I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History

Episode 4

Despite the fantasy world trappings, this episode is all about high school when it comes down to it. Here we have this group of people—all amid a transition from child to adult—crammed into their own little pseudo-society. As the students learn and grow, they also make assumptions about the real world outside of school, its problems, and how to fix them. Everything seems so obvious and simple—like it's only the stupidity and biases of the older generation that keep the world from being the idealistic place it could and should be.

Basically, it's the The Dunning–Kruger effect on steroids. Kids who have never had to deal with the struggles of living day-to-day—making money, paying bills, dealing with all the tiny, immediate crises that eat up your free time despite your best efforts—making sweeping judgments about the state of society, secure within their own happy veil of ignorance.

The problem the kingdom is facing is that these aren't normal high school students. They're the leaders of the next generation and they've been ensnared by the idealistic ramblings of an ideologue that the kingdom can't afford to ignore due to matters of religion and prophecy.

To be clear, Liz isn't a bad person—no one, including Alicia, thinks she is. Nor is it a bad thing that she has such zeal for making the kingdom a better place. Her issue, when it comes down to it, is that she believes deep down that everyone is as good of a person as she is. Her view on human nature is skewed to a dangerous degree.

This is shown in this episode through Liz's essay about Roana village. While both Alicia and Liz agree that the state in the village is intolerable, Liz thinks that it is the magical barrier that keeps them locked in that makes it that way. If they were free and equal, they would be happy and contribute positively to society. These pretty words ignore that outside of the children born there, and the political prisoners exiled there, the rest of the town people are legitimate criminals forced to live in hellish squalor for decades. These people aren't going to be happy to be free; they're going to want revenge on the kingdom that locked them up.

Luckily for Liz, Alicia is much more of a realist. Rather than see the village as a scholarly problem, she's taken the boots-on-the-ground approach. By saving Rebecca, she has created a saint of her own—at least for the people of Roana. She can give them what they've been lacking: hope and the leadership needed to improve their little penal colony. If Alicia can guide the villagers to become self-sufficient and happy before the barrier comes down, the chances of them becoming revolutionary rebels decrease dramatically.

In the end, the conflict between Liz and Alicia we see in this episode is one about the nature of equality. Liz believes that equality is the natural state of mankind and the goal humanity should strive for. Meanwhile, Alicia believes equality to be impossible to attain. There are too many socioeconomic factors for equality to be possible, especially with magic power thrown into the mix. Thus, it's best to make a meritocracy where those who work hard gain more, turning the inherent inequality in the world into something useful to humanity at the very least.

And with that, the battle between idealist and realist—heroine and villainess—continues.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• “The villainess I strive to be is ambitious and hates lip service, and always remains calm and prudent. She's a strong woman to her very core!”

• If I were Alicia, I would wonder how exactly Duke knew my location to teleport me to his location in another room.

• What was that weird eye color flash in her brother Henry's eyes when Alicia confronted Liz? Perhaps Liz has some kind of unconscious charm magic going on around her.

• I felt like it went by a little fast but the idea of magic that makes skin smooth actually being a spell that repairs flesh if you put enough mana into it makes for a good solution to having burns all over your body dilemma. This also explains why the magic couldn't heal Rebecca's necrotic leg.

I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.