Oh, no, I’m sure some of you are thinking. Not another small Isekai in the Otome game world. I can’t blame you. Isekai’s villain is almost as supersaturated as Isekai Power Fantasies, with pink-haired heroines and mysterious transfer students everywhere. But please, when I say even if you are tired of this type, trust me, The villain is destined to die It’s worth your time, not because it’s Korean, not Japanese, so it uses a potential set of metaphors, but because it does something valuable type researchers do: It understands how Otome Games work.
Shocking, I know. But author Gyeoeul Gwon not only relists plot points proposed by early authors, they may have never picked up Otome games in their lives. Instead, Penelope’s story is based on credible game mechanics and Penelope’s life in modern Korea. These two elements combine with good writing to make the first novel (and the K-comic based on it) more than your average villain story.
The story’s protagonist is Penelope Eckert – or at least, that’s what we know. We never found her original name, but her life influenced her knowledge of Penelope. The illegitimate daughter of a powerful man, she was adopted into his family when her mother died when she was young. Not only did her father barely interact with her, she also made it clear that this adoption was just not on duty, and that her two older brothers were horrible to her, abused her and ignored her. When she was in college, she moved out, although her brother tried his best to make sure her apartment was awful. Meanwhile, Penelope is the adopted daughter of Duke, as she is like the missing biological daughter Ivonne (the heroine of “Simple Mode” in the game). Like the heroine, Penelope has two older brothers and a neglected father, but unlike her, Penelope shows off, expressing her misfortune. When the heroine opens her eyes in Penelope’s room, she is arrested only for her poor performance in public.
Due to her experience, it is not difficult for New Penelope to recognize what is going on. She realized that Penelope was not a natural villain. She was deeply unhappy and felt unloved. Showing is the only way she gets attention, and in Easy Mode, any resentment she has against Ivana in Easy Mode is clearly explained in hard mode, with the player taking on his own role. and ManhavaThis novel was previously published in print, and it all explains all of this, and the novel does it even more deeply, doing a great job of showing the depth of Penelope’s physical and emotional pain. Like the heroine, she was abused by her brothers, which made her perform poorly, which in turn made them abuse her even more. It was a vicious cycle, and New Penelope’s first job was to break it, even if she couldn’t see it in these terms.
That is one of the advantages of writing. Although she knows Penelope’s role on a personal level, the new Penelope cannot recognize Derek and Renault no Her brothers. The conversation with Renault in the second half of the book helped her to realize that these people are different from Korean half-brothers, which is a big part of the understanding, even though it is a game shefor everyone else, they are their real life. The fact that she can see the love meter on the head of all love interests blurs her further, but as readers, we can recognize that this is a way for her to better understand the people around her. Yes, in the game, she needs to keep her feelings in order to keep her life and clear a route, but the similarities she sees in the game brothers and real life are more important than she realizes. Although it is undeniable that her family in Korea made her feel unpopular, she didn’t know she might not have helped.
It was a little slippery because the feeling of her abuse and neglect was real and effective. But she recalled the scene when the young brothers stopped her from being targeted at school, which reflected the way Renault treated her. The emotional meter made it difficult for her to misunderstand his behavior, and hoped that she would help her think about her past lives more clearly. There is no guarantee that she will be able to return to Korea, but maybe her life as Penelope will help her resolve or work through some of her emotions about her biological family.
The main fly in the plot ointment is that she believes the safest bet is one of a love interest, a slave she bought. New Penelope does seem to understand slavery is bad, but her psychological bandwidth is completely consumed by her burning desire to survive and safely eliminate. She was forced to act in a way that the modern world had never been before, and the text did show that she was uncomfortable with it. The way her character reacts to her is consistent with the kind of simple writing found in many low-quality Isekai works, which is indeed intentional, because Gwon’s writing is otherwise smarter and better than this. Nevertheless, for some readers, this can be a problem and it is uncomfortable.
The villain is destined to die Still, it is one of the best-written, drawn series of Ikai’s seasons. The new Penelope tries to browse the game in the game and discovers the truth about Penelope’s life, making the simple pattern seem ridiculous, a major attraction, and Gwon gets a lot of details of the OTOME game. Whether New Penelope can return to Korea feels less important than what she has learned.
