The Villainess’s Guide to (Not) Falling in Love Volume 2 Review
Luciana has been reborn as a villainess in a romance game and is determined to stay away from all the love interests to prevent the original character’s demise. However, it’s not going so well, as her kind nature ends up not only saving one love interest, Lakas, from injury, but also saves the life of his little sister. With eyes now on Luciana, and people thinking she has unique powers of the Yggdrasil Mage, things only get worse when she meets the second love interest, Louis, who is also smitten with her. Can she navigate her way around this world with so many eyes on her, and prevent certain doom?
The first volume of this villainess/isekai fusion story was a plenty of fun that had me looking forward to the next volume, and I’m pleased to say that Volume 2 makes me feel the same way, for the most part. Admittedly the first chapter of this volume was a bit of a slog to get through, due to a lot of info-dumping. The first volume did a decent job of throwing information at you but cutting it into small chunks across the book and making it easy to digest. This time we get a lot of important information all at once and told in a rather dry way. Due to Luciana showcasing unique powers, the men in the story think she’s the Yggdrasil Mage, someone all-powerful that contradicts the law of magic as they know it, so the story has to explain that, as well as why Luciana wants to avoid drawing attention to herself.
Then we get the revelation that Lakas’ sister Seria has the power to see the future and has foretold that she won’t live past her 14th birthday. Despite her and Lakas trying everything in their power to prevent her visions from happening, it’s only Luciana’s actions that ended up truly changing the course of her fate, which is a big emotional moment in the book for both Luciana’s character and the course of Lakas’s development too that the audience must absorb. I personally wondered how Seria’s powers are connected to the family’s affinity to fire (which is established in the first book) since the two powers don’t tend to be linked in fantasy stories often, but we’ll see how that works when we’re introduced to more powers and families in the future.
And THEN we find out that Luciana has had an enchantment placed upon her, which throws into question when this happened, how long it’s been there, what its effects are and so on. I think it doesn’t help that this book is very talk-heavy anyway, whereas Volume 1 at least had the second half full of magical fights, and scene changes in the first half to keep the story going, from the school to Luciana’s home to the duke’s party and so on.
That’s not to say that this volume is boring; although the book is heavy in dialogue, there are a lot of plot threads that leave the audience wondering what’s going to happen next. For example, I couldn’t help but wonder if the enchantment was related to Luciana being reincarnated into the villainess’s body? And does the Yggdrasil Mage play a part in Luciana’s reincarnation too, or are they one and the same? It’s the developing theories and on-going mysterious that will keep you engaged. That, and of course, the various love interests. The first book did a good job of introducing Lakas, what his background is and making the audience care for him as much as the villainess does. He plays a large part in this volume too, tying up loose ends from Volume 1 as well as starting to develop feelings for Luciana on top of that, and considering that both the last volume and this volume’s extra side story (written by the author of the original light novel) are told from his perspective too, there’s a lot of material to help make the audience fall for him.
In the latter half of this book, we are introduced to the next candidate, Louis, a wind magic user who happens to know a lot of enchantment magic too. Lakas was introduced as a cold, ‘statue’ like character with the enemies-to-lovers trope in play, but Louis is more friendly from the start and not afraid to get up close and personal to Luciana, so the different dynamic will appeal to the audience. There’s also the on-going tension with Luciana’s brother Saphir, who’s very ‘hands on’ with her from hugs to holding hands, and cares for her deeply, which may or may not appeal to your tastes.
Like the first volume, Volume 2 is quite thick and generous with its content; on top of four meaty manga chapters, and the aforementioned side story by the original author, we also get a few pages outlining the campus grounds and a look at the uniform designs. My only gripe is for the short story, which had much smaller and thinner font and therefore I found it harder to read.
Meredith Singer continues to translate this series; no translation notes are provided but the book is an easy read, despite the heavy lore dumps here and there. Art by Ren Sakuma also continues to be visually appealing, there’s less magic crest designs in this book than before, but there’s lots still to admire, such as the two-page spread of an important vision Seria experiences, and the cover is really pretty with the different shades of pink and purple.
Falling in love may not be the goal of the villainess, but the story is still easy to enjoy with pretty art, interesting titbits shared across the book and handsome men to keep you hooked.
Read a free preview of this series here.
Our review copy from Square Enix Manga was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).
