Kill the Villainess

I'll keep this short and spoiler free: you need to read this manhwa. TL;DR at bottom Story: Very interesting premise that stays captivating from start to finish. A lot of manhwas feel like a train on fire during their second half - not only is [Kill the Villainess] interesting at the start, I'd say it gets even more intense towards the end. I do have to warn you though - don't expect this story to be all rainbows and butterflies. It's a rather grim and heart wrenching read for the most past. I guarantee though that you'll love the ending. Characters: The characters are well written, witha lot of them being nuanced. Most of them have huge daddy issues and past traumas, but man they're complex, and the villains are especially revolting - I love how the author portrayed all the usual toxic ML clichés in novels. I especially adore the "love rival", and the female lead, and how unlike your usual protagonists, she actually misses her family/home. And the male lead? Gyatt dayum, this guy is the ultimate green flag. It's rare to find a husbando as good as him when manhwas are filled with toxic douches. Art: The art is gorgeous. Any scene with the female lead could be used as a phone wallpaper, and the most important part - it stays consistent from start to finish without decaying towards the ending. Why should you value my opinion? I've read dozens if not hundreds of manhwas, from romances, to reincarnation/transmigration tropes, to villainess tropes and a lot of them suffer from a bad case of diarrhea second half/ending, leaving you with a shitty aftertaste in your mouth. [Kill the Villainess] is worth it, it's a breath of fresh air and will leave you satisfied at the end. TL;DR Read it! It's a dark and quite heart wrenching story, with great complex characters (some of them rather disgusting), great art and super entertaining that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish!

The main character is quite smart, decisive and plans how to go back to her world. I hated other mangas, where mf was stupid, fell in love with one of the main leads who were in love with the protagonist and in the end ended up with her or where she just forgets about her previous life and is like ok lets live happily here. Like don't you feel bad your life was taken away from you and you were forced to live in a life of a person who is hated by all and in most cases destined to die? She wasn't pretandingto be nice to anyone or make people love her, she had one goal to go back and she did everything to do that. I liked her knight, he was lovely and he treated her like an actual person, though a bit unrealistic to just follow her and be so loyal even though she didn't really do anything for him to deserve that. I liked their ending(I won't spoiler, for me it was very nice and wholesome). I gave 8/10 cuz of those things, as other isekai mangas seem all the same and this was original and the story was nice. I didn't give a higher rating cuz: 1.all of the other characters were boring, stupid and irritating. Sure, we should hate some of them, but come on... The witch didn't have any background, she just showed up and did stuff for a reason that was really stupid in the end IMO. All 'main' characters had like one moment where their past was explained, but it was too short and shallow, it didn't make me connect or understand them at all. 2.The only way she could achieve her goal was to listen to a stranger witch, who she knew nothing about, but hey lets go with that and do it! WTF seriously? That's that? I get it she didn't have much knowledge, but to blindly trust strangers? 3.The way plot was developing was awkward. Some episodes nothing was happening and were boring, others were supposed to make us sad and understanding for other characters, but were too shallow to achieve it, then suddenly things go very dark for no reason and then its the end. I liked the idea very much, but the way the story was told wasn't so good. It also came up with weird stuff, just to try to fulfill the main idea of that world that characters need to fullfill their role before they can die. It felt forced. I still recommend it, but only for the idea of the story, the main character and her knight. If you like those, you're going to be happy, otherwise skip.

Kill the Villainess is one of the many works in which the female character wakes up as the hated character of the book they were reading, however it tries to escape the mold by doing exactly what she is supposed to do instead of turning the tide towards her. It works for the most part, alas the second half othe work treads into more illogical waters. Eris is coldhearted, mean and manipulative and she keeps at it, except rare scenes she opens up a bit more to the people she trusts. She is a character you like reading about, because she gets things done. Based onthe supposedly vague memories she has of the book, since she only skimmed it, she plans ahead to bring forth the results she needs. However, this is the start of all the problems and logic behind the world. First of all, she claims she skimmed the book and does not remember everything, but she does remember everything, just only when it's convenient for the plot itself and it gets a bit annoying the further you progress. Second of all, the whole point is how the god of the world (author) has created it for a single purpose and that is the whole story of the book from start to finish, so you cannot break fundamental laws, because the world itself will not allow you to. This makes sense and it is welcome, but soooo many things change and there are also enough things outside what the god has created and somehow those things barely do anything to the world, because Eris (as well as the author of this webtoon) is just convinced that the ONLY important thing is dying by execution, disregarding everything else that should be very important plot points. The second ambivalent part of this webtoon is the characters themselves. We start reading about Eris and somehow we keep getting random backstories for every character in good and (mostly) bad exposition. I understand that we need to see a bit deeper into Helena, Jason, high priest, etc., but must EVERYONE be messed up one way or another? The more you learn about everyone, the more you wonder how the original book story came to be, because their characters are really all over the place. And towards the final part of reading this, the men who are interested in Eris one or another show that interest in very... questionable ways. The turn of events is mostly there to shock, but it is full of bad writing and little cohesion. In the end, it felt that the need to shock was greater than keeping those characters more true to themselves. The art was very detailed and as expected of a villainess webtoon, really. I found myself starting at Eris a few times due to her very pretty design. Helena's design, who is the true heroine of the book, truly gives off the idea of a Disney princess; soft colors and expressions and very beautiful as well, in a cuter way than the imposing Eris. Every guy is also distinct and maybe the most generic one would be Anakhin, who was always a more forgotten support character, but he would still win your heart! The disappointment might have been big in the second half of the book, however it still has its good points with this more refreshing look on the genre. You love reading about Eris' schemes and I found myself wanting to know more about her plans, for which the climax didn't capitulate enough on that buildup those plans had created. Eris' development is bumpy, but it hits all the right points be it the fear or excitement or panic or happiness. I just wish it was more consistent throughout and avoided the shock value effect for better storytelling.

