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2centsoframblings · 3 years ago

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Two cents of ramblings on: “Otome Game no Hametsu Flag Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijō ni Tensei Shite Shimatta…”/“HameFura” (Anime) - Season 1...

...and why I recommend it.

GENERAL DATA

Title: Otome GAME no Hametsu FLAG Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijō ni Tensei Shite Shimatta… (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… “My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!”)

Known as: HameFura (はめふら)

Media: Anime television series

Adaptation of: “Otome GAME no Hametsu FLAG Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijō ni Tensei Shite Shimatta…” (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… “My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!”) shōjo light novel by Satoru Yamaguchi Satoru and illustrated by Hidaka Nami.

Genre: Isekai, Reverse harem, Romantic comedy

Directed by: Inoue Keisuke

Written by: Shimizu Megumi

Studio: Silver Link

Original run: April 5, 2020 – June 21, 2020

Episodes: 12

WARNINGS: Bullying and mistreatment of children

The plot in short: A girl dies and find herself reincarnated into Catarina Claes, the villainess of an Otome Game, “Fortune Lover”, when the latter was a child. Aware that all the routes of the game would lead to her being either exiled or killed she desperately tries to adopt countermeasures to avoid her flags of doom.

HOW DID I STUMBLE INTO IT

I was searching a funny anime to watch during summer and this one caught my eyes, probably also due to how I saw the cute Nendo of Catarina so it felt kind of familiar...

THINGS YOU MIGHT WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE TACKLING THIS

If you’re not familiar with the terms an otome game (乙女ゲーム “maiden game”) is a video game in which the main goal is to develop a romantic relationship between the female player character and one of several male characters.

Isekai (異世界 "different world"), is a Japanese genre of portal fantasy that revolve around a person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, virtual world, another planet, future/past time, or parallel universe.

MY TWO CENTS ON IT

THE SHORT VERSION… or what I can tell you about this while trying to keep spoilers at the very bare minimum.

Opening & ending: The anime uses as opening “Otome no Route wa Hitotsu Janai!” (乙女のルートはひとつじゃない！ ‘There's More Than Just One Route For a Maiden!’) by Angela and, as ending “Bad End” by Aoi Shōta. The opening is just cute, simple and well match the music and introduces the characters with nice transition effects to show Katarina and the other characters as child and as adults. Maybe it’s not a perfect work of art but it’s well structured and definitely enjoyable so I liked it! The ending isn’t bad but it’s nothing special either, just made by still images of the characters. Honestly I found it unimpressive.

The plot: The struggles of Catarina to avoid her doom are extremely fun to follow! The story is basically split in two, her childhood, which is kind of a prequel to the “Fortune Lover” game and then her teenager years which basically cover the “Fortune Lover” plot. The plot is easy to follow and not that deep but this doesn’t stop you from enjoying the comedy of it.

The characters: The introduction to all the characters is gradual and, while they all are meant to be the stereotypical characters of an otome game… in the end they came out as much funnier and different than just that. They’re all likable and fun.

The visual: The story aims at being very pretty visually, the colours are bright and the background well cared for, even if deliberately a bit vague. The characters’ expression can be pretty fun and chibi-like. If you want the character design is a bit simple but it works well for the story.

The musical background: It’s actually rather nice! Nothing over the top but still enjoyable and fitting the mood.

Overall: It’s a light and fun anime to watch! It will offer you amusement and distraction.

THE LONG VERSION… or what I loved and hated about this with, of course, TONS OF SPOILERS.

So I quite liked the premise of this story in which our main character find herself reincarnated into the villainess and how she has to try to find a way to avoid her doom.

I loved how they depicted how her mind work in a way which reminded me of the movie “Inside out”, in short by having 5 chibi Catarina, each with a different character. We’ve chairmain Catarina, happy Catarina, studious Catarina, fearless Catarina and spineless Catarina and they all discuss among them Catarina’s situation and what they plan to do.

But a big part of what I enjoyed is how they handled the concept of Otome games.

From Catarina’s perspective she’s in an Otome game in which the main character and heroine is Maria, which, in real life, would be a stand in for the player.

But from us viewers’ perspective, it’s Catarina the one who’s the main character, which the game subtly hints as we’ll never learn the name of the person she was before. We’re meant to identify with Catarina, not with Maria and, as Catarina, we play “Fortune Lovers”.

And, by this premise, Catarina and her actions and the effects her actions have make the game more ‘realistic’ in a way.

Both Catarina and Maria are two very good girls, but while Maria is beautiful and has light magic despite being a peasant and a sad backstory and is probably constructed to be a Mary Sue, Catarina has plenty of flaws.

She’s lazy, she’s a glutton, she doesn’t know proper etiquette, despite being a noble she has extremely poor magic, she’s not particularly pretty (often she jokes her face is pretty scary) and so on. Likely this is a jab to how some people play otome games because in real life charming boys don’t just drop at their feet because they’re far from perfect.

However Catarina has her own strengths as well. As said before she’s kind, she’s brave, she’s straightforward and she tries her best and are those strengths what helps her to go through the various ‘events’ of the game in the right manner. Catarina feels she’s stealing them from other characters (mostly the protagonist) but, in truth, since SHE is the main character in this story, she’s just correctly triggering them.

Being Maria is a very hard to obtain goal, but we can all be Catarina (actually Catarina is sometimes so dense we might even lull ourselves into thinking it would be easy to be better than her) so what Catarina does and obtain seems a possible goal.

