destruction of the State, or whatever. But, I do think that simply playing by the rules will only get you ignored. Nobody cares about the “C” student. Getting the “Good” label requires some actual effort. I think that if you want to be happy, but also shape your circumstances to suit yourself, you have to be a little bit of a villain. If only for the selfishness to say, “my happiness is more important than somebody else’s moral outrage.”
@@bazazilio but then you will never truly be free from the confinement of "the masters house" if you accept that you can never escape it, hence it becomes a self fullfilling proficy as the pragmatic approach has already decided the end game is to survive as best as you can without ever truly being free. "I don't want to survive, I want to live" is a quote that comes to mind when you put it that way, the series it's from perfectly encapsulates the flaw with the pragmatic approach with this paradigm.
I would argue that most modern isaekai geared at men don’t really have self-improvement much. The powers are handed out and there is no real danger of true failure, except at the start.
Also, that’s why I love queer stories, the roles are different.
I think that because isekai is so gameified self-improvement there doesn't really feel like self-improvement, it feels like leveling up in a game, almost effortless, because the protagonist has been given that OP power to begin with, so leveling up feels easy. But to me leveling up is self-improvement nonetheless, because the OP powers that were given to the protagonist do progress, but the escapist nature of the genre kind of leaves out the actual hard work part that people need to do to level up in real life. As you said, there's no real danger or stakes, but the protagonists do become more and more badass and cool as the story progresses.
And then you have something like Mushoku Tensei where, for all the tropes and flaws of the narrative, the power fantasy plays out as the backdrop to the protagonist's journey from a tangled ball of failure, regrets and psycholohical damage of his past life into a functional and semi-decent human being.
@ yeah but I’m never gonna watch it. The way it treats women is abysmal.
@@bazazilio Ehhh, that's why the Isekais gravitated to that's relevant nowadays are those like Mushoku Tensei or those with a sufficiently interesting premise to gather a decent following then the story is slice-of-life but dealable with. I don't think it's necessarily a lack of self-improvement that's important. After all, reincarnated as a vending machine isn't exactly much of an 'improvement', it's a silly ass premise. What mattered in its case of being a decent show was that it can drag you along enough.
@@halfpintrr What do you mean? If anything it treats them amazingly given the premise that the treatment of women in fiction is lacking in depth.
Coming from someone who read a LOT of villainess manhwas, the problem with these villainess mamhwas is that to make us sympathize with the protagonist aka the villainess is to make the og protagonist "evil"... that's just lazy writing and feels definitely sexist. The double standards are strong. Not talking about the extreme classism embedded in these stories from slapping maids to the stupid twist of "the protagonist is extremely talented be aause she has royal blood actually and you should respect her you female peasant"
There are of course good manhwas that try to subvert this shit but they're rare.
My experience with fandom for Otome isekai is that if anything people would go an extreme way to defend their "babygirl villainess protagonist" and bash the shit out of the "bad og protagonist" and that's not breaking the gender norms for me. that's just sexism. Y'all can't take a morally bad woman until she's the protagonist.
Agreed
Long After the Ending is one of the few Otome Isekai Manhwa that address this.
The 'villainess' wasn't evil in the original story. It was her fiance that cheated on her and when she retaliated, he framed her as the bad guy.
When our protagonist was reincarnated as the villainess, she does her best to get out of thr fiance's way and he still frames her as a bad guy. He performs such a horrid character assassination that her own family considers her spoilt.
The OG heroine tries to reach out, she isn't aware of what happened behind the scenes and annoys our protagonist. The protagonist pulls some small pranks on the girl but can't bring herself to do anything serious because the OG heroine is the only innocent party in this.
And it comes to a point where the protagonist ends up telling her side of the story to the Heroine.
And what does the heroine do? She shows exactly how heroic she is and takes her husband to task and makes it so that her husband has to come to the protagonist with his tail between his legs and beg for forgiveness. Our protagonist even gets a chance to punch him in the face
Cannot sympathize, but well, everything is sexism by today's standards. What I don't tolerate very well on manwha in general is how ridiculously OP the MC almost always is, and the lack of challenge ahead in their journey. Probably on the head of the author, making the heroine evil is just a lazy way to add more spice to the drama, and if not: no wonder in cultures much more sexists than our own (at least, mine).
Yep. The roles are just reversed. There is the good girl protagonist that gets all the good things because she is behaving how she is supposed to and the female villainess who is not a good girl so deserves only bad things
Reading your comment gives me flashbacks from the Rashta vs. Navier situation. The comments would go CRAZY over how bad they wanted a fictional character to experience the most horrific death, just to later proclaim they are "girl's girls".
As someone who appreciates female friendships in media. Some of my favorite “OG Heroines” are the stereotypical “good girls” who are exhausted of the pressure, expectations and treatment that the society puts on them (ex. Beware of the Villainess with Yuri, Villainess's Pet with Lillith, Hero's Rival with Claudia, Magpie Bridge with Hestia, etc).
They, just like the og heroines of other isekai, are hiding their true selves to conform to how society sees a true lady. The difference however is how they react to meeting the “villainess”, unlike other stories where the heroine is angry and jealous of the villainess’ freedom, these “heroines” instead reach out, in hopes that they can be free too. Usually in the end, with the help of the “villainess”, the “heroines” break free from the “good girl” shell and have become much more assertive with their dreams and aspirations, they won’t let society tell them what to do or what to be anymore because the “villainess” showed them that they don’t have to hide to survive anymore.
I wish a lot more otome isekai's did this, it's a lot more interesting than the classic green-tea/white-lotus heroine (though a two-faced og heroine having a redemption arc would be very interesting as well)
ABSOLUTELY agree with this video. The thing that resonated the most for me, is this part 21:24 this does not get talked about at all. They always say ''we want deeply written, grey female characters!'' until they meet a female character anteheroine written as a male antihero/villain. They do not handle it well, the amount of hate i see online for these characters is crazy honestly. In archane the character of Ambessa is ...underappreciated, uncared for, ignored and hated for being a selfish and cruel character. She yearned for power, yes, she was manipulative at it, she had her fears, but she is reduced to this absolute evil by the fans. I was really surprised to see that from arcane fans since i thought they were different, as they were exposed to various characters in this show, and yet. The same goes for Mel which is really funny, since she ''redeems'' herself by the end, but still gets hated. Oh and Maddie lol im not gonna talk about her lol. In Gone Girl i felt so pleased by such actions, and the thing that was the most pleasing was that Amy is a woman. The same thing i felt for Pearl 2022. I am no way near a person like that irl, i am what they would describe me as a good girl character in media. All my life i did what was expected of me, was kind and apologetic, anxious and followed rules, protected a certain view i built for people to see me as. Yet i feel extremely bad emotionally as i navigate in life. I cant feel honest happiness for others success, others friendships or happiness. I feel bitter, but i hide it very carefully, i am extremely supportive of people around me, yet i am alone. I think this is why i love female characters that are exceptionally, unapologetically evil. I really loved Cersei, was heartbroken they wrote her to be so..bad by the end, how they wrte the shame scene, i loved Margery, absolutely adored Daeneryss, and in last season i still rooted for her, was absolutely flabbergasted the way people turned away from her by the end. How they mocked her and were happy for Jon to be the promised prince..yet i cant forgive them since today for it. I was robbed of this satisfying ending, the thing that she fought for so long was robbed, stolen from her by a man! This would be never celebrated if the roles were reversed. How dared she grief her loss and reduce to anger by the end, how dared she take her place by force! she was meant to be this pleasant hero yet she became like her father! no, i don;t like this. She had all of the ''redeeming qualities'' as a sort of hero gone bad and yet was treated like that. i fear my comment is gonna get deleted, but i loved this a lot!
Ngl I loved Ambessa. She was such a good character. Though I feel like act 2 and 3 of s2 really rushed her writing.
I feel validated! Btw I liked Mel a lot her complicated relationship with her mom resonated with me. Though I think her story rushed in season 2 which is why people don't like her!? I think her story should've gotten more time.
The problem here is that no one liked how Daenerys's development into a villain was rushed, and of course Jon had to stop her, he's a dude with a pure heart who would never be okay with letting someone who took all of her grief on innocent peasants to rule.
Also, if you write a story where the male lead becomes the villain and he's stopped by a woman who had her own character arc alongside him, I don't think anyone would complain as long as it's well done... Attack on Titan had that ending, but because it was also written poorly, people disliked it as much as they disliked GoT's ending.
That different reaction is something I have noticed too, across media, regardless of quality of said media. It shows how pervasive these societal expectations of gender are! And since it's hammered into people's brains in a million different ways, small and large, from the earliest moments of socializing, many don't even recognize that's what it is or assume it's "natural" when it's all socialization.
Flawed female characters are my favourite. Selfish, impulsive, arrogant, impatient, stubborn - i love them so much especially as protagonists. The audience usually hates them while they adore male characters with the same traits but I couldn't care less. I love imperfect, realistic heroines dearly.
