I'm in Love with the Villainess

私の推しは悪役令嬢。 (Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou.)

10.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.4(74,611)

MAL Score

Ranked #2775

Popularity #1718

Comedy
Fantasy
Girls Love
Isekai
School
Villainess

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Oct 3, 2023 to Dec 19, 2023
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Rei Oohashi spends her days worn down by office work and her nights escaping into *Revolution*, an otome game she adores. In the game, she plays heroine Rae Taylor at the Royal Academy of the Bauer Kingdom—yet her attention isn’t on the intended male routes. Rei can’t take her eyes off Claire François, the proud “villainess” meant to stand in Rae’s way.

After collapsing from exhaustion, Rei awakens to an impossible twist: she’s been reborn inside *Revolution* as Rae, face-to-face with Claire herself. With the chance to be near her favorite rival at last, Rae openly pursues Claire, even welcoming the villainess’s trademark bullying. The game’s story keeps pushing the three male leads into Rae’s path, but she refuses to let scripted romance derail her single-minded devotion to Claire.

Otaku Consensus

I'm in Love with the Villainess landed as one of 2023's defining yuri isekai adaptations because Hideaki Ooba's direction and Ayumu Hisao's series composition keep the comedy light while refusing to soften the story's explicit LGBTQ+ conversations. Critics and fans most often single out Rae's backstory, the episode 3 queer identity discussion, and Claire's character development as the material that lifts it above routine otome-game parody. Its real limitation is a familiar one: the academy-game structure can feel formulaic, and Platinum Vision's production is more functional and character-focused than visually lavish.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want a villainess isekai where the girls' love is text, not teasing subtext, and where the comedy does not erase the emotional politics underneath it. It scratches the otome-game reversal itch of My Next Life as a Villainess, but with a sharper romantic target and a much more direct interest in queer self-recognition, social pressure, and class-coded school life. The appeal is not spectacle; it is rhythm: Rae's shameless bits, Claire's ojou-sama pride, the academy's route mechanics, and the way the series turns a gag dynamic into a conversation about desire. Viewers who want Bloom Into You-level restraint may find it loud, but anyone craving a yuri comedy with an actual point of view gets something unusually outspoken.

Key Characters

R
Rae Taylor(VA: Yuu Serizawa)
Rae is memorable because her aggressive comic confidence is not just a running gag; fan discussion often points to her backstory as the key that reframes her devotion as something more vulnerable and self-aware.
C
Claire François(VA: Karin Nanami)
Claire embodies the ojou-sama tsundere archetype so precisely that the series can both indulge her hauteur and slowly expose how much social conditioning sits behind it.
R
Rei Oohashi(VA: Yuu Serizawa)
Rei matters as the exhausted adult perspective beneath Rae's school-life chaos, giving the comedy a layer of escapist wish fulfillment that feels pointed rather than disposable.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The adaptation preserves an unusually direct discussion of queerness early in the run, with episode 3 repeatedly highlighted in review discussion as fundamental to why the series rises above generic isekai framing.
2
Rather than treating the otome-game male leads as the primary reward structure, the series uses those routes as comic and structural friction against Rae's unwavering focus on Claire.
3
The show's strongest reputation is not built on fantasy mechanics but on LGBTQ+ themes, with AniList tagging Yuri at 97% and LGBTQ+ Themes at 92%, unusually high signals for viewers searching for explicit representation.
4
Platinum Vision delivers the series as a 12-episode Fall 2023 adaptation, leaning into timing, facial reactions, and school-comedy staging more than action-forward fantasy spectacle.
5
Reviewers repeatedly note the social commentary as a surprise strength, especially the way the series connects romance, class hierarchy, and public identity inside a seemingly familiar academy setting.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime adapts the original story by Inori., with Hanagata and Shimo Aono credited for the original character designs and Youko Satou handling the anime character designs.
Fun fact 2: Hideaki Ooba directed the series, while Ayumu Hisao handled series composition, a pairing that shaped the balance between gag-heavy otome parody and the more explicit LGBTQ+ material praised by reviewers.
Fun fact 3: It aired as a completed 12-episode TV series from October 3, 2023 to December 19, 2023, placing it squarely in the Fall 2023 season's wave of fantasy and game-world adaptations.
Fun fact 4: Its reception is closely aligned across major databases: MAL lists it at 7.37/10 from 74,348 votes, while AniList records a 73/100 score and 2,117 favourites.
Fun fact 5: On MAL, the series sits at rank #2763 and popularity #1721, reflecting a title with stronger genre-specific enthusiasm than mainstream breakout visibility.