Review: ‘I’m the Villainess, so I’m Taming the Final Boss’

Season 1 [December 14, 2022]¹

Taming the Final Boss is a mildly enjoyable diversion at best: it’s an uninspired romantic comedy in an uninspired fantasy setting with a convoluted premise, a badly rushed plot, and lacklustre romance and comedy. Though the setup is superficially similar to this year’s excellent Trapped in a Dating Sim, what develops is much less impressive: like a winning chess position, except every piece is slightly misplaced.

The pacing is disastrous: the season is crammed with standalone arcs, each of which is rushed, all of which leave little time for characters and relationships to develop. Nine episodes in, the show is still introducing entire factions in thirty-second expository clips. I thought we were going to see a video game villainess seduce a demon lord: are we done with that? I feel like we could have squeezed more out of it.

Actually, it’s not clear at all how the story builds on or benefits from the premise. Why make her a villainess? Why reincarnate her? Why in a dating sim? Any one of those elements could have taken the story in an interesting direction if it had been treated as more than just isekai overhead. It’s not difficult to imagine: an evil heiress gets dumped, tries to get even, and winds up fixing her life, and the kingdom, essentially out of spite. Or how about this: reborn into fantasy high society, an ordinary modern girl has to act the part of a notorious noblewoman. As for being trapped in a dating sim — I mean, that one practically writes itself: it’s funny when a normal person has to deal with stupid genre tropes. Unfortunately, the show delivers none of the above.

The animation is noticeably cheap, but the real problem is lazy writing, whether it’s solving mysteries offscreen — no time for fun, we’ve got plot points to deliver — or ruining a joke by explaining it. Fight scenes lack tension because everyone has poorly defined magic powers. The romance is half-baked. The villains are not well motivated.

Like The Dungeon of Black Company — a much better show overall — the protagonist is refreshingly motivated. But instead of pruning her overgrown backstory and giving her room to grow, the writers merely embroidered her with isekai kitsch. Although I mildly enjoyed parts of every episode, I wouldn’t watch another season.

[1] Reposted from my Substack, where I post all my content: https://reincarnatedcritic.substack.com/p/taming-the-final-boss