The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior

Episodes 1-3

So, I'm not a fan of isekai anime, and I'm not a fan of shojo anime, but for some reason, ANN Executive Editor Lynzee Loveridge decided to assign me The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior for weekly reviews. This wasn't some cruel joke (though I wouldn't put it past Lynzee, lol), but I volunteered to review this anime! Why, you ask? Because I got a couple of early screeners, and I am impressed.

If you watch the ANN After Show podcast, you'll know me as the shonen-loving, violence-consuming, actionphile. At first glance, I was completely turned off. Isekai. A pretty villainess/princess in a magical kingdom who will likely have all these suitors fawning over her. BORING. Don't get me started on isekai, either. I have watched some Sword Art Online and Re:Zero—never finished either. It's not that they're awful (there's terrible isekai and not-so-terrible isekai), but isekai is just repetitive to me at this point. It doesn't matter if the protagonist is a slime, bookworm, or vending machine.

However, this modern-day teenage gamer girl turned evil, maniacal, beautiful villainess in a fantasy world caught me off guard because right away, we see this girl trying to do her best with what she's got. Typing this up, it all sounds so cheesy, but it's got that old shonen formula I love—determination against formidable odds.

She knows that her nature is to be vile, malicious, jealous, and violent, and in the anime, she feels all of those urges but then overcomes them with love and friendship (hitting me right in the Sailor Moon nostalgia feels).

She knows what she's fated to be, but each time she feels urges or pushes to be evil, she finds ways to overcome it, and frankly, it warms my heart to watch her battle the negative voices and thoughts constantly in her head. Episode three was when it hit me hard, though. She knows her fate. She is doomed to die young with an evil soul, so she's fighting so hard to enjoy her short time and leave the people she cares for in this world with love and light.

This made me have a lowkey existential crisis. What if we all lived like that? Like we didn't have that much time left, and the salvation of our soul just meant making loving, positive choices. Isn't that what life is all about? Instead, while we are alive, we ignore the thought of our pending death and often gravitate towards toxic, painful actions because all we know is trauma. We are too afraid to break the cycle, afraid of connection and being vulnerable. Okay—am I losing y'all? I know...now I am staring at this computer wide-eyed, wondering how my mind got here. I need to see my therapist.

Anyway, besides the philosophy lesson, episode three gives us ACTION—catapulting us into a sword and gunfight, introducing us to the fact that some humans have special abilities (Pride has precognition, Stale has teleportation, the captain has blade nullification, which means he cannot be cut or stabbed, and a random solider can use his eyes to broadcast images from a different area—yes that seemed arbitrary—but cool) and Pride brings it, literally gunning down and slashing dozens of bad guys!

Perfect right? But the animation. It's a very colorful, beautiful world with some amazing Victorian vibes, but the action scenes, though the concept was cool, were painful to watch. Pride would awkwardly slash at something, and there would be blood spurts. It could have looked better. However, I can look past that because it's off to a strong and charming start overall.

Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior is currently streaming on HIDIVE.