The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior

Pride Royal Ivy is only eight years old when she realizes that she's been reincarnated, destined to become the future wicked queen and final boss of an otome game. She's got it all in this new life: razor-sharp wit, boss-tier powers, and influence over the kingdom as crown princess. Princess Pride decides to drop the maniacal villainess plan and protect the male love interests instead, cheating her way to saving everyone she can.

The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior is based on Tenichi and Suzunosuke's The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior (Higeki no Genkyō to naru Saikyō Gedō Last Boss Joō wa Min no tame ni Tsukushimasu.) light novel series. It streams on HIDIVE on Thursdays.

The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen does not get off to the strongest start. Its art is nothing special from the get-go, and the show's rather plain direction and overall visual style fail to leave an impression. Worse, the premiere suffers from the same malady that so many new anime fall prey to: Overlong monologues that set up the story and the world in the most boring way imaginable. The concept of a “Reborn as the Villainess in an RPG/Dating Sim/Visual Novel/Whatever” is far from novel at this point, so you'd think that shows would feel comfortable just diving right into the dialogue and character building, but no, The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen makes us wade through half-and-episode's worth of tedious voice-over before we can be shown who this Pride girl is, rather than merely told.

Thankfully, having watched shows like My Life as a Villainess, I am aware of the inherent potential of this particular genre formula. Unlike other isekai anime templates, the very nature of the “Reborn as the Antagonist” framework means that the story will, by definition, have to focus on some degree of characterization and story development. The whole point is that the heroine, who is not the sadistic sociopath that her new avatar was in the story's original version, has to right the wrongs of that first timeline by exercising kindness, compassion, and foresight. Sure, that often means that you end up with a protagonist like Nü-Pride, whose main character traits begin and end at “is nice, unlike the real villainess.” However, you can at least squeeze some fun dynamics out of all the side characters who will inevitably fall head-over-heels for the “wrong” girl.

With that in mind, Pride's friendship with her unfortunately named new brother, Stale, is sweet enough to get things going, though the real meat-and-potatoes of the story is still yet to come. I am interested to see if Pride's commandment to be killed by Stale amounts to anything once the characters are all grown up and thrown into the dating sim shenanigans they are destined for. I might be convinced to give this show at least one more episode to prove its worth, but it'll need to pick up the pace to earn a spot on my watchlist, that's for sure.

I've been enjoying the light novels this series is based on, but even I'll admit that they don't start out putting their best foot forward. When Nameless Japanese Teen realizes she's reincarnated into an otome game as the eponymous “last boss queen,” she immediately panics, overwhelmed by the sheer awfulness of her new character. That's the right attitude because what we see of Game Pride in her flashbacks is somewhere beyond reprehensible. Many stories in this isekai subgenre talk a big game about villainesses, but this one owns it. When you're reading a full-length novel, you know you can get through these sections about Pride feeling guilty for what her fictional counterpart did by skimming. In a format where the story is serialized in weekly episodes, you can't just flip ahead to see where things start to get better.

That's the biggest issue I have with this episode, apart from the awful names. (But those are in the book, too.) It's important that the story establishes how terrible Game Pride was, but with the way this episode runs, it feels very much like a lather-rinse-repeat cycle: remember-weep-shock. Pride recalls something awful that “she” did in the game, bursts into tears, and everyone around her is stunned by her behavior. It's all deserved, but it's also very repetitive.

On the plus side, this does a very nice job of showing how monumental the changes in Pride are. While there are a few comments about how she's changed, the better elements are the little background details, particularly in people's reactions. With every little move Pride makes, her maids visibly flinch, even if she's just flipping over in bed. When she flings herself out a window to warn her father against traveling in a faulty carriage, her guard and maids apologize for trying to stop her from what they thought was an attempt to kill herself. I've met some terrible eight-year-olds in my time, but the reactions to Pride suggest that her pre-awakening self was utterly terrifying. Similarly, the detail about the guard slowly and respectfully backing away once the Prince Consort enters the room is very nicely done. Little things like this greatly inform us about the characters and their world.

Why Pride's little sister Tiara is being kept from her – and why her mother is more invested in Tiara, at least to Pride's mind – could have something to do with her previous behavior, but that could also be a red herring for us. Pride's evil ways, it suggests, may have come from acting out rather than being inherently vicious, and that bit of doubt fuels what New Pride has over virtually every other similar heroine: she doesn't view the world as bound by the game rules. She not only wants to change things, she's going to change things. She sees everyone as people rather than game characters, and that's a major step in the right direction. If this is at all interesting to you, I think (as a novel reader) that it'll pick up within the next two episodes. So, give this one the ol'three episode test, because it has potential if you can get past the fact that they use “brother-in-law” for “adopted brother” and that the poor guy's name is Stale.

One of the most inescapable issues with the current isekai trend is how every show in a given sub-subgenre has to start with the same setup every time. No matter what gimmick or angle or original ideas they might eventually bring to the table, every one of these shows has to begin at the same place and go through identical motions to get to the good stuff. Such is the biggest hurdle for this premiere, which eventually does reach a pretty interesting point in its second half, but has to burn a lot of time to get there.

