Beware the Villainess! Volume 1 Review

Ize Press introduces a new isekai series to its readers in which a woman from Earth reincarnates into a fantasy world from a novel as a villainess… but it’s not as clichéd as it sounds!

A university student dies after being hit by a car and wakes up as Melissa Foddebrat, a villainess in a romance book she once read: All the Men Who Loved Her. Although Melissa is a noble lady and the fiancée of the Crown Prince, her reputation couldn’t be worse—she’s known for throwing fits of rage and being obsessed with her fiancée. However, there is more than meets the eye. The fits she used to throw were due to finding the prince half-dressed and in compromising positions with a lot (a lot!) of ladies, and of course instead of blaming the actual adulterer, she is blamed because she’s a woman.

Well, the new Melissa is fed up with this and doesn’t feel anything for the crown prince other than disgust. He is one of the four men mentioned as the love interests of Yuri, the heroine. But according to Melissa who knows the story from start to end, they are all bad targets, far away from being the ideal Prince Charming. As she doesn’t have any intention of being the villainess or even faking being in love with the Crown Prince, Melissa requests to break off the engagement, but to no avail. The prince thinks he can do whatever and whoever he wants because Melissa loves him and will always come back to him, but since our main character took over the body of Melissa, things have changed. She won’t let the prince do as he pleases, so she’s ready to take a stand for herself. Too bad the prince doesn’t understand it but instead gets her brother involved—another love interest who couldn’t care less about his older sister’s feelings.

Melissa is not the typical villainess, and the readers are informed straight away that she’s not going to behave like one nor will she try to take on the role of the heroine—she just wants to be left in peace and live her life as she pleases. She’s no damsel in distress either, so she doesn’t expect anyone to save her—she’s ready to take matter in her own hands and destroy whoever gets in her way. I find this personality quite refreshing, and it spurs me to wait for the next volume to find out what Melissa will do next because she’s unpredictable.

Although all four love interests are mentioned, the readers only get to know two of them in the first volume, and both of them already give the ‘icks’, making us wonder what the other two will be like (I imagine from how the story’s going, they’ll be quite bad or gross). The heroine is mentioned as well, but Melissa doesn’t meet her yet. With many isekai stories, the main character reincarnates either before the main book or game story starts or in the middle of it. For the readers, it’s not clear yet where Melissa falls in the story and how her new behaviour will affect the love interests’ affection toward Yuri and vice versa.

At the moment it seems that Melissa is fighting alone against the world as not even her family stands by her. Her brother aside, her father also seems to barely recognise his own daughter, and instead of trying to get to know her, he follows his son’s instructions on how to deal with Melissa. It’s a complicated relationship and I don’t know if it will be fixed later in the story as that might impact Melissa’s behaviour and goals that were made clear in the first volume.

Other than this new take on the villainess, the illustrations are also enjoyable. The artist paid close attention to the characters’ expressions using the backgrounds to enhance them. The story is light with humorous twists that can be found throughout the whole volume. Moreover, it also mentions sayings from Korean pop culture, which are thankfully explained at the end of the volume.

Beware the Villainess! is written by Soda Ice, illustrated by Blue Canna and adapted by Berry. It’s published as a serialised web comic on Tapas and it’s available in both print and digital versions from Ize Press. Volume 2 is slated for release in January.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.