Thank you for this video)
idk why but I recently became very addicted to korean manhwa "vilainess" stories. I'm a male from a country with very rigid traditional values (which saddens me a lot I would like my country to strife for more equality but all liberal opposition was destroyed here a long time ago) so I can't possibly understand everything that a young female may expirience in here teen years. But those stories do convey really well a trauma of broken families and expectations that those families put on a heroine. It is always especially satisfyping when protagonists of those stories manage (often just by being authentic to themselves) to suddenly become respected by those who often wronged her. It is also refreshing to watch stories where protagonist doesn't suddenly forgive her abusers as would be expected from a more traditional "good girl". Overall, thank you for your very informative video!
One of my favorite vilainesses is Aria from 'the vilainess turns the hourglass'. I didn't always agree with her decisions, I sometimes thought she was overly manipulating with people who were nice and didn't deserve to be used. And I loved that I didn't always agree, and thought she was going too far. And I still rooted for her, because she still deserved her happy ending.
It's the same for Penelope. I always thought that, sure, she's doing bad things, but I could never blame her. Not with her life at stake, not with her past and what she thinks life is always like.
Azula is a good villian character that I actually thought was ferocious, and yet completely believable and likeable in a way. Her wit was very appealing. But you're right in that there are very few female villain characters that feel believable and likeable at the same time.
it would be interesting to compare that with how Katara and her dark side is perceived, who most of the time comes of as this goody two shoes, calm caring female figure full of hope, but is also shown to have female rage like no other character in the show.
Did you perchance read the comedy “Miss Not So Sidekick”? It taps into the tropes and cliches those type of stories have by making the main character Latte a fan who views herself as an onlooker, embracing herself being a side character while she sticks to the female lead like glue to survive.
I love how they handle the OG Female Lead Ibelin here. She is a girl who is “inherently good” only because she thrived on the recognition for being good and the love she received for that reason. The author even depicts her as a stone a few times because her “flawless character” seems flat with only default answers.
Once Latte receives the interest from the people around them because she is quirky and quite different - all the while being indifferent to the love the FL receives - Ibelins character cracks. She experiences the jealousy others felt over her for the first time which she recognises as foreign, making her hate Latte. It’s sending her into an identity crisis because this is something she isn’t supposed to feel, she is good and being good everyone should love HER. Unfortunately the authors writing is all over the place at times which makes the execution of this part of the story feel a little out of place and abrupt, but I still like the take of Ibelin who never knew she had a “dark side” because she was raised to ignore it, she was raised to be a good girl.
I like villainess manga cause the girls aren't taking it anymore. Most of the time they try to escape the toxic environment they find themselves in, find a better no that treats them better, or they leave it entirely to find a new identity. As someone that had severe depression "the duchess has a death wish" spoke to me better then most stories or the "lady just wants to relax" where the character leaves to pursue a career is better then putting your fate in a male lead and standing on your own feet. They remind me of the golden age of shojo in which the female lead had much more going on in her life then just trying to get senpai to notice her
16:07 "bad girls do whatever they want" reminds me of the plot of the manhwa 'The duchess's 50 tea recipes' as the reborn woman chooses to live her life to complete her dream of simply drinking all types of tea, which she didn't get to complete in her old life
And she has to do it in a society where Tea is seen as a barbaric drink so she opens her own business for tea with the challenge of making it palatable to the coubtry she fell into
This is what she wished for and she gets it
There is also the Villainesses Lofi Coffeehouse, the coffee counterpart that has it’s own spin. She gets the mages addicted to coffee lol, the engineering students of the fantasy world.
@Kartanaunfolded OMFG THANK YOU FOR THE RECC
ILL START READING IT THIS INSTANT (COFFEE)
FINISHED AND FINISHED! GIVE ME A MORE!
Thinking of isekai being escapist power fantasies, it’s fascinating to examine the way men and women view power. For men, we largely see physical toughness reflected. You’re tough when you can use your innate skills to physically dominate others of higher social standing and are rewarded for it. Through villainess stories, we see that for women, power is reflected in financial independence and social prowess. You assert dominance and defeat enemies through your position in society. This means, we often see reincarnation stories where the main character is born rich and becomes richer when she strategizes and invents capitalism . It’s definitely an idea worth exploring- the way the patriarchy informs media and our understanding of the world. Men’s power is in aggression while women’s power is in their calculated planning and social strategy.
To follow up on that idea, if you’re familiar with Joseph Campbell and “The Hero’s Journey “ there is a more recent work by a Gail Carriger called “The Heroine’s Journey”. And while Campbell is a bit problematic in his analysis, the idea that women’s journeys are different from men’s is very interesting to me. It explains why Hollywood gets powerful women wrong where manga and anime often get it very right.
There's a very interesting wanwha that has a male MC being a villain with a very villainess story, I like it a lot. It really is like watching a villainess manwha but with a man, the only thing it's missing (as far as I've read, like 300 chapters of the novel if I remember correctly) is romance xD It's called Trash/Lout of the Count's Family.
@@gabrieldartemius9940 i love that one
34:50 This is so real. As someone who suffered through emotional abuse in my childhood I wish I could simply travel 10 years back in time. So then maybe I wouldnt have to deal with my fathers anger issues, or my mothers emotional neglect. I feel my childhood has been robbed by my trauma and mental health issues and I want these years back so badly, just to experience what its like to be a normal teenager.
This reminds of the manwha “kill the villainess”. The whole story shows how the women were forced to lived under the society expectations. The heroine is not a bad person, but she was told all her life to be submissive, and in comparison the villainess didn’t conform with that (the original and the mc). Not even the queen, neither the original villainess mother chose the stuff that happened to them. It shows what is talked in the video. I highly recommend to reading it.
I was thinking of Elise this whole video, too! Specially at the section about the heroine turning out to be the villain, another big bonus is the ml being so different from the usual tropes
I really love that manwha because I think it also explores how a lot of the male lead archetypes we love in fiction are really toxic. And the Villainess never tries to make amends or “fix” the story. I also like the webtoon your throne because it explores how both the heroine and the villainess are shackled in a patriarchal society,
its also how each of the women react to eachothers situations. how helena thinks of eris will always hurt me, tbh. its bittersweet in a way
28:27 "We wouldn't expect a male character to show a slave kindness and gentleness." (paraphrased but I feel it's accurate to what you said)
I would. Male characters shouldn't be complete assholes to powerless people considered "below them" either???
In fact, male characters who keep slaves tend to be hated too? See like, Shield Hero.
I thought about it, and I think you're partially right - we would expect a male protagonist (or literally any gender protagonist) to show slaves kindness because that's usually the purpose of slavery tropes in media like this - to whitewash the protagonist and to show how everyone is an asshole, but our protagonist is a light shining in the darkness who treats slaves like actual human beings instead of things. that's why I made a note that I hate ALL slavery tropes - because I think this kind of a cheap way to show that our protagonist is a good person, unlike everybody else. It's cheap because it's rare to find anyone nowadays who wouldn't think that slavery is abhorrent, so being anti-slavery = easy cookie points. However, the thing about Penelope (it's kind of hard to explain for those not familiar with her story) is that she actually DOES treak Eckles with kindness - yes, she does have somewhat of a villain speech when they meet, but she still treats him better than literally any other character in the story. She IS kind to him, she makes sure he isn't bullied, she gets him to train to be a knight, she buys him gifts, etc - she actually treats him not that much different from how Shild Hero treats Raftalia. The difference is that Shield Hero actually cares about Raftalia, but Penelope actually doesn't care about Eckles, she treats him kindly because she wants something out of him, she wants his affection stat to reach 100 which she believes will enable her to clear the game and return to her life at home. So that's the interesting part, she actually does treat him with kindness, but because she doesn't actually have feelings for him, because she doesn't *really* care or love him, because her kindness is *fake* and calculated, readers dislike her. So I think that while we wouldn't expect a protagonist of any gender to treat slaves like crap, I think we wouldn't expect a male character to treat slaves any kinder than Penelope does, so to me it feels like the standards are different.
@@bazazilio Yeah, that's fair.
I do get why she's not like, actually nice to him, well, more than shallowly nice just to use him.
Since afaik she doesn't really care about anyone in the "game" until the very end of the story? They're not real to her.
But still, the way she treats Eckles especially just raises my hackles.
I also hate the slavery trope.
I feel like it's nearly always either super shallow or downright contributing to it by -saving- buying one hot guy for _totally innocent reasons,_ never mind that he'll eventually fall for the female lead anyway.
@@bazazilio Just chiming in that even her "kindness" harms him as she basically puts a target on him with how she introduces him to the rest of the household's staff (considering he's from a defeated kingdom that's viewed as "evil barbarians") & that part didn't seem to be calculated - just careless on her part.
I'd say most of my gripes with Eckles JUST being a narrative device is that his backstory is the PERFECT setup to expand on Penelope/Siyeon's life back in Korea as she too was a bastard child of a wealthy family, but her Korean life is barely acknowledged or used to show how & why she became such a hard-hearted person that she's able to immediately go into slavery auctions & manipulate people without a shred of remorse.
