Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily Maintains the Social Subversion and Queerness of Its Anime Inspiration

By Elijah Gonzalez | July 31, 2025 | 3:15pm

Anime Features Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily

Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily Maintains the Social Subversion and Queerness of Its Anime Inspiration

It feels like an understatement to say that the anime scene has an ongoing obsession with video games. From Sword Art Online to the alarming number of modern isekai barely attempting to hide their hijacked RPG stat screens, these stories dominated the light novel space before spilling over into the manga and anime scenes like a leaky dam.

And while the majority of these are quite forgettable, using established gameplay conventions as an excuse to avoid custom worldbuilding, there’s a specific sub-section that has a much higher hit rate: villainess stories.

For those outside the know, villainess stories tend to follow women who die (frequently from overwork, which is very grim) and are reborn in the world of an otome game, a style of dating sim generally targeted at a female audience. The twist is that instead of being reincarnated as the plucky heroine, they instead take the place of the villainess, antagonists who are fated to meet an untimely end if the game’s events play out as expected.

But the weird thing about this genre is that while you might assume that these stories are based on real-world otome games and are seeking to subvert their tropes by humanizing the genre’s archetypal bad girls, the reality is a little more confusing. Traditionally, most otome games don’t feature villainess antagonists at all. Instead, the villainess trope is more an amalgamation of influences, combining the ringleted antagonists of many shojo manga, the “reincarnated as the romantic rival” premise of the web novel Kenkyo, Kenjitsu wo motto ni Ikite Orimasu!, the general structure of otome VNs, and the video game-referencing verbiage of LitRPGs.

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This specific mixture truly came to the fore after the light novel series My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! climbed to the top of the self-publishing website Shōsetsuka ni Narō, setting off a chain reaction of copycats on that platform and elsewhere, some of which are quite good: Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated!, and I’m In Love With the Villainess, to name a few.

But while the villainess genre has its roots in light novels instead of video games, we’re finally seeing some games that adopt these tropes, whether it’s itch.io indies or adaptations of the above-mentioned series, like My Next Life as a Villainess. Of these, the recently released Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily is easily one of the most ambitious, unexpected, and interesting, combining many of the above-listed conventions with its own strategy-themed twist.

The game follows Scarlet, a villainess who was engaged to the crown prince before being accused of a crime she didn’t commit (a common trope in these stories). In this case, the alleged misgression is a pretty big one: regicide. After news of the assassination spreads, the prince attempts to capture Scarlet, and our protagonist is about to spill some blue blood for real when she’s talked down by an engineer named Lily, who helps her escape on her airship. Before long, the pair fall backwards into leading a revolution against the aristocracy so Scarlet can avoid the guillotine and have some fun in the process.

Basically, Scarlet is the polar opposite of a traditional noblewoman, a whiskey-chugging, gauntlet-throwing badass who’s one of the strongest fighters in the kingdom. Her description from the in-game glossary is a good summary of what she was up to before the plot kicks in: “Duchess Scarlet, a woman of exceedingly high status, enjoyed seducing people in cafes, heedless of their gender or title. She also got into fights while wearing men’s clothing. Naturally, this behavior turned her into the talk of the town.”

She and Lily are a delightful fire and ice pair, with the former being a hilariously unhinged brawler who punches first and asks questions later, while the latter is her not-so-straight woman, initially seeming quite reasonable before more than going along with Scarlet’s rebellion. I most definitely placed them side-by-side on the battlefield as much as possible, even when this wasn’t strategically advisable, so I could maximize their romance meter in the way that the game clearly wants you to do.

And while they’re the centerpiece, we get plenty of other enjoyable characters with their own dynamics, most of whom fall into extremely shippable pairings, like Prince Ciaran and his loving lapdog/idea guy, Tyler. It also helps that the cast is rendered with positively gorgeous illustrations that mark a visually confident game from top to bottom, whether it’s the character art or the gameplay sections that use an HD-2D-inspired aesthetic.

As what happens outside the storytelling, the word “strategy” being in the title probably should have tipped me off, but I was genuinely surprised to find that Scarlet and Lily’s adventure isn’t only told in visual novel textboxes, but largely resolves on the battlefield in a surprisingly challenging turn-based military campaign that has you managing supply lines and weighing each move.

