Villains Are Destined to Die
Author/Artist: Gwon Gyeoeul (Original Novel) and SUOL (Artist)
Letterer: Chiho Christie (IZE Press)
Translator: Jay Kim (Tapas) and David Odell (IZE Press)
Publisher: Tapas (VSC) and IZE Press (Print)
Publication Date: Oct. 31, 2020 (Tapas) and Oct. 2022 (IZE Press)
Rating: Teen
Genre: VSC (S. Korea), Reverse Harem, Romance, Otome Iseaki, Fantasy
After finally escaping her cruel family, the heroine in Villains Are Destined to Die by Gwon Gyeoeul and SUOL is sucked into a new family’s problems. This time around the consequence for disagreements is death! Will “Penelope” find her way back to the real world to enjoy her life as a university student?
Our heroine learns about a popular otome game, Daughter of the Duke’s Super Love Project, that is taking over her university. She’s uninterested at first, but she quickly gets drawn into trying to win. After beating the game, there’s an option for a hidden ending but the $85.00 price tag is firmly out of her budget.
Thankfully, she can also earn the hidden ending by clearing the game’s hard mode, so she starts the game in hard mode, which is played from the villainess Penelope Eckhart’s point of view. She played through the night, but all of her attempts ended in the villainess’s gruesome death, instead of paying the $85.00.
As she fell asleep, her only thought was that she wanted to make sure she kept “Penelope” alive at least once. Our heroine is then woken up by someone calling to her but she doesn’t recognize where she is. After scanning the room, she realizes that she’s somehow in the game she was just playing and he reaches the conclusion that following the rules of the game will get her back home, so she needs to find a way to boost the affection scores of her five love interests.
Unfortunately for her as the villainess, the affection scores start at 0%. After meeting her two brothers, she already starts to feel like all hope is lost. Her eldest brother, Derrick Eckhart is cold and harbors hatred for Penelope for replacing his sister. The second son, Reynold Eckhart is bad-tempered and has been causing problems for Penelope since she was a child. The crown prince Callisto Regulus is a cruel tyrant and was the one who killed her the most while she was playing the game in real life. She never got far enough into the game to interact with her love interests, Eckles and Winter Verdandi. Eckles is a noble from a fallen kingdom and Winter Verdandi is the Marquis of House Verdandi and a sorcerer who masks his identity.
Hindsight is 20/20. Or is it?
When “Penelope” realizes she is in fact not dreaming, she starts to organize the information she has. She makes a list to see which of the love interests she may have the best chance of receiving a love confession from. As I’ve continued to read the story, I’m starting to wonder if her dying in hard mode so many times created an unconscious response that could keep her from winning the game and returning to her life.
Having played the game so many times, the only thing she can think about is not dying. She’s operating from a place of fear and her inability to let go is affecting her decision making in recent episodes as Penelope hasn’t made any leeway with Duke Eckhart or her brothers until she responded to the situations differently in-game than when she played in real life. Her first interaction with Duke Eckhart is what ended up giving Penelope the ability to respond to situations freely instead of having to choose her responses based on the game’s pre-set answers.
Even though she’s experiencing the game in a new way, and making good progress with her love interests, Penelope is stubborn and still believes that the only way to survive is to get a love confession and because she’s so focused on the affection meter, she’s overlooking small details in her interactions with the men. Callisto is falling in love with her despite his protestations otherwise. If she wasn’t so focused on the meter’s percentage, she would be able to see that he can guarantee her safety.
When the game changes and the affection scores are hidden, “Penelope” only focuses on who has the highest percentage and not what the different colors of the affection meter could symbolize and as she starts to approach her coming of age ceremony, she starts hyper focusing on getting Eckles’ percentage to 100% while ignoring that the color of his affection meter is a dark, rotting red color. Penelope usually pays close attention to what is going on around her so it was quite surprising that she wasn’t being more cautious. As her fear of death grows, she clings to the hope that Eckles will save her.
Villains Are Destined to Die does a great job of giving the five love interests equal amounts of time to spend with Penelope and develop their connections. Some harems don’t spend enough time giving each love interest their own story arc and as a result, the love interests end up blending together. In this series, each character and connection feels distinct, as Penelope shares different moments with each of them.
I highly recommend checking out the prologue episode on a web browser, as the panels received some animation work and it makes the already beautiful art even more immersive.
Villains Are Destined to Die is a series that draws me in with its beautiful art and rich world building. I’m sure Penelope will continue to make more questionable love choices to avoid death and I can’t wait to see how events unfold. The series is currently on hiatus so now is a great time to check out the series online with Tapas. If you’re a manhwa collector like myself, volumes one through six are also available in print from IZE Press. – Yazmin Garcia
