Score: B+

Even though the isekai (other world) genre of anime has been prevalent for a long time now, it’s interesting to note when different sub-genres start gaining more prominence. This show reflects how we’ve started to regularly get this “Otome game” style of isekai. I’d say each show has tried to put their own spin on it and have come up with better and weaker means of doing so. The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen has found an impactful way of handling the issue and honestly, it’s a way that I think the isekai genre could take some tips from.

She’s absolutely getting worked over by guilt

The biggest thing is how the evil acts of the character the MC is inhabiting aren’t something she feels detached from. A lot of times these characters wake up in this villainess’s body and are mostly freaking out about how they could be killed if events aren’t changed. They know of what happened, but overall they don’t feel any serious ownership of it. They are actions they could do, but not really. The moment these characters are dropped into these bodies they don’t have any intention of doing those things and the focus is mostly on making sure the world doesn’t conspire to kill them.

For Pride it’s different. She equally doesn’t want to commit those acts and certainly won’t. But the difference is that she remembers them. Maybe it’s an effect of gaining precognition. These dreams and memories are utterly haunting her and that’s regardless of why she’s seeing them. The horrific atrocities of Pride aren’t the actions of someone else. This girl can see those actions, can see the agony caused, and feels the guilt. Even if she’s never going to do those things, it doesn’t change that she can see herself having done them. I can’t imagine how she’s going to handle all that trauma while trying to navigate the best possible path forward for her.

At least she’s winning hearts to her side

The haunting memories lead to setting Pride apart from other leads in her sub-genre in other ways. She’s not focused entirely on her own survival. A lot of these characters are worried about getting on that path because it’ll get them killed. That is fair and understandable of course. Whatever kind of fusion between the game character and the real human exists, the reality is that fear of death will change behavior. But Pride is mostly afraid of ending up like the version of Pride. That’s why she straight up asks Stale to kill her if she turns into that horrible person. Because ending up like that kind of monster is far worse than dying. Some characters want to avoid the bad end to survive. But she wants to avoid becoming the person that warrants that kind of bad end.

I also kind that she acknowledges that there is a bad end where Tiara or her love interest dies. Of course, that kind of bad end will be slipped into games to make for a bit of tension. Got to have the player make enough good choices to stay alive. It’s just a nice touch to have her note that ending existing, but also refusing to use it. It just shows how focused this girl is on not ending up like that monstrous version of herself.

Pure evil!

Honestly though, that truly evil Pride was monstrous. It hammers home pretty well why this girl is so afraid! There’s no way she could be anything besides scared of ending up like that. This girl wasn’t just a bad person. She was pure evil! We haven’t seen what she did to the other love interests. Just seeing what happened to Stale is enough. Holy smokes! It was bad enough that she basically tricked this kid into signing a slavery contract. Betraying his trust was already awful. But she made him murder his own mother! Seriously!? That girl is a monster. She knew he couldn’t do anything against her thanks to that contract and made him kill the only person he really cared about. I guess part of it is the parents not being in the picture, but no wonder this girl had to be killed in the game.

I hope things work out for her

This version of Pride though is extremely sweet and I feel awful for her. Not only did she die in real life, but she got sent into the body of a truly evil monster. She can take actions to try and avoid becoming that monster, but the actions are still going to haunt her. That will probably get worse as she continues crossing paths with the various love interests and her younger sister. In a sense those people are going to have to protect Pride from her own guilt and trauma. Even if she can express that she can see an evil version of her tormenting these people I don’t know if they will truly be able to grasp how tortured she is.

Yeah, this guy isn’t suspicious

The episode did move fast, but I think it was ok. They did have enough time to allow moments like showing how terrified the servants were of Pride. It made them warming up to her all the sweeter. I’ve seen versions of this kind of setup that were comical, but this one is dramatic. The awful nature of the person she’s inhabiting isn’t being swept under the rug. I look forward to seeing how they handle the story going forward. This is yet another show that might be tempting to blog, but I’ll probably have my hands too full for it. But it did demand that I try to talk about it even for just one episode.