English Dub Season Review: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X Season Two

Based on a series of Light Novels Written by Satoru Yamaguchi and Illustrated by Nami Hidaka. Season 2 serves as a direct continuation of the previous Season which I jokingly describe as “A Shot a Love: Isekai Editon” because what it has in common the most with that talentless and short-lived Tila Tequila reality show from MTV, is the oblivious leading female character being the object of affection to both men and women. But unlike that disaster of a show, Caterina is charming and often comes across as an oblivious dolt whenever she’s faced with people conveying their romantic feelings. Made worse is the people who see Caterina as an object of affection after having at least one conversation are suddenly falling for her like a crazy fanboy/fangirl with almost zero logic or reasoning. So color me fucking surprised when there was a show that tops itself in its absurdity.


The art, for the most part, feels like they picked up everything right where they left off giving the show a consistent look and feel to what came before. As if it’s more colorful in some areas, and darker in others, with some nice touches here and there. Sometimes, there’s a static model of certain characters in place and just show the mouth moving, if you’re perceptive of this, it could potentially hurt your experience. As for the soundtrack, Angela performed the second season’s opening theme song “Fall in Love at Andante!”, while Shouta Aoi performed the second season’s ending theme song “give me ♡ me”. which is at least catchy to some extent.

To compare the story elements between both seasons, Season 2 attempted to push the story forward by having character development (Nicol, Geordo, Keith, Mary), but they failed in the execution. Mary, specifically, gets more annoying. Sora is the only new character that has more depth than the established main cast. It also takes a noticeably deeper dive into the side quest that is the whole “dark magic” realm with the engagement with the Department of Magic in dealing with new issues with the head of the Department of Magic Larna Smith. Some new characters are weaved into this scenario, like Rufus Brode in the whole Stuart family debacle of becoming king, and the complicated origins of Keith. In the midst of all of this, the dense Catarina doesn’t completely progress, but at least there are subtle hints that she’s made aware of their advances but that’s not saying much…

A lot of the same shit happens in season 2 with almost no stakes or urgency and problems are just solved so damn easily. They also kept using the same kidnapping plot over and over again which got annoying as well. I honestly think they should’ve focused on Caterina’s relationships more and given hints on who she is falling in love with instead of her being taken advantage of all the time by three specific characters.

Overall, while not perfect, the show is at least watchable to a certain extent. The most hurtful and flawed part of this double-reverse harem anime is that it shares many of the same problems with shows like Black Clover when it comes to writing romance. Either because its main character consistently fails to see when romance is right in from them and doesn’t reciprocate, or it generally blue-balls the audience to where even if the confession almost happens and is somehow interrupted by poorly contrived situations which really frustrates and kills any emotional investment we the audience are supposed to have. At the very least with the recent announcement of a Movie, we can only hope there’s a proper conclusion that redeems the show from Harem Anime Monotony…