This is the first of two Impressions posts today, so keep an eye out for the second in case you miss it!
Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord
Short Synopsis: A girl is sucked into her favorite otome game as the villain and must do everything she can to win the boy and avoid her fate!
I’ll admit, Villainess Lv 99 actually got me. I hadn’t read the summary and so fully bought into Alicia as our MC and the whole “I’ve been sucked into my favorite Otome game as the protagonist” thing. And you know what? While watching it, it wasn’t terrible. Rather dull, sure, but that’s mostly because this genre isn’t my favorite. But I was actually kind of impressed at the way it used its environment. Take for instance the rooftop scene, I fully expected them to just ignore the window, for it to not matter at all, when logically they should fall as they walk over it. And you know what? They did! That, along with a few others, felt nice to see. And the switch to our primary PoV character after we first meet her assuming Alicia would be our lead? I think it worked. Sure at the end of the day it’s still an Otome game OP MC isekai, lets not set the expectation too high. But if that’s your thing, Villainess Lv 99 seems like a solid choice.
Potential: 30%
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp
Short Synopsis: Fantasy princess dies, isekai’s to our world, becomes a doctor, dies again, isekai’s back to her own world before her first death, and starts it all over.
Holy crap this is bad. Doctor Elise is an Isekai of an Isekai, where a fantasy princess dies, comes to our world, trains as a doctor, dies again, and then gets sent back to her world 10 years before she died the first time. If you want a story about a terrible person learning to be a better person, why not just… Do that instead of all of this convoluted bullshit? And to top it all off? It doesn’t look good at all. This one is a hard pass, there are better isekai this season. God doesn’t that feel weird to say.
Potential: 0%
Metallic Rouge
Short Synopsis: Mecha tokusatsu on mars. That’s all I’ve got, it really doesn’t explain much more than that.
This first episode of Metallic Rouge felt really really awkward. It’s stuck in this middle ground of being a mecha tokusatsu and a transhumanist think-piece on AI/Cyborgs on whether or not they are truly human. On one hand, it looks cool. That fight at the end was fun, looked great, the 2D mecha designs were fantastic, and the music worked well. On the other hand, this world feels like an amalgamation of many different ideas that don’t really fit together yet, from the “Immortal Nine” to AI being second class citizens basically and needing a special nectar daily to survive, but that nectar is also apparently worth a lot of money and humans can drink it too for some reason? How are these AI affording this while working menial labor jobs and such? And that’s not even mentioning the characters. Can you honestly tell me anyones motivation at any point in this episode? Rouge? Naomi? The weird and mediocre blonde villain dude who dresses like a jester? Because I can’t. Metallic Rouge feels like a show with a lot of ideas that, as of this first episode, it has no idea how to communicate. I’ll give it a shot for another few episodes, see if this was just a really awkward pilot. But I’m not expecting a lot from it.
Potential: 40%
The post Winter 2024 Impressions: Villainess Level 99, Doctor Elise, Metallic Rouge appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