And I don't mean like "oh she should empathize with him cuz they both suffered", I mean it was a wasted opportunity for her to double down even HARDER by secretly resenting him (who had a father who at least tried to care for him). The fact that her backstory is only dumped near the end along with the reveal that she savescummed her way through the game without paying attention to the lore/cutscenes is not a good payoff for the question as to "why did she do such a bad job at properly manipulating Eckles if she's so desperate to survive". I've seen a lot of criticism where people said they'd like her more if she wasn't so careless with him & her being a "genius archaeology student who beats her first p2w moba game in a few hours with no guides" was actually relevant to the story. Even if you ditch the genius gamer part, archaeology isn't exactly an easy field & her being an illeg child in Korea (NARRATIVELY) should have resulted in her being able to read people to some extent at the very least.
Also the whole reveal that Siyeon IS the og Penelope feels poorly foreshadowed considering the whole "savescumming through the game" stuff. You'd think it'd ping her at the very least or have her be obsessed with watching the same cutscenes over & over again but unable to understand why she cares so much. I feel like the story has a lot of interesting parts but they don't all connect neatly.
Siyeon becoming queen & a mother in the epilogue should have shown that she's changed from "she doesn't owe these people or this world anything" to actually want or accept responsibility for others, but then when she meets Eckles again, it's basically like she hasn't changed at all & it's like those are just "rewards" for her cuz villainess rofan. At the very least, she should have at least visited her bio mother's grave back in Korea before spiting her family by shutting off her own life support & returning to her "true" world.
i don't know why but this whole video is keep reminding me of " i'm in love with the villainesses"
Probably because that story tackles three underrated themes at once: female rivalry over real issues,.queerness and female dominance and strong will.
@@VelCakeit’s also great and I love how it’s my first ever series I read that involves a bisexual harem! It stood out and made me laugh quite a lot!
Can we talk about how cool the thumbnail is? Loved the design.
It's from the manwha "the villainess is destined to die" it's very good!
Lovely video and the in depth analysis. I used to really like the Villainesses trend in manhwa, but then it got mass-produced and most of the series now don't even feature a true villainesses, but some shallow, indecisive character who (again) needs to be rescued by her prince charming and is often being abused etc etc. It also turned into a reverse-harem or some weird romance. Imo we still need to wait for strong female leads to emerge within the pop culture or anime/manga/manhwa specifically. Can't wait for your next video, keep going!
Momo from Dandadan and Amane from the old niche anime Witchblade are some prominent examples of strong female leads, shoujo is full of such characters.
@@Snormite Shounen tends to portray really strong female chars (even if heavily sexualized). I watched a few eps of Dandadan, but it was difficult for me to survive certain scenes depicting half or fully naked Momo. Witchblade I haven't seen, but I assume she may be similar to Bayonetta?
@@UnpublishedChapter Both Momo and Okarun end up with little clothing, so the anime gives both the same treatment because they are both dealing with aliens who want their bodies. You should continue watching it because the characters are fleshed out really well... As for Witchblade, you could say it's like Bayonetta? I'd say it's more dramatic, specially since the main character is a single mother.
@@Snormite wtf is dandadan about actually. ive only heard about it through people mentioning momo and okarun as SA survivors and i assumed it was like... human? i thought humans did that to them. but there are aliens involved?????
@@kichikitsu The first episode says everything you need to know, it's an over the top bizarre show with some really heartfelt moments about two teens who are united by trauma... And the source of that trauma is rooted in the paranormal, with aliens who want to use human women bodies and evil spirits who wish to possess the bodies of living humans.
But even then, the motivations behind those beings is rooted in pain as well.
Something I'd really like to see more often is the ML and FL working together, rather than the FL having to suffer and make efforts alone until the ML starts loving and ultimately "saving" her.
She‘s not really a „villainess“ but a manga I really enjoy where the FL is actually very assertive and has some traits typically associated with masculinity is „My Gently Raised Beast“! Especially in the later Volumes! And the FL and the ML work together
@bored_darling Thanks for the rec!
Yesterday I started "The End of This Fairy Tale is A Crazy Drama". The FL is not a villain, but I love her decisive personality and intelligence. And she really makes an amazing team with the ML. Both have their reasons to work together, and they do it well! Give it a try!
I'd recommend "Yona of the Dawn" if you haven't watched/read it already. It is not a villainess story, but Yona is a very strong female lead who has the male lead Hawk consistently fighting by her side throughout the story. She eventually grows strong enough in her leadership and archery skills to stand by his side in battle.
One thing I've noticed (in Western media, at least) is that villainesses are almost never portrayed as truly evil. It's almost always a man's fault that they strayed from the path of good. Their father or boss or lover or someone (always a man) who they had a close connection with betrayed them, and that's what made them turn bad. You almost never get a villainess who just likes to watch people suffer or doesn't care who gets hurt in her ambitions.
27:36 - honestly, i think the worst thing this series has done is just. how they handle slavery. like yes, it makes absolute sense why penelope would be treating this like a very, very serious game. to her knowledge, thats all that it IS. why would she treat these characters like real human being when they exist inside a game for her? her goal is to survive and go home. its kinda insane how many ppl (likely kids but still) complain that she uses them to survive, bc like. yeah? no shit? they arent real to her. but also...
(spoilers from here on out, leading up to the most recent arc in the manhwa)
was it necessary to villainize eckles like that. was it necessary to paint him as narratively In The Wrong for not being okay with being a slave? was it necessary to push him into the Slave that is Actually Evil (And Used To Be Powerful) So You Shouldn't Feel Bad trope? why were the other characters given some grace with both their trauma AND being manipulated/literally brainwashed by yvonne, but he was given none? its not even just about how penelope uses him. he does not exist as a real person to her; but solely as a tool just like the rest of them. it's about how the narrative itself encourages you to view him.
man i hate it when good soup is ruined by prejudiced writing.
If I'm being honest, I got quitw confused with what they were trying to say when she met him in the dungeon, I don't think I really got it. But still, here is my interpretation.
In my opinion, Eckles wasn't really a villain, he went insane and it is Penelope's fault. She didn't even see him as a human being, she manipulated him into "falling in love with her" and when she finally reached her goal, managed to develop in him the obsession necessary for a slave to "love" his master who treats him as subhuman, she realized that insane obsession would be the death of her, so she threw him away, threw away the TOOL she broke.
She made Eckles go insane, all so he would "love" her, and when she finally saw the insanity she developed within him, the consequences of the inherent abuse of their relationship, she discarded him. To the very last moment, she didn't see him as human. In the end, Eckles was left a broken man. Penelope was left despondent as all her plans foiled.
Eckles is just another victim in the cycle of abuse. First abused, then abusing. As was Penelope in a way.
Actually, I think (at least the way I interpreted it) the series ends up addressing one of the worst tropes of slavery in these stories, the myth of the "kind slave owner". In so many anime, manga, manhwa, you see this trope of a character who buys slaves to supposedly "save" them, and keeps them as slaves but is supposedly "so kind" to them that the story insists there is no problem and he is an amazing person because he treats his slaves so well. For fuck's sake, in some of these stories the enslaved characters literally choose to remain slaves, JUST LIKE ECKLES.
The difference is that, in Villains are Destined to Die (again, the way I read it), they expose how slavery is inherently exploitative and abusive no matter how "kind" the slave owner is. A human being is being into property and stripped of his freedom and rights, all to be exploited. Eckles doesn't fall in love with her because of her kindness and then praises her virtue for being such a "good slave owner", he is manipulated by her into reducing himself to less than human. He betrays his people and lets them be executed and becomes willing to rot in a cell all to earn her favor. It is horrible, violent and dehumanizing, as all slavery is.
@@scug1997 ouhh it's 2am rn so forgive me if this isn't too coherent. I like your interpretation! and I think, in a way, they did unintentionally do show the true horrors of slavery/slave master stuff. but in my opinion at least I do think it's unintentional.
In the manhwa, Penelope kind of realizes that her actions are what drove Eckles insane. But by the end of it it's still... The narrative still feels like it WANTS you to side with Penelope. It feels like it's encouraging you to view Eckles delving into insanity and corruption as His Own Failing more than Penelope's impact. The art direction during the confrontation scene when Eckles was imprisoned very much implies to the reader that they should be rooting for Penelope during it. I'd have to pull up the pages to give you a detailed rundown of what I mean. But. 2am. Ough.
The first villainess reincarnation manwha that truly made me fall in love with the genre is "Beware the villainess!". Such a funny and very girl's girl story. On the other side of the spectrum, "The Villainess Turns the Hourglass" really put a new standard for a villainess to act cunning and smartly to turn her fate around, she doesn't stop being a villainess, but fights tooth and nail for her happy ending.
The fact that I don't read or watch much anime, manhwa, and manga, but still know about every other one is a warning of how obsessed I'm with the Villainess Isekai genre
There is some south korean webnovel called Omniscient reader view point and it made by a marriage couple. I thing they really naild female and male character really well. I dont want to spoiled anything but this was story for love for the story itself. It look like just another power fantasy at first, but when you reach that epilog, you will find out why this story is special.
