The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess – Episode 1

What’s it about? When Satou Konoha was a middle school student she wrote a fan fiction series called “DarK History” and continued to add to its lore throughout her teen years.  Once she became a working adult she had long forgotten her writings, but not long after rediscovering them she’s killed by a truck. Konoha reincarnates into “Dark History” as the villainess, Iana and now has to figure out how to survive in her own story.  

There’s nothing worse than getting reincarnated into a fan fiction story you wrote back in your teens.  Young adolescence is such a sensitive time for teens since their bodies and minds go through immense changes.  That’s why fan fiction is such a great outlet for them to explore their complex emotions and sexuality in a safe space.  What interests me about this premiere is that the series wants to engage with tropes often found in isekai stories for teenage girls and explore why those themes resonate so strongly with them.  In Iana’s case, it’s clear her stories were also a form of escapism from the pressures of being a teenage girl, creating a world for herself to enter.  

A part of me can’t help, but wonder if there were darker implications as to why Iana felt so convinced that she’ll leave her world.  Was she going through some suicide ideation and coped with it through her delusions? It could also just be she needed some simple escapism and I’m just overthinking it.  Regardless, any story with this much thought into it has my attention and I’m happy to report that I had a lot of fun with this premiere.  Iana is such a spunky lead and her internal mental breakdowns are hilarious.  She’s incredibly lucky that she arrived into the story before she did anything truly heinous, otherwise she’d still have assassination attempts on her life.  The comedy centers around Iana’s desperation to remember her own storylines in order to avoid major death flags for herself and the heroine.  

Iana is a fantastic example of physical comedy done right, as her facial expressions and body language conveys her eccentric thoughts, which makes an otherwise quiet or serious scene extremely funny.  I definitely can predict the poor girl will eventually experience fatigue from either fighting for her life or cringing at her teenage writings — I know I would.  The other characters are surprisingly interesting despite being their exact archetypes.  The stand out for me is the assassin butler named Sol.  While it’s obvious he loves the heroine, there’s something about his stoic energy that just matches Iana’s eccentricity very well.  I don’t know how chaotic the shipping is going to be in this show, but for the time being, I’m locked in.  

It could also be the fact that aside from May I Ask for One Final Thing?, I’ve seen nothing but bottom of the barrel shows this season, that anything that exudes genuine effort makes me feel a semblance of joy.  I mean the visuals for the opening theme song alone got me hooked and the animation for the rest of the premiere looks decent.  I don’t expect an A-tier animation budget, since we all know how shoujo anime is treated by the anime industry at large, but I promise you, this is absolutely watchable. 

I think it’s worth giving this series a chance just to see where it goes.