Summary
- Villainess: Reloaded! flips the isekai genre by featuring a 4-year-old girl wielding massive guns in a fantasy world.
- The manga's over-the-top premise is justified by a convincing explanation of how modern-day weaponry is incorporated into the fantasy setting.
- The series mocks the well-known villainess trope by having the protagonist use modern weapons to avert her predestined fate of death.
Villainess: Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons is truly a popular villainess tropes in general.
The latest trend in the already trend-laden isekai genre is to have the protagonist reincarnate into the most absurd thing imaginable, with some of the more popular examples being a vending machine, along with Butareba's pig and Inukai-san's eponymous dog.
Others tend to put the protagonists into absurd series, while even fewer give the otherwise normal hero a ridiculous item or article of clothing like in Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear. However, Reloaded! goes above and beyond.
Flipping How Most Isekai Try To Be Extreme
Created by 616th Special Information Battalion & Futsu Onshin
More directly, Reloaded! essentially plays off Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, except rather than pair the main character with something that is just naturally ridiculous (and adorable), it features a 4-year-old female noble named Astrid von Oldenburg wielding massive guns and other impressive weapons of mass destruction in a fantasy world setting. This is obviously adorable in a completely different sense. Reloaded!'s over-the-top premise clearly fits the epic name of the series' writer, 616th Special Information Battalion, whose story is brought to life by artist Futsu Onshin.
More importantly, Reloaded! uses a convincing explanation to bring modern-day weaponry into a fantasy setting rather than just being outrageous for the sake of it. In this fantasy world, there's a unique magic system that requires s to conjure spells a certain way, and Astrid von Oldenburg leverages this within the system's guidelines to create out-of-place weaponry that is also rarely, if ever, associated with little girls, let alone prim and proper nobles. That, or she just has to imagine the overall devastation inflicted by modern-day weapons to cast effective spells. Some Isekai see the protagonist combine modern ideas with their magic, but that's still tame by comparison.
Making The "Death Flag" Trope More Absurd Than Most Villainesses
From the perspective of the villainess genre in particular, protagonists are mostly restricted within already greatly limited settings. What Reloaded! does within the confines of this particular genre is absolutely mock the well-known trope where the villainess tries to avoid her predestined fate, which usually involves death. A recent example that would have been an extreme if it weren't for Reloaded! is the new Crunchyroll anime Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I'm Not the Demon Lord. The protagonist tries to avoid her doom by becoming overpowered, reaching the eponymous 99th level in the process.
Reloaded's Astrid clearly takes a shortcut by summoning modern-day weaponry. She just lucked out in general because in her past life, she was a gun enthusiast and could draw from her experiences to help avert her own fate in this new life. Villainess: Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons is outrageous for obvious reasons, but the way in which the manga reaches such absurd heights justifies these moves just because it naturally builds off what most villainess series and the overall isekai genre are doing to get there.
