I just finished reading 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった…1
As the title implies, the main character dies and is reincarnated into the main antagonist of the otome game she was playing just before her death… Interestingly, it is established that she didn’t remember about her former life until she has a sever head injury at age 8 (in her new life), leading her to recover the 17 years of her past life. (That’s a little bit spoilery, but that’s basically the first couple of pages, so I’d say it’s okay). The thing is, the game she was playing takes place when she is 15, so 7 years in the future. She also knows that a lot of possible endings of the game will lead to her being exiled or straight up dying. She thus decides to spend the next 7 years getting crazy prepared™ for every possibilities. Her action completely break the setup, since she hardened all the seduction targets of the MC, removing the trauma/vulnerabilities that MC was supposed to exploit to seduce them. In doing so, she basically ended up having the harem for herself
Fun fact: I did not expect this story to involve a (reversed) harem. Thinking back, I cannot understand what I was expecting. Well, harem stories seem to be very similar, whether they are written for young men or women. The only difference I can see beyond the gender of the protagonist (not to be confused with the game’s MC :p) is the type of fan service. In books like DanMachi, you get scantily clad women with large breasts, which sounds like back pain. In this book, you get alluring men whose charm could not only entice women but other men as well, which sounds like fun for the whole (legal age part of the) family if you catch my drift sorry.
Anyway, this book was a test to see how reading ebooks would (y’know, it was for science, not because I like it or anything). I read it in technically two settings (for Science, I said), the “technicality” of it being that I ran out of battery a few pages from the end. Well, I have to say, physical books do not run out of battery.
In terms of quality, the writing isn’t really great, but the story telling is nice. Each chapter first tells the story from the point of view of the protagonist, then has a second part recounting the same things from the point of one of the characters she charmed. That was a nice addition, since the protagonist’s actions are so dumb (the way she presents them or justify them) that her getting all the boys (and all the girls because why discriminate) really stretch the suspension of disbelief. However, from the point of the person, it often takes a completely different meaning. Also, she seems to be much better looking/presenting from the point of view of others than from her own point of view, which makes sense I guess. So, yeah, suspension of disbelief somewhat restored. The main issue, though, is that you basically have to read the same thing twice in a row. That feels a bit like sloppy writing when conversation are just basically copy/pasted as is.
Anyway, to conclude, fun setting, average-ish writing. It was heavily discounted the day I bought it (sadly the last day of the promotion), so for that price, it was worth it, I guess.