An unnamed woman lost her parents when she was in junior high. Then she lost her grandparents 14 years ago when she was 24. But as she enters her home, the now 38-year-old woman presumably passes away for any number of reasons. And when she awakens, she finds her engagement to the Prince of Augasta Kingdom broken, and her known as Elise Von Schwarzward. Who in the world is Elise? Well, she’s the villainess of the otome game her aunt lent her, Love Princess! And talk about getting thrown right into the main crux of the game!
But Elise recovers and happily accepts the prince ending their relationship. She then begins plotting untold new things to make her new world as comfortable and cheat-like as possible. But for some reason, some time later, her maid provides one of Elise’s favorite sweets, cake. Wait a minute — cake shouldn’t exist in this world yet! And now her family has questions about the cake! As someone who doesn’t want to keep hiding things, she tells her family the truth about her being reincarnated.
This leads to the most interesting twist in the villainess/reincarnation trope yet!
…Well, maybe lol!
While villainess series are starting to become more prevalent in anime form, there’s a large amount of villainess books — manga, manhwa, webtoons, etc — that exist that I’m sure have reimagined/reinvented how the supposed villainess is supposed to act. So saying My Engagement Got Broken off (lol) has an interesting twist only applies to me and me only. But learning that not only has Elise had real world memories beginning when she was a child — she just forgot them during certain points — but her family, particularly her mother and father, already suspected she wasn’t normal caught me off guard. If the isekai work has not already shown that otherworlders exist, then usually in these stories the main protagonists keep that part as secretive as possible.
So Elise revealing this and her family accepting this does open things up to where they can use her advanced knowledge to grow their territory. You already combine that with the idiot prince who broke the engagement and his now new fiancée, there are plenty of ways for the series to go. Currently though, we’re at the weird stage of finding out Elise growing up had odd fetishes. (Why are the knights wearing loincloths? And is she actually whipping them???). And at the stage where current Elise just wants to create “food porn.”
Is this the part where I go, “is this localization of the manga ok?” The answer to this is, sure — it reads fine enough, but some words just read kind of awkwardly. Are we sure food porn is great to say at every opportunity? Maybe it would’ve been wiser to only use it selectively. As it stands, it feels unnatural. I guess I should just be glad the series overall doesn’t read poorly.
Still, while the characters themselves have some questions about them (except Elise’s mother and the Queen of Augasta, they’re both awesome), there’s intrigue in knowing what exactly Elise can do to have the perfect isekai life, even if maybe it should be faster paced in some areas or have a general focus. But sometimes words and actions are enough, and at least for now, I’m wondering what’s going to happen next.