My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 7

Karandi started last week’s posts with the sentence “Well, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to advance its plot” and I guess that’s just what we’re going with now. Not that I’m complaining, I wanted the show to become unrelated Slice of Life episodes so I’m thrilled.

But before we get to all that, it’s Friday, everyone!!! Not only that but it’s Friday the 13th! Happy Friday the 13th. K, Crow, how have you both been. Not too unlucky I hope?

My week has sucked but nothing to do with Friday the 13th, which is fortunately well and truly over for me anyway at this point. Lack of sleep, work computer breaking down, and just a number of things that really didn’t go the way I needed them to have meant that I was running on fumes by the end of the week (note, telling people they look tired does not help them be less tired).

That said, My Next Life as a Villainess is a good way to kick off the weekend and get my head into a more positive space.

One of the great things about having my luck is that Friday the 13th is just another day! Overall, it’s been a solid week. My family’s healthy and so am I. I count that as a win! Also, my part of the US has been spared most of the extreme weather, at least for now.

So this week’s episode was one of those alternate reality episodes a lot of shows have. The basic plot device being that after finally arriving at magic school (seems like magic school has been teased forever now) the team is brought to a magical dollhouse in which you can live out your fantasy. And our merry band of royals have some odd fantasies!

I thought most of them were pretty fun. Neko Nicol was cute and Allan as a bid was hilarious! I thought it was sort of telling that Catarina and Maria were the only two whose fantasies didn’t involve anyone else. Oh, and Mary is sort of evil. I guess we already knew that but this was a pretty big reminder. She doesn’t just want to end up with Catarina, she wants everyone else to suffer! I wish we would see more of Mary this season.

After all of this though, I have to say I really wish we would have seen more of Keith’s fantasy. Like where was he going with this? Why did he genderswap everyone instead of just himself and Catarina? Why didn’t we get some BL moments with the genderswapped girls? So many questions. Also, Allan may look very silly as a bird but he looks great as a girl. 

Did you guys have a favourite fantasy?

The effect of Neko Nicol’s (I wish that were a real, recurring character — it has a great ring to it!), even in Neko form, was funny. I also loved Anne’s ongoing commentary. For example, remember how Sophia’s fantasy was just to be a fairy who could hang out with Catarina? “It should never be shown to Lady Mary, though,” Anne said.

I tried to think of Mary as less evil and more passionate. Then that changed to fixated, which morphed into obsessed. Then I figured, no, she’s evil. That’s what Mary would do.

Made quite the dashing man, though. 

And seeing Alan’s gray hair on his bird form was a high point.

I could really relate to Nicol’s fantasy of being a cat as it was one I wished for many times this week as I had to head out and could see my cat curled up in amongst the blankets happy as could be. Even now she’s bouncing around my room trying to find the ‘best’ spot for her next nap.

I also really found Keith’s gender swap fantasy kind of fun and thought it would be great if we’d just had a whole episode of gender-swapped characters.

Though unlike Crow, I found Alan’s fantasy of being a bird pretty ho-hum. I mean, we couldn’t have spent more time exploring that because it was more or less played out in the few minutes we saw whereas I felt most the other fantasies had some room for further exploration or made me want to see a bigger story in them.

So eventually the people on the outside realize what’s happening. Oh wait.. I forgot to talk about them. We have Larna in her third personality, which is apparently an abusive employer, Sirius who seems to be back to the person he was pretending to be in season 1 and Sora who was… Ok, so Karandi is a huge fan of this character so she’ll correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t he more suited to the glasses and butler outfit? Also to being a little evil? I don’t know, this week Sora seemed sort of dull. If we didn’t know him from previous episodes I probably wouldn’t have really noticed him much. Is it just me? Crow, Karandi what do you think?

It’s hard to disagree. He was so darned nice that it bothered me. Not enough to affect how much fun I had with the episode. But a little sense of danger would have been fun. It would have been fun if he had an arrangement with the doll master of the house, for example. 

I was excited to see Sora return but you are right, he was a little dull here. I was hoping he’d at least stir something in the group by dropping a hint or two of how close he got to Catarina or something but instead he’s just Raphael with better hair and slightly taller. 

However, his reaction to Catarina’s fantasy was pretty hilarious because it was more or less the same exasperation he had when he realised she was more or less unperturbed about her kidnapping earlier in the season. Still, I wanted more from this character when I saw he was back.

Can I just ask why Catarina wants to work at this magic institute when everyone seems so overworked and tired? It seems like the absolute opposite of the life she wants for herself. 

Anyways, they figure out what’s happening, and Catarina’s maid is there too. Sirius and Anne decide to go into the dollhouse in order to save everyone by putting the doll that resides within to sleep. 

It’s a little sad that Sirius’ fantasy is just to have a reasonable work-life. He even called a workplace where you can go to sleep in your own bed “the ideal work environment”. Ouch. I can sympathize. I know I’ve felt that way from time to time and you guys have as well, right?

I’ve been lucky recently, but yeah, I can sympathize. I’ve worked in places where 16 hours was the minimum. It was the family farm. During the spring (planting season), if we had to work the ground, it’s be sun up until sun down. And then we got them fancy modern tractors with lights. So I really sympathized with poor Sirius!

Yep, modern technology has made it that even when you aren’t at work you are never too far away from it. Still, I do enjoy my work, I just find it tiring while trying to manage my health. I really think Sirius/Raphael needs to join a union and at least set out an agreement of basic working conditions. Plus the boss shouldn’t be the biggest flake in the place.

When they were finally fighting the doll and Sirius created a small tornado I suddenly realized that I had actually forgotten that all the characters had magic in this series. It sort of hasn’t been brought up much this season and although obviously there was Magic School, I forgot that every member of the cast had their own elemental magic specialty and spells they can use. Why don’t they use them more often? I would use magic all the time if I could.

That’s a really good question. Plus, we never see people even at the magic academy using magic, even in the background, except for odd moments in the OP or in this episode. It’s too bad. I enjoyed the animation for the fight between Sirius and the doll. 

Spelling of the doll, was I the only one who thought about Rozen Maiden? The doll here reminded me of Suigintou. That’d be a fun cross over!

I was actually reminded of the doll from Ghost Hunt (in The Doll House file conveniently) who was just super creepy.

And yeah, the lack of magical use in this show continues to be a bit surprising because usually fantasy stories have any excuse to pull out weird powers. Whereas this one goes out of its way not to. I think season one only really had the dark magic, Catarina’s earth bump, and that one episode where they were doing the test in the labyrinth thing where magic really was used.

Still, it was a really cool scene and I loved that ultimately the magic didn’t solve the problem. 

In the end, Catarina saved the day, plucked the key and everyone went back to normal. They even agreed to never talk about it to each other ever again, which sort of ensures that this episode was a one off.

I’m still loving the randomness of it. How about you guys?

I had a blast with this episode. Really loved Anne’s running commentary, even within the doll house. “I’ll save that room for later…” My favorite Anne quote was near the end, when Catarina begged to know what Keith’s fantasy had been. “It would be best not to inquire further… For the sake of peace in everyone’s hearts.” She has a great dry sense of humor.

I really enjoyed the episode as it was just kind of fun silliness and as you said at the start My Next Life as a Villainess kind of works as a slice of life comedy so even if we don’t really get back to a ‘plot’ there’s enough going on to keep me entertained and I really just have fun with these characters.

Previous Posts

• My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 1
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 2 Review
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 3
• My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 4
• My Next Life As a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 5
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Episode 6