I haven't read the novel, but I love the webtoon!! (although I'm a couple of years behind haha, I need to reread and keep up) but I really am impressed with its character work. it's great and I hope the story will get even more recognition when the anime adaptation comes out.
@bazazilio oh so you have reaf the webtoon. The novel is better because ORV is a story for reading. In the webtoon, we more like using 3 person perspective meanwhile in the novel we well see the world with kim dokja POV and he is really unrealible narator. Han sooyoung maybe look like get behind kim dokja and yoo junhyuk but she actually the most importent MC. Spoiler :
Han sooyoung is the writer behind TWSA and ORV itself. Yup, the story is actually written by the character itself (breaking the 5 wall). We are also kim dokja reincarnation, basically every reader is kim dokja (kim reader). Yoo junhyuk sponsor (the most ancient dream) is actually the real kim dokja who dream, what if he and the character he love is have an adventure together. Secretive plotter is actually the real yoo junhyuk from TWSA.
@@rizkysetiadi2441 oh no why did I read the spoiler 😭 I think the novel will still be enjoyable im a webtoon reader
@@trishachandra1216 watch orv in 6 minute in youtube, you will get spoiled but actually no because how confusing it was. Trush me, you will laugh and confuse if you wach it
@@trishachandra1216 don’t worry even though it’s a big spoiler most of the context was left out, I think you would still enjoy the novel even knowing that information
I was waiting for this kind of video analyses, and you absolutely delivered with this one, thank you so much. Mentions of "Akuyaku Reijou no Naka no Hito" are always appreciated, a gorgeous novel and manga.
One of the things that irks me about the Villainess troupe is that often the 'crimes' the original villainess did is not really bad, or she was framed, and it is the people around her that hyped the crimes up to the point she was either exiled or killed because getting rid of her profited them. Often the 'crime' is being angry because the 'hero'/OML and the OMC had an affair, and original 'villainess' did not want to divorce or look the other way.
One direction that the villainess troupe is going that I sometimes like is when the new/reborn mc decides to actually do bad things, because being a quiet good girl will not help at all. I think the ones I have the issue with is the ones where the villainess punishes people how has not actually done anything yet, and the person has a chance to change, but the MC does not want to give them a chance to.
The Original Villainess Stories:
•Macbeth
•Madea
•Clytemnstra
•Phaedra
The Point of these stories:
•Villainess starts off as a angel
•It Starts off as Simple Goal(Revenge, Jealousy Etc.)
•In the Pursuit of their goal The Main Character Does Heinous Acts by tempation,or mistake becoming a unrecognizable demon for the remainder of the story
In the End Most current Villainess Stories Miss the Point.
•Angel Becomes Demon
•Demon Defeated.
•If The Demon Becomes a Angel just note the Angel is haunted by the Demon creating a redemption story
Most current Villainess Stories aren't actually villainess stories.
•Revenge doesn't make it a villainess story
•Being Framed doesn't make it a villainess story
Current Villainess Stories are just a character who's misunderstood
Really interesting and well-made essay. As a long time reader of "otome isekai", it was really enjoyable to see the genre so eloquently analysed and its place in modern culture and current societal shifts.
If I may be so bold, I have some sort of response/theories for a point raised during the video: Why these stories often reflect uncritically other societal problems like capitalism and classism instead of also "dreaming" of more equal societies? (Apologies in advance if this is a bit nonsensical, English isn't my first language and I'm writing this at 1am)
Personally, I think that a reason for this (beyond the internal bias and personal beliefs of the author) could simply be that the fantasy of the villain is in a way a bit selfish and self contained, and that's all it wants to be.
These are, at their core, the fantasy of escaping not only the pressures of being the good girl, but also just current life in general. Most importantly, due to their place of origin, these stories are mostly about escaping current life in modern South Korea or Japan and their VERY capitalistic and patriarchal societies. You already talked at length in the video about the psychological purpose of the Villainess, what fantasy it serves: both to oppose gender norms and to give an outlet or relief to common traumas and hardships modern middle-class and working-class women (and people socially perceived as women) might suffer. This, I think, it's also why they are all rich and beautiful. The Villainess fantasy's objetive is to serve as an escape for the everyday-life of the reader, but not as a dream of changing the world. The reader most likely suffers, in some way, not only under patriarchy but many other societal ills as all of them are deeply intertwined, but the Villainess story only wants to give the "dream" of fighting against gender norms and the expectations of the good girl, without also having to fight, say, capitalism (or whatever pseudo-feudalism they have going on). It only wishes to imagine *relief* for them, to fight some issues and escape others. It *could* also serve a bigger fantasy of an equal world with a focus on Villainess and starting by fighting gender inequality, but isn't that such a tall order? The Villainess needs an unequal world to rebel against, but isn't fighting the whole world and all it's problems such and endless struggle? Perhaps a bit too similar to the endless struggle of the real world. It is selfish, but it is also a bit of the whole point. It wants to offer a specific relief to more individual anxieties.
Personally, I don't think it's fully a bad thing. Of course, you do have to keep in mind the more problematic ideas it replicates as a feature, such as classism, and it would be great to see some of these stories tackle more diverse issues (or simply, to tackle them more radically). On the other hand, not all stories will want to tackle such heights and, hey, who doesn't dream of suddenly becoming rich and quitting forever the daily grind of a shitty job?
As a side note, I do think other reason for this (and other points brought up during the video such as the "Villainess" not being particularly morally-challenging) is that a lot of those stories are, well... not that well written. They are still products to be sold, often under crushing conditions, and as such a lot tend to be simpler or just follow trends.
i think the topics discussed in this video also applies a lot to "I'm In Love With the Villainess", which technically focuses more on themes of being queer from what i watched so far rather than gender, but i think the two are still intertwined.
idk how to properly explain it, but because Claire is branded as a villainess due to her mean and self-serving nature, she doesn't fall into the stereotypical 'feminine' ideals that is imposed onto female characters. she, like the video states, is free from the pressures of being seen as an angel by society. of course there's the fact that she's very much an annoying classist at the start but the narrative still gives her more grace than the og story of the otome game she's in. at least in this new narrative, she isn't doomed.
in a similar vein, Rei, the reincarnated heroine of the story, deals heavily with the tribulations in being the 'good girl' heroine. only this time it's doubled by the fact that she is a queer woman who faced being judged and rejected in her previous life solely for being attracted to other women. there's even a whole segment in ep2 going into her experiences with sexuality and her defense mechanism of fawning over Claire being the result of the pushback she faced.
it's honestly a shame queer themes aren't more popular in these villainess stories, a queer person reincarnating as the hated but ultimately free villainess would go HARD. i think it's interesting seeing queer themes intertwined with gender especially with stories centered around female characters. ig that's why i'm a fan of stories like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Rose of Versailles lol.
**it's honestly a shame queer themes aren't more popular in these villainess stories, a queer person reincarnating as the hated but ultimately free villainess would go HARD. i think it's interesting seeing queer themes intertwined with gender especially with stories centered around female characters. ig that's why i'm a fan of stories like Revolutionary Girl Utena and Rose of Versailles lol.**
I would agree with you there! Sadly it's almost always queer-bait at best - the villainess / regressor / reincarnated protag ends up being so assertive and bad ass that their female maids and closest confidantes become their biggest fans, sometimes even lowkey in love with them, but the stories rarely ever explore those angles and instead still opt for the stereotypical prince charming routes. (most manwa has pretty shitty men I would never want to date IRL in them if you ask me, I almost always ship the sapphic bait harder than the hetero-plot)
I forget which one it was, but "the little mermaid" turns out to be able to swap genders and sex and loves the female protag without any of the typical tropes and holy goodness I wish she was a genuine love interest for our very very hetero protagonist in that story. XD
Girl I’m just popping in to say that you’re an amazing editor and script makers. It’s so impactful! Like probably some of the best on vibes alone and the points that are being made in such a digestible and yet easily understandable way. It’s scratching my brain at like 3 AM 😌
Amazing essay! It opened my eyes as to why villainess stories are so popular, a genre that hasn’t piqued my interest before. Want to give it a go now.
However, it is still strange to me that in a story that is a subversion of the gender norm, a villainess is only given the freedom to rebel internally but on the outside is forced to pretend to conform to the norm, follow the rules and present herself as a “good girl”. Feel however you want, but still act according to your gender - that seems a half measure at best in redefining gender roles. At least that is what stood out to me out of the examples in the video, my only source, since I’m not closely familiar with the genre.
Aaaaa I’m getting strong Anthy vibes. While close to Utena, Anthy feels like an antagonist once you look back on a second watch through. Absolutely watch Utena!
36:58 One of the best examples of this is Rashta. To this day, I do not understand the hate towards her. I get that people may not like her "woe is me" perspective even as she makes others suffer, but are we really going to act as though, considering what she has lived through only to end up being trapped in an uncertain position that could be taken away at any moment, having no true allies in her corner, and having no where to go back to, are we really going to act as though we don't understand her motivations or why she is the way she is?
