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who's up for some stupid theorycrafting because let's talk about otome isekai, character archetypes, and Saimoe
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If you don't remember, the original Saimoe was a character voting tournament meant to find the most moe anime girl of the year, run by 2channel between 2002 and 2014. It was later replaced by International Saimoe Tournament up until last year, and has numerous successors such as the best-girl polls regularly run by Anitrendz and /r/anime.
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Many of the choices were... questionable by multiple metrics, but that aside.
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Let's talk about the 2004 winner.
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Ashita no Nadja was a shoujo historical drama best known for being that thing Toei did in the gap between Doremi and Precure. It also heavily featured this horrid little demon child.
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Rosemary Applefield, the main character's longtime friend who grew up in the same orphanage and dreamed of becoming a princess. Unfortunately for her, while Nadja discovers her long-lost mother is alive and actual nobility, Rosemary gets booted out of the orphanage when she turns 13 and has to work as a maid.
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When she returns to the story, she's now gotten tangled up with the main antagonist and becomes convinced that Nadja left her out to dry.
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She concludes that the way to her dreams is to terrorize Nadja, destroy her things, and sadistically brag about how it doesn't matter that everyone loves Nadja the pure perfect angel because Rosemary is stealing her identity for her inheritance while the real Nadja will die in obscurity in a gutter somewhere.
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Even the actual villain whose fault this is starts to get scared that this 13-year-old child is going to backstab and overthrow him.
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She ends up getting redeemed and forgiven eventually because it's that kind of show.
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In a stretch of years where girls from actual moe seinen series were losing to girls from kids' shows, Rosemary won the top spot that year and was the only villain ever to do so in the original Saimoe, and the ISL never had a villain win either (though a morally questionable protagonist did win the first year they opened a men's bracket).
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Now, this is where we get to the stupid theory-crafting.
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We know that villainess isekai, despite often being about in-universe otoge, don't tend to... actually resemble modern otoge. They usually just rely on shoujo historical romance archetypes instead, when they're not just knocking off Angelique.
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And now that the genre is super popular in manga, we're also getting series that aren't even for the shoujo demographic that use the genre, often with results that make one wonder what they even think an otoge is.
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One of the biggest inspirations for the "villainess archetype" (which. isn't really much of a thing anymore in actual VNs) is Rosalia from Angelique.
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Who looks like this. 
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But... is she the inspiration for the villainess characters we're seeing these manga protags ported into? Rosalia was never a bad person, is a friendly rival towards Ange, and was very popular and beloved by players.
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The idea of the catty, haughty, conniving girl who wants to improve her station and tear down the protagonist and is destined to fail... well, aside from the cruel fates that usually lie in store for the character, they seem far more inspired by girls like Rosemary.
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And considering how popular she was in the demographic making a lot of the anime these days, she might be the real blueprint for the villainess isekai protag.
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Even a lot of the character designs for these girls look a lot more like Rosemary than they ever resembled Rosalia.
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TC
...you know what even Euphie from MagiRevo kinda looks like that
TC
now that you have pointed it out
TC
I feel like there also must be some kind of weird crossover with general shoujo/lady archetypes cause the idea of the haughty villainess I more remember from like...modern high school settings? I'm not expert on otome games but when I think of girls that are become the MC of these isekais, I don't think of like...old reverse harem fantasy, I think of
TC
Nanami from Utena
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Yeah, it feels like it.
Love Snake Kaja
I know the original villainess webnovel that started this whole fad is set in a modern era fancy rich people school more or less, but other works took on historical or fantasy settings instead
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Or at least what appears to be the original Kenkyo, Kenjitsu o Motto ni Ikite Orimasu - Novel Up...
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Notably it's not transported into a otome world but rather transported into a shoujo manga
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Which may explain some of the genre's weirdness since they aren't actually copying otome, they're copying shoujo manga
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But the latter work added VN trappings
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So it's the common modern anime thing of copying without full understanding
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Resulting in weirdness
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(I do like the villainess genre, just it definitely has this issue)
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Interestingly Kenkyo Kenjitsu doesn't actually have a lot of romance; the male leads just view the MC as a weird and funny friend
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The fan translation is actually really good and it's a genuinely funny work that I actually recommend
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I'm not saying that people aren't copying Rosemary because some likely are
BattroidBattery
moe dio
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moe dio
TC
so they were copying shoujo manga for the original shoujo isekai, but then isekai trappings of fantasy to empower the genre's popularity happened, even though they probably could have been fine without it.
TC
man i hate that isekai is all fantasy shit....