Even Monsters Like Fairytales

With OI being Otome Isekai.

The main story is complete. I've only read some of the side stories (up to partway through chapter 27, which covers the antagonist's POV. Eagerly anticipating the rest. It's hard to talk about it without spoilers, but I will try my best to keep spoilers to a minimum. But, still, spoiler warning.

First off: the art. It is a manga, unlike most OI I've read. The character designs are rather simplistic, nothing particularly outstanding. There aren't a lot of particularly stunning panels that made me stop and go, wow. However, I think (aside from the character design, maybe) the art is perfect for the story. The background and shading reminds me a little bit of The Girl from the Other Side by Nagabe, and overall creates a wonderful atmosphere that really augments the story. No real complaints here.

I think it is pretty clear from the start, so hopefully it is not a spoiler, that the antagonist/"protagonist" is a transmigrator. We take the perspective of who she condemns as "villainess" in a pretty normal OI/Villainess fashion. Everyone around her believes whatever she says no matter what, and our POV character gets left for dead. Instead of dying, she gets picked up by a dyslexic king of the neighbouring kingdom, whom everyone in Sylph's (POV character) country believes to be a monster that eats people. Instead, he lets Sylph live out her dream of reading all the time.

This, I think, is also pretty par for the course for the villainess genre. I think the shining part of this story is Sylph's character (and in the side stories I've read, Kanna's (antagonist, OG!heroine) as well. She behaves in a very human way, and while probably most people would not behave as she did or agree with her actions, I really enjoy the way her thoughts and actions are laid out for the viewer to understand and digest. I would say she is a bit "perfect" as a character, but this was not at all annoying to me and I moreso enjoyed considering her perspective.

To talk about what I've read of the side story a bit, Kanna is also very interesting to me. We look into a possible reality -- I think her personality is definitely a little bit extreme, but perhaps not beyond reason -- of what happens when a person is transmigrated into such a story. There was a comment on the site that I was reading this, that said in almost any other OI story, Kanna would have been perfectly fine, but because of the choice -- or even design? -- of the characters such as Sylph and the internal "narrative" of the story, it works out differently. I won't say more on it, but it gets meta at times, which I greatly enjoyed.

Overall, I would really recommend the story. It isn't perfect, but it creates some great atmosphere and interesting nuggets to consider, all rather short (there's only 27 stories I've read, the main story must be just above 20) but paced well.