the villainess genre that misses it's own point

[panzerkampfwagyu]

I've kinda been thinking about it for a while, but the villainess stories that make the heroine/original cast evil bad guys pretty much miss the entire point of the subversive core of the genre.
Like, at the core, the genre is "what if the not-actually-that-common-otome-game-archetype of the villainness was actually the protagonist and a morally good person", but a lot of the uses tend to turn the original cast into bad people or even whitewash the pre-possession villainess and that...
Kinda just makes it a straight good vs evil, where the MC is the underdog heroine and the antagonist the powerful villainess, except the heroine is allowed to be edgy.

I do find that that really fails to do anything with the trope and is pretty much the story just larping as it.

 

[UnnamedPlayer]

It's partly because the best way to show that someone (the villainess here) is a good moral person, is trough a conflict with evil. And you can use the original cast for that, instead of introducing new ennemies. Also, it help to understand why the vilainess was treated as such from the start : the big bad evil was slandering her and ruined her reputation. It's simple and make a coherent story, it explain why the vilainess is treated as a vilainess, help her to show her morality, and so on. It's kind of logical, the other possibility is some kind of "social redemption" arc for a real vilainess (after possesion if an isekai), but good luck trying to do that, it's really hard to write correctly, way more than the other option. And there is way less action with that kind of story.

Also, Vilainess manga target young girls/womens who identify to the vilainess. Everything is clear when you understand that it's the female equivalent of an isekai/harem manga but for teenage girls instead of teenage boys. You can't make the vilainess anything else than an edgy good-hearted misunderstood women treated badly by people around her, because the stupid deluded teenage girls who read those mangas thinks they are like that, they're good and it's others who are the problem.

 

[Angry_Panda]

I do kind of want to see a villainess manga where the MC leans into it.

"Well, finished having my rival beheaded, so I might as well burn down the orphanage."

 

[Manko-sensei]

I don't expect much from subgenres that are generic isekai/fantasy for other demographics than shonen. Specially when they are rarely something different from a plagiarisation of the same buildings/royalty of Paris.

 

[undeed]

I do kind of want to see a villainess manga where the MC leans into it.

like Joou Heika no Isekai Strategy?

my problem with most villainess isekai story, especially when the setting is said to be from a game,
is that if you think about the game itself, the original game's story shouldn't be able to work properly as a game

 

[Angry_Panda]

like Joou Heika no Isekai Strategy?

Well, there goes my productivity for the afternoon....

 

[TheAmberFang]

The most effective villainess stories I've read are ones that are more about why and how the OG Villainess came to be that way, focusing more on worldbuilding, politics, and drama. This often ends up avoiding the silly role reversal of having the OG Heroine be the evil-one-all-along, since an ensemble of villains and antagonists can be built from all the shitty people that raised and influenced the OG Villainess to be the way she is.

But yeah, stories that lean into villainy are hard to come by in general. Looking for that kind of stuff is why I often give villainess stories a shot, but it's very rare to find an MC who is genuinely a villainess. Despite the genre name, you're still more likely to find MC villains in shounen stuff.