My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Desperate Situation! On the Verge of Doom

[ozaline]

So thanks to the comments on my last post I was clued into there being a spin-off manga AU story... wherein things go differently for Katarina. She regains her memories of her past life not at age eight where she was just being introduced to society, her fiance, adopted brother, and other friends, but at age 15.

She's already bullied her brother for eight years, and started bullying Maria at school. She's trying to make amends now to the people in her life since she feels remorseful, and also has less than one year before she faces her impending doom.

She makes a lot of the same moves as before, and manages to build a better relationship with her maid, and make friends once again with Mary Hunt, and Prince Alan, she even manages to get one of her followers to give up on bullying Maria (the rest abandon her though). She tries to break off her engagement with Prince Jeord, but he refuses to allow it first because he still finds her as useful deterrent to other suitors, but later he starts to become interested in the ways she's changing.

Maria forgives Katarina and starts to become friends with her as well... But old wounds are not so easily healed.

Comments

[alicemacher]

A 4Koma I'd like to see: Katarina regains her past-life memories mere moments before her execution. "Wait! Stop! Just give me another chance; I'll explain later."

[doodleboy]

Ah this is neat.

One thing I didn't really like about that spin-off was how it felt too... easy. Essentially it was a lot of repeating the beats of the first series, even breaking continuity at times to do it.

Which felt less like a emotional look at realizing you've been a crappy human being and trying to do better despite the damage already caused. And more like the author realized that they have a formula that works and are afraid to deviate from it and dilute the Brand TM.

It would be nice if the rest of the series was like this. If some of the capture targets can't be redeemed since they're already their toxic selves, and if Catarina has to deal with the fact that some of the damage she's done is irreparable. That she doesn't deserve the forgiveness of everyone she harmed.

It'd very much not be Bakarina, but we have a mainline Bakarina that does it's job fine.

[ozaline]

yeah I agree. That's why I posted this specific one, I don't know if it gets better after this.

I guess it makes enough sense for Maria to forgive Katarina since she's such a nice person to start with, and Katarina really made it clear she's repentant. and Mary was already a fairly nice person, she's probably LESS toxic than her mainline counterpart.

But yeah in the early chapters I found it boring cause it was a little too much of the same... with Katarina's snakes and everything.