I'm not a Villainess!! Just Because I Can Control Darkness, Doesn't Mean I'm a Villain

"I'm Not a Villainess!! Just Because I Can Control Darkness, Doesn't Mean I'm a Villain" is not good. Chapter 12 has a huge elephant in the room hanging over it that absolutely everyone is willing to give it (deserved) criticism, but it's far from the only problem that keeps the manga from being a good read. The obvious issue should be addressed first. The main character, Claudia, is blessed by the Dark Spirit King at birth, and as such has dark eyes, black hair, and notably darker skin than the rest of the cast. The dynamic at play is "her skin is darkso she is evil and should be shunned" (with an extra step), and it is not handled with nearly the deft hand needed to try and make this allegory work. It is EXTREMELY unsubtle in this regard, with the manga going so far as to spell out that her discrimination is explicitly because of her darker features, but is also lacking any sort of nuance beyond 'she is dark, so she is treated bad'. A scene in the middle third fumbles this *even harder*, if such a thing were possible, so badly that it had to be re-released with the offending element reverted after the outcry in Japan. It is extremely problematic, and if that's a dealbreaker for you, you should avoid this manga. If it isn't, the story is still full of flaws. The pacing of the story is *awful*, even among a sea of poorly-paced villainess manga. It spends an inordinate amount of time on story beats that do not matter, while glossing over at least one major plot development as being handled completely off-screen that is told about to the reader later. The story also contains multiple time-skips, several of which happen mid-chapter, that completely throw off whatever momentum the story was capable of building up to at that point. Events that clearly deserve proper exploration and buildup, including but not limited to an entire war, are simply glossed over in a few pages. As a direct consequence, much of the plot feels like an unrelated string of beats and contrivances rather than a complete story, and many decisions made by characters feel like they only exist for the sake of the plot. One character is 'unknowingly' carrying around an object the size of an apple in their shirt. Another character refuses to do a specific action for the entire story, and then at the climax does that exact action that they've been adamant they'd never do just so that the drama can unfold in that moment. A specific group of characters is introduced as a potential force moving in the background of the story and then basically never used. The final tapestry of the story dangles with dropped threads and is full of holes, and all attempts at twists fall distressingly flat. The villain is an idiot. This is not exactly new for the genre, but it is especially egregious here as they show up for less than one total volume, make a series of extremely and obviously stupid moves, and then are put on a bus to never be seen again. The replacement villain (because the story keeps going, although this is almost forgivable in context) is not much better. The summary implies that Claudia has been "granting them immense magical control over their respective element", but the story utterly fails to show even a sliver of this. In fact, Claudia has almost no agency at all. The extent of her ability in combat seems to be to cower behind another (always male) character and shout for the (again, male) Spirit King to come save her. Most, if not all, of the combat magic seen around Claudia is done *for* her by the Dark Spirit King, and very little if any is done *by* her on her own. (this is strangely not true of her healing magic, an ability she uses exactly one time in the entire story. I'm sure this is not traditional-gender-role-dynamics related at all. /s) Even in the climax, where it looks like she's going to have to stand on her own two feet, it is immediately undercut by, once again, male characters coming to her rescue while she effectively just watches. This is never addressed and mostly just given as a normal way for this to play out. There's not nothing redeemable in the story. The method that led to the main character's first death and isekai into her new world is something that, at least personally, I've never seen before, for example. But overall, the story just doesn't have anything at all going for it in the positives, and a slew of negatives that make it hard to score the manga higher than a 3. (And, if I'm being truly honest, I'm not sure what more a manga would need to do for me to score it a 1-2. I'm sure there's SOME sort of criteria out there that would cause it, but I cannot think of what it might be.)