“Anyone Can Beat the Original” or “You Think It's Easy Rewriting a Story?” starts like any other manga in this genre: a girl is reborn and realizes that she is now part of a book she once read. However, her character is supposed to die, so she does everything she can to prevent that – and so the story takes its course. Honestly, that's all you need to know to understand what you're getting into here – but why should you read this manga over the hundreds of others that have a similar premise? At the beginning, the unusual protagonist is particularly convincing. Not only did shegrow up among the rich in “our” world and thus knows how to fight against the high society aristocracy, but she also has a rather cheeky and rebellious nature, which repeatedly maneuvers her into entertaining, often even laugh-out-loud funny situations. The whole thing is underscored by a subtly different art style, which is characterized above all by very expressive facial features. Here, faces are contorted in ways that would often be funny on their own.

However, the further the story progresses, the more the main idea behind this book comes to the fore: the story that the protagonist Eve is trying to change seems to be fighting back. Whether it's fate or something else, something seems to be forcing the world to make Eve die a cruel death in a tragedy. This was somewhat entertaining at first, but soon develops into an annoying quirk. Every time a plan seems to be working, something or someone says “NO” and something happens that ruins the plan – often in a way that seems absurd and inappropriate. Even though there are small successes along the way and it seems likely that the story will be changed through a thousand small alterations, it soon becomes quite frustrating.

That's why I enjoyed the manga less towards the end, which is why I'm only giving it 6 out of 10 stars.