Honestly, I personally am incapable of reading Remarried Empress any further because of how much the story itself simultaneously demonises and ridicules Rashta.
part of the reason why i never really understood the hype of the webtoon version of remarried empress is because, on paper, rashta is wayyy more compelling of a character than navier. if it was written better, a story about an enslaved girl clawing her way out of her station whilst contending with schemes and politicking done by all the nobles, an emperor who doesn’t actually give a fuck about her well-being, and an empress whose position is threatened by her presence would be so interesting. instead, rashta’s just meant to fail over and over again to highlight how perfect navier is. that made the webtoon so boring.
When I started reading the novel I liked how it reversed the roles of someone who would usually be the villain (Navier) and the heroine (Rashta). But I do think both the readers and characters in the story reduce the complexities of Rashta’s character. She is uneducated, and was born a slave, she is manipulated by most of the characters that surround her (who arguably are more evil than her). But they treat her like this big schemer that got what she had coming. If you ask me I think most people don’t give enough shit to Sovieshu who was the one who had the responsibility to respect his marriage, who if we take in the power dynamics took a slave as his lover (so basically no consent), then married her and neglected her, and got rid of her when she was causing more problems than what he was willing to overlook.
I couldn’t get past the first 30 chapters of the remarried empress for that exact reason. The whole story felt like it was bending over backwards to make the LITERAL EMPRESS be a victim and a slave be the villain for wanting to escape slavery.
In Kill the Villainess, Eris so desperately is looking for a way out at the end. What struck me as different in reading that one was the only one who actually listened to what she wanted to do with her life, no matter how good or bad she was, supported her in her wishes. At the beginning, all of the male heroes hated her for being the villainess, and when her personality and goals changed, she became something necessary that they HAD to save, whether she wanted it or not. It was a stunning degree of autonomy for me. When you fit outside those ideals, you deserve punishment and worse, and when you fit inside of them, you have to be saved. After all, why would someone who does good want to escape? Maybe they CAN be redeemed if I redeem them? In an obsession with getting things to stay in control, the Villainesses trope does break that mold! Solid video essay. :)
This was a fascinating watch as a fan of the villainess genre.
I do think one of the most interesting stories in this genre that I've read is The One Within the Villainess, because of how it deals with the reincarnator and villainess relationship, and the fact that the story follows the original villainess, tempered by who the reincarnator was.
what i like about sometimes female villain characters are mostly they dont give a shit about standards they are the underdogs in most of the shows and have do redeem themself against the odds while the good girls on paper gets everything what they want but it has a massive side effect they lack of responsibility
This is a really high quality video?? I really appreciate the subtitles too. I read english better than I understand it in listening form so its helpful ^^ (not my first language)
12:37 I think hope that things can be better or the person can change is valuable. It's possibility that I am betting on. I am a man and I was in abusive relationship and I hoped throughout the relationship that she would change as person for the better. She didn't unfortunately but I don't think I was wrong to hope. I still hope she changes and becomes a better person. I would hope again in my next relationship without letting myself be abused. I think we need sperate hoping for the betterment for the person we love from stay in an abusive relationship. Kierkegaard's works of love is a useful philosophical book here. My probably useless 2 cents. Thank you for the video btw!
yes, absolutely! I think that when it comes to our specific personal life circumstances, optimism is definitely valuable and imo can even be healthy as it is something that can get you through the day when you're struggling. What Berlant specifically talks about is big cultural narratives when we're always told to chase a dream that's supposed to make us happy, but while we're chasing that dream we're suffering in the process. Like hustle culture, when you work 100 hours a day to "become a billionaire one day" and therefore become "happy" but you're obviously just destroying yourself in the process, in that case the optimism of becoming a billionaire would be hurting you rather than helping.
@@bazazilio I understand. I think her and my understanding of hope is different, that's where the confusion lies. Thank you for replying back, love your channel!!!
This was really good. I hope we do get to see more morally grey / villainous / bad girls in rofan and media in general who don’t need to regress or reincarnate to garner audience understanding.
Let me, as the biggest consumer of template fiction in the world (and therefore the average audience), make it clear: the gender of the protagonist is absolutely nobody's business (especially when they try to sell "it's a girl, she shouldn't be like that" reverse card). And in general, to be honest, our readers don't care about the protagonist's orientation, social status and so on. We just want a normal story.
If you've read enough novellas on both sides, you've noticed that there's enough crap both ways. Yes, the “villainesses side” has a higher percentage of good content at the moment, but have you ever wondered why? Well, it's just that the "hero" isekai is a long-trodden path where all the moves are already written down (which is why you're sick of it), and the "villainesses" (who aren't really villains) are still a new field of experimentation where it's still not entirely clear which story will go down better. Soon, though, this too will become as dull a piece as the average isekai about a "hero", with rare glimpses of good content, and nothing will change despite the appearance of an anti-heroine who is actually a "heroine". It's just a cross-dressing game and nothing else.
There's no "gray" there, everything is sickeningly "white", it's just that your eyesight is shit. They just change the scenery and cover their laziness and inability to come up with something new, with “innovation”. And you, naive people, rejoice like children.
So what's the point of this video? Is it so women now can have a "wider choice" of protagonists? Oh, yeah? It's more about getting high on a new trend before it dies like all the previous did. Although, let's be honest, that too will turn into another cliché. So really, everything is going in circles, and you're all sitting around with your hands in the air.
My favorite villainess ever was this goddess from Sinbad. She just did whatever she wanted and wasn't really evil, just free and curious. I aspire to be this unbothered and chaotic haha
I think you'd like "I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History" because the villainess is... different lol. She looks at her new world and went "mm, eh. A lot of things aren't working. Let's just advocate to change absolutely all of them."
y'all should read tamsyn muir's excellent short story 'princess floralinda and the forty-flight tower'! its protag is a princess who has been taught this 'good girl' stuff her whole life. she's stuck at the top of a tower waiting to be saved. suitors keep dying to a dragon in trying to reach her, so they give up, and she has to find her own way down. she gradually loses that 'good girl' self (and makes some questionable moral choices) as she transforms herself and is transformed into the kind of person who can survive and escape--very much not the person she is expected by society to be. the basic concept ("princess saves HERSELF!") sounds a bit smug and contrarian on the face of it, but that's misleading. i think it's a really well-executed story and has some interesting things to say about fairy tales, gender under patriarchy, and the fluid nature of the self.
Thank you for this video. Ive been obsessed with this genre for the last.. 5...6.. years now? And I could never quite find the words to explain why i enjoyed it as much as I did, but you verbalized it perfectly.
The only thing i disagree is that only villainesses are destined to fail, i didn't read any of these villainesses stories so i don't know how immoral their actions are, but other villains usually lose in the end, even when they are the "heroes" of the story. Walter White, Light Yagami, Tony Soprano, they all die in the end. Even if we root for them during the story we don't want to see them go unpunished
Nah alot of ppl don't want em punished
I think what she's trynna say is that villainesses are easier to hate their failure is usually cathartic
Maybe idk
I think that's more like writer's morale, which is why they're awesome! But in fandom spaces, they're(characters) often seen as legends. Also a lot of people hate writers for either giving the character's comeuppance( consequences){especially Walter)for their action or killing them(Light). Just take a look at modern anime fandom spaces.
@@imaginieiotaI thought people hated the ending light got because it was not well thought out especially with how detailed it was so far. I’m not sure though since I didn’t watch the series. I saw a lot of people who said it felt out of character for them.
@@imaginieiotaI agree. It’s the writers who don’t want to be seen as “bad” people. A lot of the fandom still supports the “bad boys/girls” and don’t really want them do be punished. I wish the world instead would be punished as it’s what made those people become “bad” but that’d feel to real for people. To realize society, including them (the readers/us), is what makes people into “bad” people. I put quotes over bad because I don’t really think they’re bad. It’s just what society teaches us to see them as.. but for what reason really?
i just watched this whole video in one sitting without skipping or speeding it up, absolutely adore your eloquence. thank you for the video!
This is a really interesting and well put together video that I found thanks to someone linking from the otome isekai subreddit. One minor nitpick though:
Harley Quinn gained her antiheroine traits back in the 90s. Two episodes, one involving her teaming with Ivy and the other where she actually captures Batman, showed us just how her relationship with the Joker truly is. This hasn't changed much since.
(Edit: oh, and the parole episode and "team with Batman" episode show her ability to heel face turn)
I guess to be more specific, she went through a character evolution on B:TAS and TNBA, which spanned from 1993 to 1998(?):
V1: Unnamed henchwoman whose design could have become a duplicated uniform for female mooks in a parallel dimension
V2: Named and voiced villainess but not fleshed out or independent yet
V3: Tragic villainess in a bad situation
V4: Antiheroine, albeit one who leans far more towards villainess than Catwoman
I was going to say, the abuse by Joker is nothing new. He beats her and throws her out a 2nd story window because he thinks she did a bad job in capturing Batman because she had to explain part of the joke.