Seriously, the opening here drags badly, as we watch Pride slowly figure out that she's in an otome game villainess isekai story, and come to all the stock conclusions that every one of her villainous peers comes to. In the game's she was an evil monster who eventually dies, so if she wants to survive she must change her ways. The only difference between this and the opening minutes of My Next Life as a Villainess is that Last Boss Queen plays this entirely for drama, zeroing in on how much of a sadistic psychopath Pride was in the original timeline. That seriousness, combined with how familiar all this is and the threadbare production values, made it a pretty tiresome sit for the first half, and I suspect it'll be a big speed bump for viewers who aren't already familiar with the source material.

Thankfully, things really pick up after that, as it quickly becomes clear that Pride's goal of becoming “good” isn't as simple as just being nice to the people she's meant to mistreat. Through her “adopted” (read: kidnapped into servitude by the royal family) brother, and the myriad ways he's been confined to his role as her servant, it becomes clear that OG Pride wasn't the sole arbiter of cruelty in this kingdom. There's inherent power imbalances within the system and family she's been born into, and if she actually wants to help people – for her sake and theirs – her job is going to be a lot more complicated, perhaps even revolutionary. That's a really good hook for a more dramatic villainess story, taking the chance to interrogate a more complicated form of villainy that personal empathy alone can't defeat. By the time Pride solemnly asked Stale to kill her if she ever became the kind of awful queen she could have been, I was fully on board.

I'm still worried about there production holding up, though. There's a number of cut corners and cheap tricks in just this first episode that really don't work. However, on a storytelling level it seems like the worst and most perfunctory moments are behind us, and this show's take on the familiar setup really is intriguing enough to stick around for.

In most stories about being reincarnated into a book or game world, the heroes go hard from the start in an attempt to change the preordained story they are familiar with—usually to avoid some dark end or another. While there is always some pushback—some dilemma to overcome—things diverge quite quickly most of the time. The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen falls into this pattern but with a twist.

Despite changing things drastically from the start—saving her father's life and not cruelly enslaving her adoptive brother—Pride is driven by the fear that fate might actually be set in stone. She is plagued by nightmares of how the story was supposed to unfold—how she was supposed to have her brother kill his mother for no other reason than her sadistic pleasure.

The fact of the matter is that Pride is a normal girl from our world. She has no idea what the “rules” are for her reincarnation. Sure, at the moment she's on the side of the angels, working to put right what once went wrong, but who's to say that things will continue in that direction? Fate could simply be unchangeable at key points—or one day, her soul could be replaced with the original Pride's. Or perhaps most terrifyingly, she could slowly but surely transform into the Pride from the game over the years without ever noticing it. She has no way of knowing. This is the psychological horror she faces.

All she can do is try the best she can to do good while hedging her bets—in this case, ordering those closest to her to kill her should she stray from the path and start to turn evil. It's a fantastically dramatic situation that casts Pride in the roles of heroine, damsel, and villainess all at the same time. If reincarnated as a villainess story are your thing, this one looks to be a solid entry in the ever-growing sub-genre.

There was something familiar about The Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior from the first minutes. It wasn't just that the novelty of the reincarnated villainess subgenre has worn off as it rapidly regenerates into the same mass of tropes and cliches as its male counterparts. Too many of the specific plot beats felt familiar, about the protagonist and her relationship with the game world, about her approach to changing the events of the world and how she identifies event flags…

Oh, I know. This is just My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! except it's a drama that takes itself seriously. Also, with way dumber names. I could accept the protagonist being named Pride, but who names their child Stale? I'd even take another Keith over this.

Actually, “My Next Life as a Villainess but serious” is a solid enough conceit for a series, since Katarina's airheadedness made it possible for her to skate past some of the darker implications of her situation. In The Heretical Last Boss Queen, Pride recognizes and must live with the fact that she was a horrible monster before she reawakened her memories. She has to reconcile that her father who dotes on her and treats her with great kindness and consideration treats commoners like disposable garbage, having maids executed for minor errors and essentially kidnapping a child to be a suitably powerful heir for his daughter. She's tormented by the guilt of it all and acts not just to avoid getting murdered, but to actively negate the game character Pride's tyrannical ways and the harm she causes.

However, there's a bit of a disconnect happening that's stopping this from hitting four stars. Pride's internal monologue is going on constantly. If another character isn't speaking, you better believe that Pride is broadcasting her thoughts to the audience, whether it's about the world she's in or her own processes. Despite this, there's an incongruity between her thought processes and the emotions she's feeling. She tries to treat Stale with kindness, but when he comes down with a fever from the stress of having to learn how to be a prince, she blames herself. It feels like there should be some subtext here that she's taking on too much, but that doesn't fit with the way her narration has worked so far, which is that she's had a correct understanding of the way things are happening. Is she a reliable narrator, or is she unreliable? Figure it out!

You know, I'm not sure if we've had a straightforward dramatic approach to a villainess isekai yet, and that alone may be enough to set The Heretical Last Boss Queen apart. But then again, I'm not sure if I want to sit through a story that repeats all the same tropes, just with tears instead of a self-effacing chuckle.