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

"Villainess Level 99" should've been a masterpiece, but it turned out to be good instead. Honestly, this series was really disappointing, and not in the way that it is overall bad, but it just felt like it had much more potential than what it concluded with... What I mean is: Characters don't really have very much characterization, and the plot feels a bit skewed. 1. Characters don't really have very much characterization: The entire plot tries to focus around the next hero's party, which makes sense why they would work towards that because the plot proclaims that the demon king will attack. The problem with this isn't thefact that the characters do stupid nonsensical stuff, the issue is that the story doesn't actually focus around the main character "Yumiella Dolkness" for a decent portion of the series, especially after episode 6.
This is a problem since most of the "hero's party" are somewhat useless characters that don't make a difference to the plot. The only characters that actually somewhat matter to the story are; Yumiella, Alicia, and maybe Edwin. The other hero party members, William and Oswald, are basically all meant to draw a fake romantic conflict between Alicia and Edwin. That being said, there simply isn't enough time for you to get enough development to like these side characters to actually get to really liking them, plus it actively destroys the MC's own character development and likability since there is less development and screen time actually showing these characters gain traits.

2. The plot feels a bit skewed:
This almost entirely only comes into effect at the end of the season, the finale with the demon king was very uneventful for an ending, and didn't come across as all of what it should've been. The last episode felt rushed, while the rest of the series felt very slow, possibly due to the amount of time the anime focused onto side characters, as I said in #1, but it also doesn't help that the characters were pushed out to fight a character that the viewer has no knowledge of, and the anime didn't make a good impression with the demon king.

This isn't to say that this show was any bit unwatchable, it's actually pretty good. The lack of distinct focus on the plot and narrative really just hits this show right in the guts, making it feel much less worthwhile than contemporaries.

Overall, this is a good anime though, it just has some issues, and had a lot of potential.

🗿 7.5/10 🗿