In Batman Beyond, it's implied that's what breaks her out of Joker's grip; in the movie "Grandma Harley" has to pick up her twin grandkids from police custody and smacks them with her cane for running around the the Jokerz Gang, imitating what she used to do.
I just wanna say this was such an interesting video, I haven't seen anyone tackle this subgenre to this extent before now and you did a great job!
This is why I love the characterization of the MC in "so I'm a spider, so what?", she is a female protagonist in a male isekai. She's really goofy and fun when she's alone, but later on she meets people to interact with and it becomes clear that she's very selfish. But while her companions don't really like that part of her they also respect her alot for her strength. Really looking forward to seeing where it goes.
The reason that male isekai stories don't question the narrative towards power is not related to any societal issues, more of a storytelling principle.
how can you make a compelling story without giving your protagonist the ability to enact change? (because that is the very deffinition of power, "Ability to enact change")
If you take that away from your protagonist you will end with a passive protagonist, and we all know how good those are right?
A fitting saying: "No good deed goes unpunished."
I've been writing Isekai stories since I was a kid-always about a girl entering another world with an obvious purpose. I enjoy writing morally grey characters, so it’s no surprise the villainess genre is my favorite.
This video made me reflect on my current story and whether I’ve truly let my characters act freely. Did I create their trauma just to justify their actions? Honestly, I can’t say. My process isn’t structured-I start with an idea, but once my characters develop, the plot takes a backseat, and the scenes often write themselves through dialogue.
I think my fascination with anti-heroes, is what led me to create an unjust world for my characters to explore morality. Themes like idealism, cynicism, and gray areas of justice driving the narrative, with my main characters clashing: "The ends justify the means" vs. "Do what feels right, no matter the cost." Both philosophies can make them anti-heroes given their experiences.
I often question their reasoning, but I haven’t considered if my female lead’s ideals differ because of our gender-very interesting.
this video TOTALLY changed my view on who i want to be. ive seen so many 'docile' girls in shoujo anime, despite also reading many villainess stories. since shoujos always felt closer to being possible, i wanted to be 'good' like the main characters. this video helped me realize thats not who i am or who i really need to be.
I just realized that I stopped reading "Death Is The Only Ending For The Villainess" because of my bias. I truly felt it was a poorly written manhwa because the heroine did not make sense to me. I thought she was too heartless, and her selfishness made me extremely uncomfortable. Only now, after hearing another person's perspective, did I realize why I felt so strongly that Penelope was a poorly written villainess. I was too used to villainesses being kind AND maintaining boundaries to understand that I couldn’t handle a truly flawed and realistic villainess.
This video and the good girl archetype reminded me of the fairytale in the fruits basket anime about the traveler who gave everything he had until he was left with nothing but his head and he cried tears of joy when the creatures he allowed to eat his body finally left him with something in return, even though it was a piece of paper calling him an idiot
One really good exemple of a morally bad women character is Satō from my happy sugar life
That show also totally fucks your moral compass, and makes you root for her even tho her action are bad
Most character arent good in the show but she is the main character and i really like how it portrais all those issue in a way to show theyre bad things and not romaticise them, yet its sweet like candy because its what love taste to the main character and we see everything from her perspective
One thing I don’t really like about the villainess genre is these days most of the works that have been released are contradictory to the point of the genre. This is mostly done by portraying the ‘villainess’ in an extremely good light after her body has been possessed and portraying the ‘heroine’ most often in either a negative light or making her get along with the villainess. I feel like this destroys the whole point of the genre. You’ve essentially just swapped the names of the titles of villainess and herione. But the whole good always wins motto is still persistent. The issue than becomes with when they try to write the villainess as morally grey. The reason why so few good stories like this exist. Is because, well, it’s really difficult to do. To write a villainess as not all good or all evil while still having her be an interesting character. Most of the time the writers will default to all good. Or try morally grey but the end result ends up feeling like a villainess who’s needlessly cruel or does bad things just for the sake of it. It’s a very hard thing to write properly. When done well. It’s amazing. It just hasn’t been done well very often. The villainess genre is now oversaturated. Just like the broader isekai genre or in Korea the regression genre. It needs a distinct standout story that is well written and properly plays on the troupes of the genre. Which I don’t think it’s gotten yet. Great video overall. Keep making content like this!
15:20 we will achieve our own happiness only if we put other people's interest before our own because then they will love us for our kindness
Man this is such a well constructed, edited, and written video, I hope to see your channel get big in the video essay scene.
i can name at least 5 different media where the good moral male hero has an edgier more utilitarian female love interest the fandom hates but that same fandom ships the good guy with - not even antihero - a MALE VILLAIN. this is definitely a misogyny thing. its even more infuriating to me bcz most of the time these fandoms are female dominated. if men were hating the “bad girl” i’d be like okay thats just misogyny but women doing it for yaoi purposes im like *do you hate yourself that much*
exactly! then we ask ourselves why women like to identify with bad boy characters, when bad girls are literally not allowed to exist without people immediately pointing out how wrong and horrible they are.
I'd say there's a lot of internalize misogyny and coping on that as well. But it has to do with why BL fandoms and BL ship are so big with girls and women, and why in BL ships there is usually a strict dynamic of top/bottom and character are always a bit (or VERY) feminized. I have watch some video of people talking about it. But it's basically like this.
It's about being able to relate, but not to wear the character's shoes. It's escapism.
When it's about a BL ships, women put themselves in "the Observer" role. They simply watch and feel with the character yet are not contributing to it at all, and thus no consequences are directed at them But it gets better, they get to CHOSE to relate only to the good part and block out the bad part. When it's a guy there's a layer of unrelatability there. It's safer to feel and not uncomfortable when the story are RIDDLED with toxic trope like r@pe, kidnaping, emotional abused, etc, because it's not directed at a girl, not ME of any girl as well. It's male on male violence, and I get to enjoy it. Its like back in the day people went and watch Rome fighters. It's exciting, and it's not their pain, not YOUR pain. Its also a form of coping with their repressed aggression, to see a male vulnerable to violence, beaten, bruised, hurt and toss away like a female do, but you will never be able to truly relate, cause that's a guy. He can go to the gym, get jacked thanks to testosterone and protein, and fight back whenever he wants cause he's a guy, unlike....me. One weak female, by nature. Or the other side of the spectrum is to see the guy trap forever in the cycle of violence. It's the same thing.
Another aspect of it is male character are more likely to be respected. This is for more soft stories. It's more positive but still escapism. It's because the relationship is between 2 males, it's kind of expected that they would truly love and respect each other. Cause even if they are forever happy, they are forever unable to reproduce (I KNOW THE ABO TROPE STATE OTHERWISE BUT BARE WITH ME) You cannot make a traditional family dynamic with a BL ship, but they are still happy, right ? Not bounded by children or any value that are usually taught as needed to keep a family happy. They are also more likely to be on par with each other when it comes to physical power = more respect. Just 2 well-rounded person with like, dislike, flaws, and they're IN LOVE. Isn't it just so, dreamy ?
Now, when you introduce a female, the unrelatability of a male is broken. It becomes TOO RELATABLE. It becomes, a projection. What if the male gets hurt ? No, what if that's a girl ? What if that's ME ? What do you mean SHE gets to have what she wants and I DON'T ? And that is when fear, or envy and internalized misogyny steps in. It's either I don't want to be her OR I'm so much better than her. It's when the bad parts also become relatable and you can't stop your feelings. She is BREAKING my forever unrelatable fantasies. Get out, get out, GET OUT. You are dragging me back to my cruel realities, and so you are unlikable. Either it's fear of violence or jealousy of a better relationship.
BL does not directly address women issues but it makes a good enough escape to cope. And many will FIGHT for it instead of facing reality and try to fix it. Cause that hurts
@@bluemeg1787 yes but running away from reality or bad parts is not good for anyone's psyche. Also most of the population that consumes bl like horn, it's an addiction. Btw your explanation is so dope, I enjoyed it!❤
@@bluemeg1787 while i agree and this was very interesting to read, i have two things to add: none of the media i had in mind was east asian nor romance media i was thinking more 2000s tv shows and comic book movies so these aren’t the first places most women would look for escapism especially the romantic/sexual kind
secondly while i get the psychological & projection aspects of the subject and i’ve been there when i was a repressed teenager, 20+ y/o women in fandom spaces writing paragraphs of misogynistic hate vents about the female character counterpart of a male character they adore is cognitive dissonance at best, i think as women we could do better and im not saying this in a “let women be evil” way either of course anyone can hate any character for any reason but i just want people to be more conscious.
An intersting question is how women feel about "rough heroine" type characters. Are their views just as bound by gender norms? What about "smooth hero" type characters? Are they seen as okay by women/men?
Another excellent video! (I will be re-watching it for years to come) I’ve been waiting for a genuine analysis of this genre forever and your video gives me so much to ponder about
This is a wonderful video that was really such an eye-opener.
