The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor

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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.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:
I'm not going to lie—I was enjoying this one. After all, everyone reading this probably already knows I love villainess stories, even ones where a good person is tricked or forced into that role. Watching a person re-live their life while knowing that each change they make weakens them by moving them apart from the future they know? Can't get enough. And having the villainess be a sword-wielding badass in her past life? Sign me up. I couldn't be happier.

I mean, this one had so much I was excited for. As the episode went on, we were introduced to an easily hateable prince and a naive emperor that the heroine might be able to save before he became a mad tyrant. These are classic setups for anyone as obsessed with the villainess sub-genre as I am. I was all ready to give this show an easy 3.5. Alas, because we live in the darkest timeline, such a promising setup was basically squandered.

I can tell you the exact moment when I went from enjoying this anime to being disgusted by it. It was the double whammy of the lines “[In terms of age for a bride you're] ideal” and “It might have been better if you were two or three years younger.” Jill is 10. Hadis is 19—and, apparently, keeps a closet full of little girls' clothes with him, even while traveling abroad. When sex is brought into the conversation he objects. Not because she's a literal child and he's an adult, but because his head is full of romantic ideals about how a relationship should properly progress.

I even tried to give the anime the benefit of the doubt: perhaps Hadis meant Jill was ideal from a magical power sense. But, no. After calling her age ideal, he then says “And you have a high amount of magical energy as well”—meaning a ten-year-old (or even a seven-year-old, apparently) is what he is looking for, and Jill's magical power is just a bonus!

And look, I'm sure we can compete in Olympic-level mental gymnastics to rationalize this being okay. Jill is, at least mentally, an adult. But Hadis doesn't know that; he knows practically nothing about her. They've had one single conversation. All he knows is that a pre-pubescent kid says she likes him and he is down for some romance.

Before watching this, you wouldn't have thought there would be a villainess anime out there I wouldn't want to watch. Turns out, I do have standards after all. I am as shocked by that as you are but here we are. So, thanks, I guess?

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Caitlin Moore
Rating: 911 (to have Hadis ARRESTED)

As I watched the The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor, I thought to myself, “Even if the tone is all over the place, this is pretty fun. Jill looks pretty young though—maybe twelve, even though she looks eight? I guess Gerald is supposed to have groomed her.” But then she accidentally proposes to Hadis, the legitimate love interest, who is 19 and wishes she were two or three years younger. I knew nothing other than the vague series description, so I asked my dear colleague Rebecca how old Jill was, and Rebecca informed me she was ten.

“NO,” I shouted. “NO! BAD!”

I have spent the last fifteen minutes pacing my apartment crying, “Why is she teeeeeeeeen,” while my husband shouts from his desk, “WHY IS SHE TEN?”

I know this won't bother some people, but it will ruin the show for a lot of others—and I am in the latter category. Just, why? WHY? I'm pretty sure having her be in her teens wouldn't have messed up the story's premise! I couldn't enjoy the anime of I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss, based on a series of light novels by the same author, because it looked like pure, unfiltered ass. Before I am accused of such, this isn't about moralizing or worrying about it being a bad influence. I'm not worried about a ten-year-old getting their hands on this and getting the wrong idea. I simply cannot enjoy a fluffy romance between a ten-year-old and a nineteen-year-old.

If you are unbothered by such things, it will behoove you to know that I was about ready to give it three stars before I learned Jill's age. The story is something like a cross between I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss meets Teardrop Empire. Jill is something of a “not like other girls” heroine—her parents talk about how she's not much good at the usual feminine pursuits like embroidery and more interested in food than dancing. In her previous life, before her fiancé murdered her, she had been nicknamed “daughter of the god of war,” and, Oscar de Jarjayes-esque, had eschewed the life of a noble lady to become a warrior.

After a strong, dramatic opening, the tone becomes wildly uneven. Handled with some grace, I'm fine with this; some contrast can strengthen both the highs and lows. Here, however, the tone will shift from dramatic to comical and back within just a few minutes, without the punchiness needed to make comic relief work. Within a few seconds, Hadis will go from acting like a puppy toward Jill to threatening to being comically teased by a sassy dragon god. His response to the idea that this child may regret impulsively proposing to him, turning menacing at the idea of rejection, also gives him some unintentional incel vibes.

If the age gap doesn't send you screaming for the hills like I did, The Do-Over Damsel really is just okay. Have fun; I'll be out in the hills, finding myself a nice cave for shelter because I guess I live here now. This do-over damsel is done.

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James Beckett
Rating:

I'm sure the ridiculous emphasis on the age-gap romance(s) in Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor are going to make this show an instant skip for a lot of potential viewers, and I totally understand that. Not only does the original timeline's pairing of Jill and Prince Gerald already come across as iffy when he's fifteen and she's only ten, but the rewound version of events sees a future-savvy Jill running into the very eager arms of the very grown-ass man, Hadis. Jill is still ten, mind you, despite having the mind of her almost-but-also-still-not-quite-grown seventeen-year-old self. Shit's weird, man.

That said, for me, personally, the show is playing so broadly and comedically with its material that it was hard to be grossed out by the scenario. If anything, the way that the script is constantly drawing attention to how conspicuously excited Hadis is to be engaged to this tiny child makes it feel like we're supposed to be in on some sort of satirical joke. At the very least, it comes across like a winking nudge to genre-savvy fans who have seen similar stories played out, except here it is being played up to the extreme.

I mean, our dude Hadis gets dunked on by his cute dragon friend for being the kind of reclusive weirdo who has apparently only ever experienced the concept of romance in the pages of books, so I think there's something else going on with this guy that could potentially… well, “justify” isn't the right word, but we might get an explanation for why he's such a deranged dweeb, despite also being the a potential warlord of death and destruction in the future.

Also, I should point out that Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor isn't being pervy at all about Jill and Hadis' whole… deal, which is what made me able to roll with it enough to enjoy its snappy jokes and eye-catching production values. This was honestly a breezy, entertaining episode, and it's a damn shame that they didn't just age the whole cast up by a decade to avoid any unnecessary baggage. Jill is a really likeable heroine who is proactive enough to keep the plot going, and I could honestly see her back-and-forth with Hadis becoming pretty cute, provided that we don't cross any lines with his, er, intentions. Like I said, I fully get why people just won't be into this show at all, and I'm not going to pretend like I plan on keeping up with it every single week, but The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor has plenty of charms beyond it's questionable premise that I'm sure will appeal to plenty of folks out there for totally non-prurient reasons.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

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.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.