Hey kids, remember when stories about kids/teens going to fantasy worlds were interesting? And had three-dimensional characters, creative worldbuilding, compelling stories, and actually cared about things like character development and storytelling? Yeah, me too. In recent years, a sudden wave of novels and anime involving characters being sent to fantasy or game-like worlds drowned Japan, giving rise to the term "isekai" which means "another world" and many of them...aren't good. You may recognize them by several things: Ridiculously long titles that threaten to break the Twitter limit count, milque toast male main characters with little personality but are magically given God-like powers for no reason other than convenience, a harem of beautiful girls who exist to fall all over said male character, video game mechanics, very little effort put into actual worldbuilding, character development, or any kind of compelling conflict whatsoever, and functioning as little more than male power fantasies. Unfortunately, it's still going, and I don't think it's going to die out anytime soon. Luckily, in the pile of stale excrement, there are some gems to be found, so it's safe to say that there are some genuinely good "modern" isekai anime lurking about, even if they're still not as polished or compelling as many of the powerhouses from the late 80s to early 90s. One of them is the subject of today's review, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom!, which took the isekai community by storm.

Based on the light novels by Satoru Yamaguchi, it goes under a variety of names, but many of them are too long, so for the purposes of convenience, I'm going to refer to it as Hamefura. So what's the story? A young Japanese high school girl is killed in a car accident and finds that she's been reborn as a villainess named Catarina Claes in an otome game she owned called Fortune Lover. But she only regains her past life memories when an eight-year-old Catarina trips and hits her head. Remembering her knowledge of the game, Catarina realizes that the person she's reborn into either gets exiled or dies in all of the game's endings. Afraid that she might suffer this terrible fate, Catarina does all she can to avoid anything or doing anything that might potentially force her down that path...which basically amounts to just being a nice person and being nothing like the original character.

So yeah, Hamefura still adheres to a lot of cliche isekai tropes that its contemporaries love so much, such as MCs dying, being reincarnated into a game, gaining a harem, and so on. Thankfully, unlike its contemporaries, none of the characters do anything like level up or look at their stats (If you want to do that, just play an actual game!), nor is anyone overpowered to the point of completely solving every single problem with a snap of their fingers. Much of the show is a gentle parody of the genre, poking fun at the tropes it indulges in without seeming too mean-spirited or overly reliant on breaking the fourth wall. A lot of the comedy is fairly character driven, with Catarina being too dense to see that everyone she interacts with has clear romantic feelings for her, or trying to do something silly only to wind up achieving weird results...or overreacting to every little thing involving the conquerable characters interacting in any way whatsoever. Several of these work fairly well, but other times the comedy can be milked a bit too much, especially when Catarina freaks out about being potentially exiled or killed even though she's already avoided the bad endings by...well, being a nice person and not the character of Catarina. Thankfully, a lot of the jokes and punchlines are well thought out and full of energy.

The animation really helps sell the comedic aspects of the show here, showing a wide array of silly, cartoony expressions, zany movement, and bright colors. But even when not focusing on the comedy, the show is still well animated, with creative character designs that don't go too over-the-top, smooth character animation, pretty backgrounds, and just as much shoujo sparkle to make you feel like this is, indeed, the world of a fantasy otome game. I'm rather mixed on the music, though. I mean, the soundtrack itself is very versatile and well done, with ominous violins during the dramatic scenes, soft piano tunes for more low-key moments, and energetic fiddles and banjos for when Catarina does something silly. Seriously, when was the last time you heard banjos being used in an anime soundtrack? But the opening and ending songs didn't really wow me, per se. The opening, while well sung, seems like it's trying to mesh a bunch of different musical styles together without trying to make them form a cohesive whole, making any transition between them feel jarring. I mean, going from J-pop to classical to hard rock within several beats doesn't give it a whole lot of flow. The ending song is...okay, but again, it didn't really wow me, and it was mostly just still images of the characters framed with sparkles.

My mixed feelings continue with the characters as well. Most of them, anyway. Several of them are more developed and fleshed out than others, with Catarina having the best of it. She's a fun lead character with a lot of personality and charm to her that it's easy to see why people would like her. I'm glad the show is at least careful to give her some character flaws, such as being rather dense (Though thankfully not the obnoxious kind of dense) and being rather reckless, so she doesn't come off as an overly idealized cipher the audience can project themselves onto. Plus, it is kind of funny to see her freaking out over anything that involves the game's progression, though sometimes even that could be a little much, especially when it's made clear that she'll never meet her doom simply because she decided to be a nice person and not the game's villainess. Maria, Sophia, and Alan also receive some good development, though they aren't nearly as fleshed out as Catarina is, and I liked the whole ensemble. Even Catarina's maid, a side character, is given her own backstory and personality, and from what I hear, she's pretty popular. Unfortunately, two of them, Geordo and Nicol, don't really change much throughout the series, with the former being especially notorious for it because the show is constantly telling us that he's a black-hearted, sadistic prince, but nothing in the show indicates as such. Anime, remember to show, not tell. All he really does is be nice, a little snarky, and constantly remind everyone he's engaged to her. Plus, Nicol doesn't really do anything other than just stand around looking pretty, and his reasons for falling in love with Catarina just feel forced. "Hey, this random girl is nice to my sister. I've found my true love at last!!" As a result of the show not really doing anything with them, Geordo and Nicol just feel bland and woefully underutilized.

Which also leads me to my biggest problem with the show. It's nothing that completely turns me off to it, but the show seems really intent on having EVERYONE have some sort of crush on Catarina in some fashion. From what I heard, the light novels are marketed as a mixed gender harem, which is fine, but the show seems to bend over backwards just to have every single character Catarina interacts with fall in love with her in some way, or interpret anything she does as seduction. In one early episode, when Alan first shows up, he accuses Catarina of trying to seduce Mary, even though all she did was become her friend...and keep in mind, this is a child accusing another child of seducing a girl. First off, how in the world would a nine-year-old know what the word seduce means, much less enough about it to accuse a girl of doing so to another girl? I myself didn't learn what seduce meant until early high school! Second, episode 8, which from what I heard is a filler episode, has all the characters except for Mary and Maria being sucked into a magic book which reveals all of their deepest desires. Everyone's desires except for Catarina's involve...well, trying to either bang Catarina or seduce her. It was at this point where I was like, "Okay, now you're just trying too hard." Why make EVERYBODY fall in love with Catarina? Having every single character do so just feels forced and unnecessary, and like the writers just want them to get with Catarina because they want them to rather than just letting their friendships (or in some cases, romance) develop naturally, and the show did do the latter in its first half! I mean, a little romance is okay, but having everyone want to smooch Catarina and get jealous if any one of them so much as looks at her, even a little bit (Though they're thankfully still nice to each other, so I'm glad the show doesn't go down the cliche route of having everyone try to kill each other) just doesn't feel organic.

So how does the show fare as an isekai show? Well, it's not nearly as compelling or polished as the ones from the eighties or nineties, but it's far better than a lot of the crappy wish fulfillment schlock we've been bombarded with over the past several years. For one, even with its problems, it still TRIES to give the characters more personality and development beyond their assigned archetype, actually has a story, a little haphazard as it can be, and is overall just pure mindless fun. Hamefura is also one of the few shows that didn't get delayed because of the awful pandemic, and considering the current times we're living in, I think we can all use a little mindless fun once in a while, if only so we remember that there is some good to look forward to in this crazy world.

Overall, if you're looking for some good mindless fun and a good laugh, feel free to check out My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom! It's funny, sweet, and Catarina will surely steal your heart some way or another.