Review of Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord

This show exemplifies a lot of things that have just been annoying me about anime, especially modern anime. First thing that is pretty inconsequential but actually pisses me off is the long and overly specific titles. It is a title, not a premise. Why couldn’t this just be called Villainess Level 99? That’s all we need. It tells us the main character and the premise of them being OP. If we want to know more we could read the synopsis or, I don’t know, watch the fucking show. This next complaint might just be a cultural difference but it is the utter unoriginality in anime.And what I mean by this is that there is an entire genre to “getting trapped in a otome video game as the villainess”. This is such an oddly specific concept and yet for some reason, there are countless anime and manga on it, each with just a tiny little caveat that makes it ‘unique’. That’s the extent of the creativity that goes into these shows. It’s the same thing except ‘she’s op in this one’ or, ‘she’s in love with the hero’. It’s the same damn thing. I have watched the first episode of every anime that came out this season and 90% of them were isekai or some fantasy world setting. I only finished 3 of those shows. Everything is just a tweaked version of the other. But the unoriginality doesn’t stop there. Because every anime is an adaptation of a manga. It’s a teaser saying to read the manga or for people who are just too lazy to read them. It’s a waste of an entire medium. Saying the show is unoriginal is not fair because actually, it’s the manga that’s unoriginal. On top of that, the premise of entering an otome game is unoriginal. It truly is just a self-insert. It’s looking at another person's work and saying “I would have done this if I was the character.” Every person thinks that and if you really want to see shit like that play out for whatever reason, go to Wattpad. Why are these actual studio productions? I feel like most manga now are just fanfictions. That’s why they are all power fantasies. It’s unoriginal and hinges on validating and playing out fantasies instead of actual compelling storytelling. This show is nothing. Every character is bland, it’s inoffensive, it’s predictable (it ended exactly as they said it would 3 episodes prior), it gave you the mindless rush of “yeah, show the people who doubt you!”, the cgi sucks dick and I’ll probably forget it exists by tomorrow. The only reason it’s so high is because it’s just inoffensive. I don’t hate it, I enjoyed parts of it. I don’t need to talk about specifics because of how unoriginal it is.