Very minor spoilers and me talking around things to avoid major ones. I’m going to start with this, one of many factors having me having mixed feelings than straight-up recommending: if you are looking to read a love story, this is not that. It is a story that has love in it, but it is not a love story. The “male lead” is in reality just a supporting character with less development, personality, and “screen-time” than one of the major antagonists of the story. Despite loving this story in retrospect, I’m going to rate this a 7 (“I liked it” in my rating system) instead of an8 (“I loved it” in my rating system) because while I loved parts of it and overall loved it looking back, there were also parts I thought were just “fine” at most, and there are one or two pretty significant plot holes and weird plot points. I’m a sucker for a good isekai, especially the “transmigrated into a book I read” ones. I’m more of a side character transmigration person myself, but this story stood out in that it gave me something I loved: a transmigrator who wanted to go back. It’s great and touches on something that no other seemed to touch on. If you were ripped away from your home, wouldn’t you want to go back? In some, they excuse it by saying the character had a bad life and therefore this one is better, but in most, it’s barely addressed. In this story, yeah, she didn’t have a great life, but it was HER life. Her wanting to go back was what made this story stand out for me. This story started off strong, and I’m not going to say it collapsed, but it certainly weakened. Still, it was good enough that I continued, unlike a number of other isekais that simply crashed and burned after a while. At some points it’s stronger than others. I think one thing I hate about these stories is that so many are unnecessarily long and drawn out. And I’ll admit, it got REALLY strong again in the last 20 or 30 chapters. But that’s quite a while to wait. Let’s start with her love interest: he’s just there. He, in my opinion, largely serves as a plot device to make our MC feel conflicted about leaving and one of a few characters to help her start viewing the fictional characters of the novel she’s been transmigrated into as people instead of just fictional characters. He is an extremely passive character, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a point when it goes from passive to boring. What made him interesting was her love for him. He didn’t really have much of a personality and didn’t talk much, and this was largely due both to simply how he is as a person and also the choice to make him the knight of the MC, and therefore someone under her service who does not speak unless spoken to, does not share his opinions unless asked, and does not make his own choices unless it’s “oh, I have to save my master now.” We know nothing about he feels until there’s finally a confession and in the two or three chapter epilogue that’s just a brief recap from his perspective. So essentially, unless something happened between the lines that we never saw, our MC falls for her love interest because… well, because he’s doing his job or protecting her and following her every single order. Then we have the plot holes and plot points. First the major plot hole: the love interest, Anakin. Eris meets Anakin completely by coincidence. He is quite literally an unnamed character in the story. She later sees him during a ceremony in which nobles pick their knights, and she chooses him. Eris had a knight in the novel, and I’m pretty sure it’s literally stated that Anakin might not be the knight since it’s all coincidence and the knight was never named. But then Eris keeps acting like he was the unnamed Knight from the story despite there being absolute no proof of this whatsoever when virtually nothing was known about the knight aside from him serving Eris and then falling for her. PERHAPS her logic is that the laws of this world (referred to as the Law of Causality) make it so everything that is destined to happen in the story ends up happening, but that’s not mentioned. She just suddenly decides it. Another major plot hole is the Law of Causality at a few points. This simply cannot be broken. She literally can’t kill herself because of the Law needing her to live as the villainess for the story to progress. Yet a major character of the original story is allowed to die? Then one huge one at the ending that, without spoiling, happens in chapter 92 iirc, and is the MC being like, “Hey, what if we do this?” As if it will automatically work when there is literally no supporting evidence for this whatsoever. Like, why would you think that’d work? Most likely case scenario is bad consequences so where the hell is this coming from? Eris is also called the most powerful woman in the world. This is never elaborated on. She has no fighting skills or magic powers like other characters do. There is literally no reason for her to be called this except for maybe adding onto one of the weird plot points at the end. And now the annoying plot points. For one thing, the former empress of China shows up, apparently having been transmigrated who knows when. FL comes to the conclusion it’s her because the name is the same and apparently we’re not supposed to find it weird that the former empress of China is here. And she calls FL an outsider despite her being an outsider herself. But most of all, the ending. Is there a sequel to this? Because dear god, the ending just slaps you with so much new, random information, that it’s confusing af. It feels partially a way to explain the final plot point with the love interest, but it genuinely makes no sense whatsoever. And then one of the supporting characters suddenly ends up super important and is destined for some major thing and then the story ends. I need a sequel just for this character coz how tf are you gonna end it saying “something major is going to happen and you are here to help” and then end the story? I think this story needs to be polished a LOT. I’m disappointed that a story that started out so damn strong suddenly got so weak, just like so many other isekai I’ve read are. Despite that, I was still interested enough that I gave it a good grade and finished the story. And can I just say one more thing: how tf do you abandon a traumatized child you view as family and counts on and loves you for your own selfish desires? Like, we see this child sobbing and alone. Should I be rooting for the people who made her that way?