A beautiful queer story for the ages.

I'm in love with the villainess despite being late to the otome isekai in the anime sphere is one of the progenitors of its genre in its light novel source material. You can see in the inspiration that certain stories took from it to create their own works while watching Villianesse so I won't be focusing on that.

What I am here to talk about and what I would largely like to focus on is who this series is for. The otome isekai genre is largely meant for women and despite certain claims the demographics for GL stories based on censuses from magazines that focus on it in Japan is largely women and girls. So I would be remiss in not offering the perspective of not only a woman but a lesbian woman.

Villainesse is not afraid to touch on the elephant in the room. It's not afraid to establish that for our heroine Ray the gender of the person she's attracted to does matter. It's not just that she happened to fall in love with Claire for the amazing person that she knows is there underneath. It's that she only could because of her being a woman. We're early days in the anime but it covers that brilliantly as early as the 3rd episode along with touching on some preconceived notions that a lot of hetero people have about gay people that shows Claire her internalized homophobia, another issue that the story handles brilliantly. As Claire herself isn't magically "turned gay". Claire has always had repressed feelings for women and looking at how many both gay men and women divorce after having children and realizing that they're queer late is a huge issue of compulsory heterosexuality in our world much less the pressure a noble like Claire would feel to marry a man. There's so much more to unpack here but looking at the 12-episode length I realize that it's unlikely that we'll get deep into the many other facets of queerness it explores. It is somewhat hinted at when the 3 "princes" are shown in the opening if you know what to look for wink wink.

Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that this story isn't "generic otome isekai gay edition". It understands and explores the struggles that most people face while not being completely unrelatable for the heteros. I think Rae's unwillingness to be truly genuine with Claire early on stemming from her fear of getting hurt. Her fear of complete and utter rejection to the point of losing her current relationships while maybe not something most people have to face the same way queer people do is still something that a lot of people can relate to, albeit to slightly less disastrous consequences. Rae is ultimately a person so she's not perfect. She's flawed, however, she's often called out on it and is the type to learn and fix her behavior. Rae grows as a person when it's pointed out to her that sometimes she goes too far with Claire and makes her uncomfortable and this touch on consent is something I've rarely seen handled so maturely in anime.

For those uninterested in romance, I don't really believe this story is for you in regards to the anime itself. The world-building in this show as well as the magic system which I noticed seems to be a sticking point to some does actually get a very large development later on, sadly the anime's length won't make that possible unless multiple seasons are made. Mostly the magic system as the world-building does at least massively ramp up at the same pace as the romance if the cut-off point is what I think it is I would still say it will massively disappoint if you're watching for just that though.

This is ultimately a love story, and it's as sweet as crème brûlée.