From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!

I thought i had learned my lesson...

The highest i've ever rated anything from this ominous theme was 6/10 and that being rounded up. The bar is low.

As a chair of the 'Isekai Binger Foundation', each season at least one of the shows from the worst subgenre of isekai piques my interest,

You can of course imagine why such a show beamed brightly on my radar, an elder bureaucrat man who apparently dies by the fan-favourite multi-dimenional agent/hit-man/assasin is then warped into in a new fantasy world into the body of the complete polar opposite type of indivdual; the spoiled rich girl. This girl's duty is to make everything she touches suffer, then we explore how the mind of this modern-day japanese senior man contrasts with the nefarious dealings of an uptown girl in mysterious world filled with magic. Doesn't such a depection just fire neurones rapidly into the curiousity centres of your cerebrum?

School setting and Isekai, in my opinion, the worst combination for isekai shows. However for the Otome-game route it isn't so bad and can work quite well as shown here.

You know what, 9 episodes in, i was positively surprised. I thought, 'what a blast, what a refreshing take on this genre'. The author, the direction, the animation, the soundtrack it all weaved together such a stunning experience for me. It played like a parody of sorts but, instead of trashing the medium, they rather brought out the best i've seen so far for this subgenre. The strategies employed in the orchestration of its ideas allowed the viewer to engage into the world with the brain activated, aswell as providing a wealth of nuance and knowledge. What i found endearing was the added touch of immersive detail at every turn, a true rarity in this medium amongst the modern works.

I loved how much you could learn from the dialogue as well as the intelligent discourse on display. There was no 'Mary Sue' trash, every action the MC took eminated with such a charming and irresistable sense of humilty, selflessless and only served to edify the people around her. What was funny was the stark but very evident truth of how much better a woman would behave wired with the brain of a man. They demonstrated a part of the true purpose of women as a bridge between men, every problem required her inspiration of others to solve, diametrically opposed to many of the less captivating and sloppy Villainess stories which feature an MC which in effect does everyone's job for them and better than them. The character was overpowered but there was no immoderate use of power for superfical effect. Her new found powers were used when necessary consequently hammering home the idea of restraint and self-control the perfect way a woman that position should behave. Another very irratating thing i noticed about other Otome-game shows is this perpetual wholly excessive praise and glorifcation with shallow exposition of characters(primarily female) without showing anything on screen, on the contrary in this show, that kind of nonsense was absent. I would never recommend a single villainess show to anyone, but this show was becoming the exception.

I don't know what it was that made me enjoy the show, the fact that it went off the rails with the concept of the villainess or the production values, references, humor, and little details that spiced it up. Either way it's just different from the norm for this abstract but in a good way.

There is a major twist early on which accentuates its status as more of a parody, which to be honest, i wasn't too fond of and it basically made any meaningful romance utterly impossible socially.

There was of course a lack of tension, or a lack of some big, bad overarching threat, but let's be honest, is that even needed? I never missed anything like that. If you put yourselves in the shoes of a teenage rich girl, is there anything that can realistically adventitiously harm a person like that apart from God? Those people are so bored with safety and security that they surreptitiously invent their own problems and fantasize about precarious affairs they are involuntarily put in. Thankfully there was none of the classic obligatory, random-deranged-pervert-rapist, jobber rehashed subplot here to bore us, just a focus on simple but heartwarming dialogue based on everyday problems for teenagers from a high-class academy to deal with. There was minor character development and you wouldn't be wrong to critique many of the side characters as plot-devices or one-note, it did seem that way at times. As this is a dating game theme you probably expect a bit of romance, but you'll be looking for that like a needle in a haystack. Romance in this scenario/premise is always extremely awkward and once you find out the truth behind his isekai experience it becomes probably the most awkward thing imaginable, while it's a shame that there's barely any romance in a 'Otome-Game' show the argument against it, won't have too many supporters.

Let's picture the intial premise of a man's soul inside a woman's body. We have to understand that if that's the case, he will now have to think through a woman's brain, then experience hormones that are native to the female body, that (she) because he's a woman now, because souls don't have sexual character, (no such thing as soul-mate) etc. She will experience extrinsic(to his soul) attraction to the male sex completely out of her control if we are completely logical about it. However setting up any romance in such perilous waters requires a break of a social barrier which is far too great for most writers, and not many will chastise them for not going deeeper. It's quite the hopeless conundrum.

You're thinking now, he's going to give this show at least an 7 or 8 possibly more. But here you're dead wrong!

Look back to my statement of '9 episodes', because after that we enter into 'the valley of the shadow of death'. Amongst the worst of the abominations, the sign of the end of any great civilization ever.

They had me hooked, baited me like no other i had already prepared a favorable review and an outstanding score(for this subgenre) then they ambushed me as i opened the door to episode 10.

An episode named "Cross-Dressing", you can imagine what ensues.

I have a zero tolerence policy with such things.

What initally drew me to anime was the lack of these kind of things, slowly but surely we're nearing perdition.

No final ranking like i usually do.

5/10 for first half traps, 4/10 for 2nd half traps

4/10

Yes, it's another trojan horse, another sad day for isekai enthusiasts.
Perhaps i'm a fool and oversold the first 9 episodes, if you do watch it, i hope you'll cut it short there as I did..

Hope this helps.