The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess: Short Story Collection Review

We’re currently getting to enjoy the anime adaptation of The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, but there’s always room for more. This time, we take a look at the Volume 9.5 short story collection from Yen Press to find out what it offers fans of this crazy series.

Each of these short stories opens with a brief recap of the premise, explaining how protagonist Iana has ended up reincarnated into the world of her self-indulgent fantasy work that she wrote during her teenage years. And as we’ve seen in the main series, there are a lot of scenarios that she doesn’t even remember writing until she finds herself right in the middle of them!

There are five (relatively short) chapters included here, which all revolve around Iana and one of her love interests. The first involves her going undercover for Officer Cheneau’s little sister, who is concerned about her brother having nightmares every day. She’s convinced something terrible is happening at the academy he attends and wishes for Iana to get to the bottom of it.

The second involves hunting for a birthday present for Yomi and many mishaps along the way. #3 is about Iana coming down with a fever and being tended to by Sol, whom she’s still convinced is going to kill her should she make one wrong move. The fourth chapter sees Iana, Yomi, and Sol go undercover at a girls’ academy where Konoha seems to have gone missing (this involves the boys undergoing a transformation spell to appear as women!). And in our final chapter, our heroine gets to enjoy a date with Isaac.

I suspect that the last chapter is primarily why this is designated volume 9.5 (besides having been released after volume 9), since Issac is the major new character introduced for the arc that started in Volume 7 and has continued since then. Other than his story, there’s no real indicator of where these stories take place within the timeline. And in many cases, they come off as somewhat whimsical and as ‘what ifs’ rather than adding anything to the overall narrative or feeling like they might have actually happened. It probably says a lot that my favourite was the story with Issac, which felt like it would have fit in the main story.

On the whole, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess has never shied away from content that feels whimsical, or frankly, completely unbelievable, so in that respect, there’s not a great deal that feels out of place here. Perhaps the bigger issue is just that the story feels flimsy and just an excuse to get Iana alone with the boys for a while. I think I’d have preferred if there were fewer of them but more pages, so we had time to get invested before moving on to the next.

Still, there’s fun to be had in spending more time with these characters, and if you do like what the series offers generally, you will still get some enjoyment. Even if it’s not the series at its finest, I enjoyed seeing Iana getting herself embroiled in all kinds of situations.

As mentioned, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess: Short Story Collection comes to the West thanks to Yen Press. Translation has been handled by Kei Coffman, with lettering by Rachel J. Pierce, both of whom work on the main series, so everything is consistent.

There is a second short story collection that has just been released in Japanese, so I imagine we’ll see that come to the West in time. Meanwhile, Yen Press are continuing to release the main series and is now up to Volume 13 of the 17 volumes currently available in Japan.

Overall, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess: Short Story Collection is worth adding to your shelves if you’re particularly taken with the cast. However, if you’re looking for chapters with a bit more to sink your teeth into, these are fairly lacking in substance.

A free preview can be read on the publisher’s website.
Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.