Villainess Level 99

Episode 6

Yumiella is so rarely on the same page as anyone in this show that she may as well be reading an entirely different book. That's the fun thing about her, of course – her difficulties in recognizing that the game and her life are two separate things may be improving, but she's still operating under some very awkward assumptions. Mostly that's due to her hardcore gamer mindset; sure, she could coast through the tournament without doing much, but to her, that would be both unfair and exactly no fun. Yumiella wants to win fair and square, even though she could technically do so with both hands shadow-bound behind her back.

Patrick, apart from being an excellent friend, is also the perfect foil for Yumiella's mindset. He understands her in a way that no one else seems to, grasping that she ultimately means well, she just has a hard time showing that because her earnestness is beyond the ken of mere mortals. She has a keen sense of fairness, but with her flat affect and obsession with leveling up and being strong(er), no one but Patrick can interpret her words and actions as anything but vaguely evil. When Yumiella says that she'll do her best, Patrick quickly yells after her to not do that, understanding that she means well, but that her “best” is simply too good for everyone else to process. Nothing shows this awareness like the moment before she unleashes her full-strength black hole: she notices Patrick standing in the nosebleeds, smiles, and quickly ducks behind a pillar. Presumably, he was watching from up there because he knew she'd do her best if she saw him watching in the front row, although we could also interpret his position as being as far away from whatever insane spell she unleashed as possible.

Because of that spell, and the whole Yumiella Punch debacle with William's sword, I suspect that the brief amity (more or less) that she established this week will go away quickly. That's a shame because it was nice to see Alicia ask her for help and William and Oswald apologize for being jerks, although they did apologize in a very jerky way. In Yumiella's mind, she's doing nothing but fair and good things, trying to help the kingdom prepare for the demon lord's return. But to the main characters of the game, it just looks like she's showing off or deliberately being scary. It doesn't matter that it was Yumiella who guided Alicia toward the spell she learned in the game (which has some interesting implications about the original storyline and Yumiella's role in it); she's always going to be the terrifying person who whipped up a mini typhoon during a school event. That she can't understand that is an integral part of both her character and the disconnect she still has, which at this point is equal parts “this is a game” and “I know the future and need to prevent tragedy.” Any other show would play this straight; that this one uses it for comedy is one of its greatest strengths.

It's a shame this doesn't look better, but the chibis do go a long way towards making up for that, or at least making it better. The trick of having Patrick just blurry enough to make it clear that he's in the background while still having him clear enough that we can see his reactions is good and well-used this week, and it nicely shows how Yumiella is aware of him but not entirely sure why. The twittering gossip of their class knows, and maybe Yumiella inadvertently expresses it when she comments that the nobles have come to the tournament to see lions – her classmates are fascinated by the fact that Patrick has become friends with the class dragon.

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Villainess Level 99 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.