I've always loved villainess stories because it felt tiring to see women who couldn't hold their own and are only saved by men and those around them, rather than them changing and finding ways to rely on their selves.
In my life, I've seen a lot of examples of women, who are very resilient, but unfortunately too self-sacrificing for their children and their husbands and those around them.
I almost had an averse reaction to that in which I became selfish as a way to protect myself from that fate, of having worked hard and struggled most of your life with little to no reward.
And it is usually frowned upon, but these villainesses were a way for me to see myself, in a way they were almost liberating.
There's something very freeing about not being liked, or accepting not being liked, it is empowering almost, realizing how much people's opinions and views of you don't matter.
Thank you so much for making this very well thought-out video❤
Two 'Rough Heroines' that are BEAUTIFULY💜 made and to die for✨, are the protagonists: Remilia, from "The One Within The Villainess" and Larcy, from "I Will Fall With The Emperor".
Both of them could be considered anti heroines at certain points, but I personally think that, in general, their redeeming qualities and motives (which are massive), don't outweigh the, CLEARLY STATED, bad intending and remorseless actions, even when they, subsequently, generate positive outcomes for a majority, later on.
They are evil and mercilessly, but we love them for it.
Thank you for the video! this talks about a lot how I feel about the genre ❤
I'd also like to add that (at least personally for me, ) I also love villainess stories where it starts *after* the villainess has done something horrible and potentially iredeemable, and has to learn living with the consequences. I suppose it is the fantasy of being understood and listened to- perhaps even redeemed, forgiven and loved after being a "bad-girl" or a "villainess" , especially with how easily and badly society reacts to a woman acting out, without ever trying to understand or help her.
This has always been an aspect of the genre that appeals to me personally, especially when recovery and redemption is difficult if not impossible. (The quickest example i can think of being the spin off to Katarina's story where she returns AFTER all the harm has been done. How do you deal with the fallout? How do you deal with all the hurt youve inflicted? I honestly feel it is a much more interesting look into the story than the OG but u didnt hear that from me 😂 I also quite liked "The Spark in your eyes" when i read it a while back, where the MC is undeniably a "war hero" (later unpacked subverted ofc) and is now forced to come into terms and live with her actions or inaction and complicity during the war)
Admittedly, sometimes this becomes a cop-out into Good Girl 2.0 stories, especially when someone gets isekaid to take the blame for the villainess' actions, but when it is done well, it provides a catharsis that I scarcely find in other genres. The idea that you can be "bad" and make huge mistakes but you'll be okay, you can get through this, yknow?
Anyway, sorry for the rambles. Once again, fantastic video and encapsulates a loooot of my feelings for the genre ❤
the good thing about a good girl is likely the good girl is surpressive while the villain girl is the more dominant one sounds like thats how bdsm works the one is a masochist the other is a sadist
i see penelope on the thumbnail, i watch the video
13:15 I would love to read an isekai story where the mc gets reincarnated into the 'good girl' character but refuses to be a people-pleaser and decides to pursue her ambitions. I think it would be a fun way to explore the genre and gender norms.
That beginning is exactly the moral theme and question i garner from these storys. It is what brings them intense meaning, so i love that you said that. Ive been wanting to make a video myself on this :)
Thank you so much for mentioning how otome isekai tends to glorify the idea of "the beautiful elite", and doesn't really question why the protagonists are all rich and beautiful. It's nice to see someone praise something while being able to critique it.
Credit to @gaudiumwille for mentioning that more often than not, the OG heroine is used to prop up the villainess protag, often by being worse than the villainess protag. This becomes even more questionable when you consider that most villainesses tend to be of higher social rank than the OG heroine. I wish otome isekai didn't have to fully villify the heroine just to make the villainess sympathetic. While I don't mind the OG heroine being morally grey - I encourage it, even - more often than not they're just unambiguously bad and nothing more.
I would also like to ask - what is your opinion on Re: Zero? I'd understand believing it to be a typical isekai power fantay if you haven't seen it, but I believe Re: Zero actually subverts the typical isekai power fantasy. Re: Zero is very much aware of its MC's flaws and openly pushes him towards self-improvement. There's also an interesting theme on how the typical isekai heroine is expected to be flawless and how that could negatively affect her (although that's more subtle). Re: Zero is definitely not your typical power fantasy imo, and anyone can enjoy it. Even though I am not the target demographic (as I'm a girl) I was still able to love the story and its characters. Sorry if this topic seems irrelevant to the video, I just wanted to talk about it.
Edit: @UnpublishedChapter also made a good comment pointing out how nowadays many villainess manhwa have become slop media with bad writing, using the same tired tropes and story beats. The ML also tend to be borderline abusive in some manhwa. It's unfortunate to see that just as how male isekai power fantasy have become slop media, so has otome isekai.
I always thought that the "snow white and the huntsman" movie, should have been more about The Evil Queen, Ravenna, and her path to downfall.
Not only because Charlize Theron's character it's THE MOST (and only, to be fair) remarkable and remembered character in that movie, but it would have been a much better story.
The sequel only confirmed that, since The Snow Queen, portrait by Emily Blunt, was again the highlight of the movie, and even deepened the lore of her older, evil sister, Ravenna!!!!
She would have been such a perfect Rough Heroine Protagonist 🥲🥲
Claire from house of cards is another good example of a "rough heroine". Robin Wright really made me like that characted even if she was quite anit-hero ish, and the whole couple felt like quite an insane dynamic (i can only speak for season 1-2 thats all I've watched)
Btw I agree with your video's point, sorry for just bringing up examples, I'm just doing it to identify when is it that we like gender defying female characters and why. It can help us learn something
villains are destined to die writer is super talented, i have never seen such a complex character in this genre, and even untill s3 she's still herself, her attitude doesnt suddenly change or become more kind, she still has the same motivation same conviction, just because she understands why doesnt make her forgive, which i find is such a liberating stance, because we so often are taught to forgive, its nice to see someone not do that while still not letting it consume them.
I'm trying to outline an otome styled isekai that deals with the question of the protagonist's original identity. My main character is a closeted trans man who replaces the heroine of the webnovel he's reading. Where he was meek and scared to disappoint his mother by depriving her of her only daughter (she stopped trying after having him, following 4 sons). Because of his choice to remain closeted, he chooses the familiar but uncomfortable skin of womanhood.
He convinces himself that he can do it, and even romanticizes his trapped position, and tries to enjoy femininity through fantasy and a sort of masochism. That is, until he becomes the fraught heroine of his novel. Something breaks within him as he lives the gilded nightmare of marriage to a powerful, seemingly heartless man. The distance makes him begin to live a double life as a man, something he was terrified to try in his former life. He then learns that his cruel husband was also living a double life when he unwittingly starts an affair with him with his new identity/truer self.
I just thought that these protagonists slip too seamlessly into their new identities, and it would be interesting to show the power of the phantasic self in self discovery.
What webcomics would be good to read to understand the tropes better?
op i just want you to know that this is such a cool twist on the concept of the usual otome isekai and i hope that one day your ideas will come into fruition. it’s such an interesting exploration of the “fake/disingenuous” heroine by exploring how confined and suffocating fitting into the mold of the “good girl” is, especially from the perspective of a closeted trans man!
as for the part about webcomics that explore similar tropes, from the top of my head is one called Kill the Villainess, though i only read a few chapters of it a long time ago. but i heard from other people from this comment section about how it deals with suddenly being reincarnated as a fictional character with an MC that just wants to go home, and i heard it gets really good too.
This video perfectly summed up all my thoughts and feelings about why the genre connects to me so much, your editing style and range of sources from across media is amazing :D keep up the work, I can't wait for you to blow up in popularity!!
Wonderful video, when I saw those neat animated segments, paired with a thorough analysis, I fell in love with your channel! I can't wait to hear more of what you have to say next 🧡
I don't have the presence of mind for anything more eloquent right now, but it was an interesting listen! Thank you for the cool analysis!
(I laughed a little at the mention of the Duke of the North because YEAH there's like one in almost every manhwa haha)
This was a wonderful perspective of the emerging genre. You voiced concisely my internal thoughts of my attachment to the genre. I look forward to future videos!
YESSS I LOVE VILLAINESS ISEKAI MANGAS!!! I was so eaxicted to see Penelope from "Villains are Destined to Die" on the thumbnail, I like the story a lot and how it uses video game mechanics and how our MC acts. This was a really good video and gave me some good recommendations for new manga in this genre!
The good girl and bad girl thing really hits me as a trans girl, being told about these narratives and wanting to be a girl, it gives me a perspective of the problems women face and the problems in the world, but regardless, even if I end up a "bad" girl, I'll be unabashedly myself, that much should be enough, if there isnt a happy ending, I'll make a happy ending for myself if I have to, because all girls, good, bad and all in between, deserve a happy ending
I hope others see this and are helped by this, being a girl doesnt always mean you have to be a good girl, to all of you who are here, it'll be ok, we love you all! 🫂💜
This was great! You’ve given me food for thought, that’s for sure :) it’s really interesting how the media we consume reflects society’s views at the time of their creation and invites for critique if you look beyond the cover. Even if the author didn’t intend for it, we can look further. For me, the beauty of art and creation is in the opportunity of interpretation each of us can make of it in our own little bubble.