And there’s another thing this story makes that makes it sounds more ‘realistic’ than “Fortune Lovers”.

In “Fortune Lovers” the protagonist is meant to trigger the events when they’re teenagers. In a short amount of time, by doing some right choices, she radically changes a conquerable character and wins his love. This is a very power fantasy but one extremely unrealistic because it’s not so easy to change people.

Catarina instead triggers those events when the conquerable characters are children and reinforces their changes through the years until they become teenagers and enter the magic academy.

So it’s perfectly reasonable the conquerable characters changed into different people since they had years to do so, and it works they’re so attached to her since she triggered those changes and spent years to positively enforcing them.

Keith has plenty of memories of Catarina supporting him, Geordo spent years with her, learning to know her and growing fond of her, Alan was constantly positively reinforced so that he could accept that he and his brother have different strength and neither was inferior to the other and Nicol could appreciate how good she was to his sister and to him for years.

This builds a strong foundation to their changes and their feelings, way stronger than if they just met her and she made few nice things to them.

Sure, the idea she basically conquered EVERYONE, even the characters that were meant to be love rivals like Mary, when she was still a child, is also unrealistic but the idea behind it is more ‘real’ because plays on real dynamics that can happen with an appropriate amount of time and effort.

Who’s meant to identify in Catarina isn’t, after all, an eight year old but teenagers, and the message is if they’ll work like she did, in time they’ll conquer their love interest. It won’t happen overnight as the game “Fortune Lovers” let its players believe, but with years of work. They would just start later compared to Catarina, which is a nice message.

And while conquering Sirius Dieke/Raphael Walt is the one HARD victory that’s not gained through years of hard work (conquering Maria was pretty easy, all she needed was someone to notice her which is an interesting way to paint the heroine of an otome game who, effectively, easily fall in love with one of the conquerable characters) but just two years spent together, the good part is she didn’t cause him to fall in love with her but that she wins him over by offering him friendship and kindness.

Catarina: That’s what happened? And that’s why you’re in such pain… Sirius/Raphael: You hypocrite! Do you think you can save me like you did all those others, Good Saint Catarina Claes-sama?! Maria: If this goes any further, we’re all in danger! Gerdo: Catarina! Keith: Nee-san! Catarina: I’ll be fine. I know I can’t save you. I’m not the heroine here, after all. I’m just the villainess, here to play the heroine’s rival. Of course I can’t save anyone. I can’t save you from your suffering but I can stay by your side. Just like they all did for me, I can stay by your side, hear you out when you’re sad or hurt, and not leave you until you’re feeling better. Mother: What’s wrong? Sitting out here crying won’t make it stop hurting. I’ll stay here with you. I won’t leave you until you’re feeling better. Catarina/Mother: So don’t cry all alone, Raphael.

And this brings home another theme, everyone needs friendship and kindness, along with how there’s not an easy way to fix people, to save them. Catarina doesn’t go to him saying she’ll save him, just that she’ll basically offer him her friendship… and that’s what give Raphael the motivation to save himself. Because he’s supported by Catarina, he remembers the truth, that he was supported by the person he loved, his mother, who didn’t ask him to avenge her but to live and be happy…

Mother: Raphael… Please… live. Live… and be happy. I love you.

…and so he fights against the dark magic user who was possessing him and manipulating his memories. And, if we want, in this case Catarina is the trigger, but there was one person who had loved him for years and that was his mother.

However, even if one doesn’t care about the message, this story is great just for the light fun it allows you to have. Catarina’s reactions, often over the top as well as her schemes to avoid triggering doom flags are so very fun!

I love all the cute, chibi expressions she has, just watching her it’s fun!

And I love how the story ends with a ‘friendship ending’ of some sort, at least from Catarina’s perception because, in truth it should be a ‘reverse harem ending’ because everyone loves Catarina but, since she’s unaware of it and sees them all as friends, it works well as ‘friendship ending’.

On a fun note the anime kind of messes up a little as, once Raphael joins the Department of Magic we see walking behind him Rufus Brode/Sora Smith, the scene implying Rufus is already in it… but he’ll only join it in the second season… though maybe by the time they animated this series they had no idea they would make a second season so his cameo is just a nice bonus for who’s familiar with the following events in the novels.

I also likes Catarina’s final words.

Catarina: When I was reincarnated as a villainess in an otome game where all routes led to my doom, I spent my days complaining about how my luck couldn’t be any worse. But now, I can say loudly and proudly… that I, Catarina Claes, am truly blessed to have met all these wonderful people. I have no idea what’s going to happen from now on. A new season that wasn’t in the game’s script is about to begin!

Catarina avoided all her doom flags because she adopted a very active approach… and the wonderful people she met became wonderful because she was a positive influence to them (as in the game they were beautiful but, surely, not that nice as characters, except with the heroine).

So yeah “HameFura” is a definitely enjoyable anime, not too deep or heavy but with plenty of fun and cute moments, something that gifts you with pleasurable time, so it’s definitely something I recommend!

And now let's end this with an AMV about this series I recommend watching Electropop

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#Otome Game no Hametsu Flag Shika Nai Akuyaku Reijō ni Tensei Shite Shimatta #HameFura #My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!#Silver Link #Isekai #Reverse Harem #Romantic Comedy #Anime television series #Shoujo #Recommended #2020

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