_I thought i had learned my lesson..._
The highest i've ever rated anything from this ominous theme was 6/10 and that being rounded up. The bar is low.
As a chair of the 'Isekai Binger Foundation', each season at least one of the shows from the worst subgenre of isekai piques my interest,
You can of course imagine why such a show beamed brightly on my radar, an elder bureaucrat man who apparently dies by the fan-favourite multi-dimenional agent/hit-man/assasin is then warped into in a new fantasy world into the body of the complete polar opposite type of indivdual; the spoiled rich girl. This girl's duty is to make everything she touches suffer, then we explore how the mind of this modern-day japanese senior man contrasts with the nefarious dealings of an uptown girl in mysterious world filled with magic. Doesn't such a depection just fire neurones rapidly into the curiousity centres of your cerebrum?
School setting and Isekai, in my opinion, the worst combination for isekai shows. However for the Otome-game route it isn't so bad and can work quite well as shown here.
You know what, __9 episodes in__, i was positively surprised. I thought, 'what a blast, what a refreshing take on this genre'. The author, the direction, the animation, the soundtrack it all weaved together such a stunning experience for me. It played like a parody of sorts but, instead of trashing the medium, they rather brought out the best i've seen so far for this subgenre. The strategies employed in the orchestration of its ideas allowed the viewer to engage into the world with the brain activated, aswell as providing a wealth of nuance and knowledge. What i found endearing was the added touch of immersive detail at every turn, a true rarity in this medium amongst the modern works.
I loved how much you could learn from the dialogue as well as the intelligent discourse on display. There was no 'Mary Sue' trash, every action the MC took eminated with such a charming and irresistable sense of humilty, selflessless and only served to edify the people around her. What was funny was the stark but very evident truth of how much better a woman would behave wired with the brain of a man. They demonstrated a part of the true purpose of women as a bridge between men, every problem required her inspiration of others to solve, diametrically opposed to many of the less captivating and sloppy Villainess stories which feature an MC which in effect does everyone's job for them and better than them. The character was overpowered but there was no immoderate use of power for superfical effect. Her new found powers were used when necessary consequently hammering home the idea of restraint and self-control the perfect way a woman that position should behave. Another very irratating thing i noticed about other Otome-game shows is this perpetual wholly excessive praise and glorifcation with shallow exposition of characters(primarily female) without showing anything on screen, on the contrary in this show, that kind of nonsense was absent. I would never recommend a single villainess show to anyone, but this show was becoming the exception.
I don't know what it was that made me enjoy the show, the fact that it went off the rails with the concept of the villainess or the production values, references, humor, and little details that spiced it up. Either way it's just different from the norm for this abstract but in a good way.
There is a major twist early on which accentuates its status as more of a parody, which to be honest, i wasn't too fond of and it basically made any meaningful romance utterly impossible socially.
There was of course a lack of tension, or a lack of some big, bad overarching threat, but let's be honest, is that even needed? I never missed anything like that. If you put yourselves in the shoes of a teenage rich girl, is there anything that can realistically adventitiously harm a person like that apart from God? Those people are so bored with safety and security that they surreptitiously invent their own problems and fantasize about precarious affairs they are involuntarily put in. Thankfully there was none of the classic obligatory, random-deranged-pervert-rapist, jobber rehashed subplot here to bore us, just a focus on simple but heartwarming dialogue based on everyday problems for teenagers from a high-class academy to deal with. There was minor character development and you wouldn't be wrong to critique many of the side characters as plot-devices or one-note, it did seem that way at times. As this is a dating game theme you probably expect a bit of romance, but you'll be looking for that like a needle in a haystack. Romance in this scenario/premise is always extremely awkward and once you find out the truth behind his isekai experience it becomes probably the most awkward thing imaginable, while it's a shame that there's barely any romance in a 'Otome-Game' show the argument against it, won't have too many supporters.
