The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor

Jill is sentenced to death by the crown prince, her fiancé. But just before she dies, she's sent back in time six years to the party where their engagement had been decided. To avoid this route of ruin, Jill immediately proposes to the person standing behind her…but it's the man who was her greatest enemy, Emperor Hadis. Jill knows all about his future descent into evil. She quickly retracts the proposal, but the delighted Hadis takes her back to his castle and makes her a meal. Completely won over by the food, Jill makes a life-changing decision.

The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor is based on the light novel series by Sarasa Nagase with illustrations by Mitsuya Fuji. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

From the author of I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss comes a story that looks significantly better but is also about seventy percent less enjoyable. Why? It's certainly not because of Jill, our heroine – if you thought Aileen was awesome, Jill is even better. She's strong, self-possessed, and smart, and she's currently involved in making the best of a truly terrible situation. And that's where the problem comes in: the situation is that she's gone back in time to age ten after being murdered by her fiancé for learning that he was involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister, and now she's engaged to a nineteen-year-old who is way too excited about their age gap.

So yes, we have both incest and pedophilia going on here. The former is absolutely painted as bad – Prince Gerald certainly wouldn't have sentenced Jill to death for discovering his relationship with sister Faris if it wasn't. He's utterly reprehensible, and the story knows it; he clearly planned to marry Jill so that she could be the cover mother for children he had with Faris (which he basically says early on in the episode) and because he thought that being younger than him would help him fool her. Unfortunately for him, at sixteen(ish), Jill knows right from wrong, and her skill on the battlefield makes taking her out harder than Gerald would have liked.

So what's a girl to do when she's taken back six years in time at the moment of her death? Her first plan is solid: not marry Gerald. But it's not as easy as that, and in a fit of panic, Jill (who is, I remind you, physically ten) proposes to a different, full-grown man: Hadis, emperor of the neighboring country and future villain. Hadis is tickled by her proposal and accepts it. A child. He accepts a marriage proposal from a child. In fact, he's so excited about it that he whisks her away to his ship, where he makes it clear that it's not just her magic power he likes, but her age. He even mentions that it would have been better had she been two or three years younger. It's all very uncomfortable.

In the episode's defense, Jill's not thrilled with this either and is perhaps a bit relieved when he gets all flustered and blushy at the prospect of children someday. However, the basic premise is still an issue and the art delights in showing how Jill is very young compared to Hadis. It's a shame because Jill herself is a great heroine, and the story about her going back in time to save herself and likely Hadis isn't bad – it worked very well when it was called 7th Time Loop. But I can't get past the romance angle, which ultimately was my issue with the novels as well, even though Hadis does eventually reveal why he's so into a younger wife.