As a side note, it was an instant subscription for me. It felt like a nice conversation with a friend on an interesting topic. The mood, designs and even fonts used were easily enjoyable aesthetically for me 😊 thank you for always citing your sources as well !
Great work! Thank you for your efforts and I’ll see you in your other videos :]
My one gripe with these stories is that our leading lady is also always a capitalist of the worst order, often emulating some of the worst corporations from our world.
And I can see why that's part of the power fantasy, especially with cultural context, but they're also usually born into powerful noble families. They're handed a silver spoon and a golden handshake at birth... and then they turn around and make inherently exploitative money printers.
Sadly, it is because capitalism, or rather more crudely monetary gain, is one of the common ways women throughout the ages have been able to rise above and succeed. Money and titles have also been taught and marketed to women from birth as sources of security, freedom and power. "Marry/be born rich and/or work/ to get financial independence" and you'll live somewhere safe.
Men get all the underdog stories in the world because they've had the capacity to rise above. Women had or still have harder upward mobility. We are both born facing walls but ours are harder and taller to climb. Heck, I can hardly think of any female historical underdog that didn't fail or die horribly. Unless they were born rich.
Villainess isn't only spreading to female protagonist novel. Crazy thing is it is spreading into male protagonist novel.
There is a lot of male protagonist reincarnated into villainess novel.....
One of my favorite things in media is how it iterates on each other.
Here you have OG female isekai, which was very action packed. Then the next iteration is male isekai as people know it, basically drifting towards fanfiction, bc let's be real, if we read SAO as a fanfic we'd call the protag a Mary Sue/Gary Stu.
Then, the women come back with the Otome Isekai. Some early ones still lean heavily into the endurance, women bein reborn as heroines and needing to go through some hardship.
And then the villainesses arrive on the scene. And they start directly attacking that legacy. Melissa razes down all the suitors and [spoiler] so Yuri doesn't HAVE to endure! Penelope acts in total self interest, survival mode 24/7, and yet shines bright whenever her true self gets to peek through (like when she tells Winter off for rationing the food strictly in the slums).
And now, we're beginning to get iterations on that! "This Maid is forming a Union" responds to the Otome Isekai genre to in turn examine all the ways even those authors are still a product of their cultures. Going into cruelty towards servants, the fear to touch on same gender relationships, the tension between privilege and allyship and between personal survival and knowing of a better world that could be created.
I love seeing this. It's like a cycle of the seasons, with each spring bringing a new and exciting bunch of blossoms that resemble the old ones, yet shine with something new!
I love the stories where the main character remains a villainess or just follows a key interest (villainess level 99 is levelling and theres another where the main character wants a healthy body)
Was waiting for a very long time for a new video, thankyou.
Villainess Isekai is my favorite genre of manga/manhwa by an _enormous_ margin. It's certainly hit or miss, but its propensity towards focusing on politics and economics is always so fascinating to me. My favorite one right now is probably _The Villainess Lives Twice_, but I've also been enjoying _I Will Change the Genre_. The former is just an excellent story where the MC's enemies are mostly highly intelligent people. The latter is substantially lighter, but the people within it are intelligent, thinking humans who have their own motives and opinions.
I love that this genre is a thing. It's so absolutely fantastic. There are no genres of manga/manhwa I actively search for except for this one. It's so rich with incredible stories.
Also, check out Ascendance of a Bookworm if you haven't already. It's not a villainess story, but it has a ton of the same qualities that make villainess stories so fantastic. At least in my opinion.
I'm nonbinary and if I was Reincarnated as a Villain/ess, my story would be about embracing societal rejection, taking up more space as I express myself more fully, exposing systemic flaws, and fearlessly fostering profound connections with others.
Oh well, guess I'll just have to work on being a villain/ess here.
Also, in our lives, we are baited into hating each other. Yet we are also taught that aggression is never the answer, that if we just ask nicely enough, we MIGHT earn the same amount of dignity as others. So we are taught to be hateful, yet complacent. On top of that, vulnerability is treated as a danger, a weakness. So we end up hateful, complacent and isolated from others. Sounds like a recipe for a villain origin story if there ever was one.
So be compassionate, but fight for your dignity and dare to be vulnerable.
omg fantastically made video essay!! i absolutely love the style & structure, plus TYSM for including all the songs you used in the description!!!!!! i never see people doing that and it drives me crazy when i can't find the song playing in the bg cause they get credited as "from epidemic sound" haha
Oh hell no she labeled Rezero as a male power fantasy 💀. Oh no oh noo no no. Thats anything but power fantasy Like No way in hell would i want to suffer like subaru fuck no Dude doesnt even have any powers constantly dying in the most horrific ways possible f no. ☠
For context, I really only watch the animes, so I can't really comment on the broader genre as it exists in manga/LN/WN. (The one exception was Bookworm, I really liked that, but not a villainess story even if some of the themes/plot beats/settings/characters are adjacent to the genre.)
You briefly touch on it at the end, but I wanted to talk a bit more about the class dimension to this. In a lot of the villainess anime I've seen, the villainess is a rich noble, often in high enough social standing that they're at least in consideration for a marriage into royalty. On the other hand, the heroine is often a commoner girl who is whisked into the world of nobility because of some aptitude or special power. She becomes the focus of affection in the original story by being such a good girl she breaks through the barrier between commoners and nobles.
The commoner heroine absolutely needs to employ that survival strategy because she's an outsider and inherently disposable to the people around her. Or if not disposable, only tolerated because of the special power she brings to the table to be exploited. Her place in society is entirely conditional on the good will of those with power over her.
The villainess, on the other hand, is born into wealth and power. Perhaps her role in public noble society is contingent on acting the good girl, but her place in the household isn't. Just because of the luck of her birth, she gets to be served by common people, often other women, who, like the heroine, have no choice but to stay in the good graces of those in power, and they don't even have something special about them to elevate them beyond their station. In this context, the villainess is someone who has been made so untouchable by an unfair society that she can act cruelly to the people beneath her with impunity. They just have to take that abuse and live in fear if they don't want to lose their jobs or worse. It's only when that cruelty becomes directed at the object of affection of those men with more power than her that she faces any consequences for her behavior. And not because she was cruel to a commoner, but because it's someone the nobility likes.
So then in comes the Isekai protag, a regular ass person who even if they aren't especially overly nice, doesn't have the indifference or disdain for people that comes from a life of inherited privilege. Everyone becomes confused at the change of character and instantly starts liking her because she's suddenly showing basic human respect and kindness towards people like a normal person. It's not to say that there's no gendered aspect to this, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't take feminine endurance/submissiveness to be a better person than a fancy power tripping leech.
On the subject of those "rough heroes": At least from the American perspective, I think what makes these characters so compelling is that they essentially embody a more twisted, but honest and accessible, version of the American Dream. We're told that we could be successful if we just pull ourselves up by our boot straps, work hard, start a business, and start exploiting people. (The last part is unspoken.) What is a Mafia or meth empire if not a business success story? The fact that their business is illegal and puts them in closer proximity to the exploitation and violence they're responsible for just comes down to a matter of power and privilege. CEOs get to kill people with the stoke of a pen because they have thousands of employees and the protection of the state to do their dirty work and they're largely insulated from the consequences of their actions. A mobster needs to get their hands dirty and either evade the law, or do a more direct form of bribery than big corporations do to make the state turn a blind eye. But fundamentally, this is the honest version of what's glorified by the myth of the American Dream. It's aspirational. The viewer might not exactly want to be a criminal, but that certainly seems like a more realistic way out of poverty than working your way through an entrenched power structure.
But you're right that this is mostly portrayed as a male thing. It's hard to think of any media I've seen that fits the same mold with a female protagonist.
I don't really know to what extent that translates over to anime though. Japan has different cultural norms and expectations, but it's also been heavily influenced by the West, and specifically America in it's modern history. Besides the post-war reconstruction, there are heavy cultural influences from consuming Hollywood movies and TV.
I suppose Bookworm might actually be a female bootstraps kind of story, although not a rough hero one. Also, I'm not sure what it says that the endpoint of success for Myne's endeavors as a commoner isn't to become independently successful, but to become adopted by nobility. There's still that fantasy of being lifted from the grind of the real world and put into a life of luxury due to something other than pure merit. (Myne might have used money to get into the temple, but she was only adopted because of her massive mana capacity.)
EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot another relevant thing: At least in some stories I've seen, the rest of the nobility ends up chastising the protag for extending this kindness to commoners. So being the "good girl" for society only applies to people who matter. There is no obligation to place the needs or feelings of those you hold power over before your own.
I hope this wasn't too rambley. The video was pretty interesting.
👀 I'm quoting this for life!💜
16:06 "Maybe good girls go to heaven and bad girls go... Wherever they want." - by Dinara, from Bazazilio