Let's picture the intial premise of a man's soul inside a woman's body. We have to understand that if that's the case, he will now have to think through a woman's brain, then experience hormones that are native to the female body, that (she) because he's a woman now, because souls don't have sexual character, (no such thing as soul-mate) etc. She will experience extrinsic(to his soul) attraction to the male sex completely out of her control if we are completely logical about it. However setting up any romance in such perilous waters requires a break of a social barrier which is far too great for most writers, and not many will chastise them for not going deeeper. It's quite the hopeless conundrum.
You're thinking now, he's going to give this show at least an 7 or 8 possibly more. But here you're dead wrong!
Look back to my statement of '9 episodes', because after that we enter into 'the valley of the shadow of death'. Amongst the worst of the abominations, the sign of the end of any great civilization ever.
They had me hooked, baited me like no other i had already prepared a favorable review and an outstanding score(for this subgenre) then they ambushed me as i opened the door to episode 10.
I'm in total despondency; the plot-twist of doom...
__Cross-dressing.__
They even named the episode, "Cross-dressing" they're absolutely reveling in it.
The completely unnecessary, zero reason-to-occur, shoehorned, utter-shambles poppycock. If i told you that the next development would be they that they start crossdressing.,you wouldn't believe me. It never makes any sense and in this case even more so.
One of the greatest problems with this egregious development is the destruction of any and all captivation and immersion, it's unnatural and you don't really believe the characters anymore. It's a 'graceless' pivot that shatters the foundation of what made me like the show in the first place. There aren't any normal, mentally stable individuals that willingly randomly and elaborately dress-up as the other sex, it's an unorthodox roadblock that just erases characterization to fulfill a sinster mission that goes beyond the narrative.
I recall similar bait and switch tactics used with shows like;
- 'The Dungeon of Black Company'
- 'Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World'(E06)
and the worst examples;
- 'Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun'(E22)
- 'Spy X Family S1 part 2'(E04).
The worst part of those last 2 shows was that you were in so deep with male characters you could never expect to have such wicked tendencies, it just shows up out of nowhere, an insidious patttern.
Naturally i am unable to consume this revolting gruel, the mere sight of such a thing gives me instantaneous eruptions of hives and goosebumps akin to Trypophobia. I don't know what happens in any of those episodes nor did i sit around to consume it. But this stuff has to stop, how can we sit around in seemingly calm waters then get randomly attacked violently by a storm-typhoon-whirlpool of absolute degeneracy. It seems like an editor-inspired last minute paid addition to satisfy some grandiose executive request. If this was all part of the plan then i'm truly disappointed.
I suppose, the question might come up; what if a male soul was in a female body or vice versa like in situations like mind switching, isekai, reincarnation etc? The premise of this show?
First of all, there isn't a male soul, souls are sexless. Male soul defines the initial sex of the physical body that soul was attached to.
This doesn't happen in real life so fantasy is one of the few places we can excercise ideas like these. Circumstances like that are obviously nothing like cross-dressing, not even close. How you dress concerns your physical body and in which have the genetic makeup spearheaded by sexual chromosomes XY or XX. The rule must be immutably followed to allow us to appropriately engage seemelessly in these experiences, keeping us in peace without perverting the purpose of the narrative. These sex chromosones decide the entire make-up of your physical existence from brain to even single cells and there are massive differences between the two sexes. Specifically for this topic, these distinctions are very evident between the male and female brain. There's of course nothing wrong with the initial scenario. What's strange is how i've never seen the female mind/soul into a male body done before as a premise, it's not so desired, but that also illustrates the differences between the sexes.
It's barely acceptable narrative-wise for side characters to cross-dress as we can hopefully just ignore that and leave it to that individual being a depraved deviant. However if that side character takes too big a role in the story, essentially becoming a main character in the process, that can totally ruin the experience aswell.
According to my own standard of review, if the main character crossdresses even once, i will instantly drop the show and I am unable to score it above 50/1.