However, perhaps the most interesting element of this experience is how it channels the sub-genre that inspired it. While the game’s setup doesn’t 1:1 adhere to every plot beat common in villainess narratives—the protagonist isn’t reincarnated, there aren’t any meta-references to video games, and these tales usually aren’t about unstoppable cavalrywomen leading charges into the breach—Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily more than captures the spirit of what makes these stories so interesting.

One element that sets many of these villainess light novels apart from most of their isekai peers is that there are certain compelling themes more or less baked into the premise, the main one being pushing back against traditionalist values. Since most of these protagonists are women from the 21st century being reincarnated into the staunchly gender-divided roles of a feudal aristocracy, they frequently end up at odds with the times.

Case in point, there’s Catarina from the trope-codifying My Next Life as a Villainess, whose natural kindness breaks through to those around her, as she “besmirches” her royal title by farming, devising harebrained schemes, and winning the affections of the extended cast, men and women alike, through helping them escape their parents’ expectations. It’s also been accurately described as the ultimate bisexual power fantasy, which ties into how many of these stories are about subverting the status quo through queerness.

Similarly, as its title would suggest, I’m In Love With the Villainess stars a heroine who is, in fact, in love with the villainess, and is a series that engages with both gender expectations and sexual identity. And maybe most revolutionary of all is the villainess-adjacent The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, which is about a pair of cool lesbians who defy and then shatter a patriarchal aristocracy that enforced inequity and attempted to treat them like objects. Simply put, these stories frequently focus on pushing back against systemic misogyny and backward political orders, while also taking aim at traditional depictions of “evil, power-hungry women,” through humanizing these figures.

Strategy of Lily pushes this even further with a deuteragonist in Scarlet, who is unequivocally a lot—in her introduction, she cackles as the city burns around her, makes a sexual innuendo, and then talks about how she’s glad that the city is in chaos so she has an excuse to fight people.

But although she outwardly leans into the “villain” in villainess, it’s clear from the start that she isn’t the one who killed the king. She seems so internally worn down by the assumptions others make about her that she doesn’t even deny these accusations despite being innocent, knowing that she’ll be blamed regardless. She’s already viewed as “deviant” thanks to her sexuality, complete subversion of traditional gender expectations, and tendency to win a fight, elements of herself that she refuses to give up, even at the threat of execution. And while Scarlet isn’t necessarily aiming to topple the monarchy, that seems to be a bit of an acceptable byproduct of her actions, as the first group she ends up recruiting are anti-colonial rebels leading an existing insurrection, reiterating how changing the status quo is a villainess’s highest calling.

The game is unapologetically over-the-top and silly, but it stands out by centering on a heroine who isn’t the typical video game protagonist in any sense, as she charms beautiful people and crushes her foes, a swashbuckler to the core. While the game’s romance options aren’t as robust as you’ll find in somewhat similar titles like Fire Emblem, as each character only has two potential pairings, you will more than likely level up Scarlet and Lily’s route due to them being the first units you gain, leading to a contentious but ultimately sweet relationship that challenges the norm’s of their society.

In her gameplay, she similarly smashes expectations. While there have been plenty of warrior women in turn-based RPGs, it’s also quite common for the ladies in the party to be placed in more gender-conforming roles like healers. Scarlet is the opposite of a healer. She’s been the linchpin of almost every major offensive I’ve coordinated thanks to her incredibly high damage output, potent AOE attacks, and “Scarlet of the People” power-up mode, where she transforms into the “Revolutionary” unit type, giving her increased damage against every foe in the game—I choose to interpret this last part like Fallout New Vegas bisexuality buff, and I’m all here for it. In courtship and on the battlefield, she rejects the role she was born into.

While there are more obvious ways to translate the villainess genre into video game form, Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily captures the essence of these stories by starring a bisexual, lethal, chaotic Julie d’Aubigny-type, who defies gender roles and societal expectations while dissassembling a kingdom over several hours of methodical turn-based strategy gameplay. I’m sure Catarina, Claire, Lieselotte, and the many other villainesses who came before her would be proud.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.