Content Warning: The Villainess and the Demon Knight contains explicit sexual content and scenes depicting dubious consent as well as scenes depicting violence and blood. Please refer to The Spice section for more details.
At a Glance:
Spice Level: 3/5
Mosaics: Yes
Recommend: Yes
Content Warnings: sadism, dubcon
After waking up with memories of her past life and realizing that she’s been reincarnated as the villainess in her favorite otome game, Cecilia comes to the conclusion that she’s screwed. Her past memories came back only after her downfall from high society. Her fiancé, a member of the royal family, dissolves their engagement; her family kicks her to the curb; and instead of arriving at the monastery her family sent her to, she is given to a brothel instead.
Before Cecilia can get her feet under her, she’s told that the leader of the Imperial Guard, Lucas Herbst, has requested her first appointment. Cecilia thinks this is revenge for how she treated the heroine of the otome game. After all, Lucas is a hidden love interest in the game. But what he reveals contradicts everything she knows.
Lucas purchases a night with Cecilia, happily swinging around his title and family name when he needs to to get close to her. He spends the whole evening worshiping and punishing her body, causing pleasure one moment and pain the next. But his words never give any indication that he is there for revenge. What’s even more confusing is he takes Cecilia back to his place afterwards!
The Good
Shōjo and josei manga are so saturated with villainess stories, it’s like they’re sopping wet. Squeeze them and you’ll have a rainstorm. Because of this, it takes a lot for me to get into a villainess isekai manga. The Villainess and the Demon Knight, though, did just that.
Even though the title and the story claims that Cecilia is a villainess, I’ve yet to see anything that points to that. Cecilia is a sweet and overwhelmed character who works hard, goes with the flow, and is fairly relatable. Her interactions with Lucas are entertaining, and her internal dialogue while trying to reign her crazed lover in is hilarious. For a young woman who’s never so much as been kissed, Cecilia is a quick learner.
Lucas is a Best Boy. He’s pretty (maybe a little too pretty, especially given how beautiful the art already is), single-minded, strong, and crazy. He’s a yandere male lead who falls in love first, and his entire being gives off ‘touch her and die’ vibes. Lucas’s crazed expressions that shift from anger at the thought of Cecilia thinking of another man while they’re together to absolute love and devotion towards her is the sort of whiplash I can’t get enough of. With one kiss, he’s worshiping Cecilia’s body, and with the next he’s leaving marks so everyone knows she’s his. Lucas is such an entertaining character to follow, and he’s my number one reason for wanting to continue the series.
The Bad
This is yet another otome isekai where the otome and isekai parts don’t really matter. Though Cecilia has memories of her past life including the otome game that this world is based on, the only time this information comes into play is when Cecilia recalls the love interests and Lucas’s general personality from the game. Besides this, there really isn’t any reason for the plot trope, and I think the manga would have benefitted from not going down this road.
The Villainess and the Demon Knight’s plot suffers from lack of direction. While the story explains that Cecilia is the villainess as well as what the otome character did in the game, it’s unknown what the Main Character version of Cecilia did. The manga states that Cecilia woke up with memories of her past life too late to change her initial fate, but never explains exactly what that means. It makes it more confusing when MC Cecilia reveals that she avoided committing one of the most villainous actions against the otome heroine that happened in the game.
To compound it all, the large number of flashbacks from MC Cecilia don’t reveal any sort of villainy. Instead, readers are shown a typical otome heroine who works hard, is kind to others, and is considered a great beauty. Going off this first volume, the manga should actually be titled The Heroine and the Demon Knight because I have yet to see MC Cecilia so much as steal a crumb from a mouse.
The manga is an incredibly dense read. It took me a reread or two before I fully understood some of the plotlines in the story, as the wording sometimes threw me off. I don’t think the translation was bad, but rather there was a lot of backstory to go over in a single volume, and some things seemed incredibly tricky to fit in the limited page space.
The Spice (Spoilers)
There’s only one sex scene in the manga and it involves sadism and dubious consent. In it, Cecilia has just started working at the brothel and Lucas used his title and family name to book her first night for himself. Though Cecilia tries to stall multiple times, Lucas pushes past her attempts and the two have sex. Cecilia never says no in the context of wanting the sex to stop, but she also doesn’t have many options due to her circumstances and the power dynamic between her and Lucas.
During the scene, Lucas says he does want Cecilia to feel pain during their night together, saying he wants to, “make it hurt on purpose.” Lucas bites Cecilia in various places and leaves marks, and Cecilia talks about how the experience hurts multiple times. Part of this is explained away by revealing that Cecilia is a virgin while other parts point towards Lucas’s sadistic tendencies.
This manga uses white orbs to hide things below the belt.
The Verdict
The Villainess and the Demon Knight is a cute manga despite what the title may imply. While I wouldn’t say there’s a villainess in the story, the Demon Knight is definitely there, and he’s deliciously the ‘touch her and die’ type that I swoon for. Though the story isn’t as polished as I would like, it’s an incredibly fun read full of interesting characters and beautiful art. The Villainess and the Demon Knight is a must for any fan of high fantasy josei romance.
If you liked The Villainess and the Demon Knight, you might like…
- Outbride: Beauty and the Beasts
- Before You Discard Me, I Shall Have My Way With You
- The Condemned Villainess Goes Back in Time and Aims to Become the Ultimate Villain
You can purchase volume 1 of The Villainess and the Demon Knight on Amazon, Bookshop, Crunchyroll Store, and Barnes & Noble.
Credits
Story by NEKOTA
Art by SEIKAN
Character Design by ASAHIKO
Translation by M. Jean
Adaptation by MMolly Muldoon
Lettering by Giuseppe A. Fusco
Cover Design by H. Qi
Proofreader: Dave Murray
Copy Editor: B. Lillian Martin
Editor: K. McDonald
Production Designer: Christina McKenzie
Production Manager: Lissa Pattillo
Prepress Technicians: Melanie Ujimori and Jules Valera
Editor-in-Chief: Julie Davis
Associate Publisher: Adam Arnold
Publisher: Jason DeAngelis
Published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment
The Good
- Beautiful art and interesting plot
- Characters personalities are detailed and well developed
- 'Touch her and die' vibes
The Bad
- Dense plot with overused tropes
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