The Villains Became Obsessed Bosses

Sanitary Engineer says:

Read up to ch 63:

This is good, very similar to “I became the villain the hero is obsessed with” but a lot worse in handling relationships. MC travels to a magical girl game world and decides to use his knowledge about the game to make a villain association. The reasoning for this is kind of confusing but it’s main gist is “friends of heroes die while villains care more about family”. This sorta makes sense but it also kind of doesn’t but anyways, that’s what he does. He has around 8 members in his harem: 6 villains (Crow, Haein, Xiao, Pharmacist, Bishop, and Vendetta) 1 hero (Fox) and 1 neutral (Ahab). You might be thinking, “how can the novel support so many heroines” and, well, it doesn’t. I’ll discuss it’s problems later so let’s start with the positives.

Strongest part of the novel is its world. Powers come at a price in this world, some people pay with stamina, some with lifespan while some with memories. The main method of the MC to befriend the villains is by solving the price caused by their powers. For example, his first member: Crow is able to create magical contracts at the cost of her lifespan. The MC solves this by stealing a necklace that gives vitality to anyone wearing it and giving it to Crow. Another excellent part of the world here are the factions, drugs, and corruption present. Compared to it’s inspiration, this world is a lot darker and grimmer but it’s still told quite lightly.

Unfortunately, for the focus on the world and details, there is a complete lack of attention to the characters. As said by other comments, the pacing of this novel is too fast to allow the relationships to simmer. There is a specific process on how villainesses tend to fall in love with people, it tends to start with interest, then debt/gratitude, then obsession or reliance (maybe even pure love if an author is feeling risky). This novel does the first two well, it sets up the problems of the villains well and shows how the MC solves them. This is good, but that jump from gratitude to posession/love is completely skipped over. One of the factors that leads to this feeling of relationship level skipping is the lack of internal thoughts from the heroines. Next part is where I discuss each heroine in detail. If the following part is too long for you, I recommend just going to the last paragraph for my final thoughts.

Crow: despite being the first villain he befriends, she probably is one of the least developed. She has no internal monologue about how she feels. There was never even a flashback of something like “omg I’m crow and I’m afraid to use my powers cuz I’ll die young” and then a monologue of “omg I can live long now how do I repay this I love you MC”. This is obviously badly written by me but the point stands: I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know why she has possessiveness over the MC. You cannot have the very first heroine like this.

Haein: this one is better. There are good moments where the MC acts like a legitimate older brother towards her. The process of punishing those who hurt her was actually good and made a legitimate excuse of “huh guess she would fall in love with him”. Point is: it believable and it took it’s time to simmer.

Xiao: Horrible, the MC gave her a speech about being the ground that’ll support her and she just devotes her entire being to him. Sure she was emotionally vulnerable after being betrayed by her family, but after being betrayed, wouldn’t she be even less trusting? Even worse than Crow imo.

Pharmacist: wait, is this even a harem member? He literally just allowed her to sleep more than she used to. Why am I even mentioning her.

Bishop: slower which means better. Bishop is by far the one that struggles most with her bad deeds for the sake of good. Her internal struggle is good and she has not shown any romantic interest. She will obviously be a harem member, but the fact the story is taking its time with her is good.

Vendetta: also a slow one. She’s only in the interest phase of villainess love. I’ll have to wait for the future how the story will handle her.

Fox: okay. A stressed little hero helped by the MC by giving her motivation and curing her illness. A case of “the right place at the right time”. A coincidental encounter allowed her to be romantically interested in him. I’m personally not a fan of this kind of romance development but it works well (compared to the others in the novel).

Ahab: Good. Slow process of seeing her grieve the loss of her family to recruitment to revenge and guidance. She’s a bit of tsundere but her development sort of works well. I do think she should grieve more though, can’t imagine romance entering the mind of a girl who lost her entire family but I’ll give the novel a bone and say it’s okay.

Overall, this is a good novel that is genuinely dampened by trying to be what it isn’t. It has built a world and an MC that is grim, interesting, mysterious, and dark. However it keeps on trying to be a light hearted harem but doesn’t give the time that sort of thing requires. You cannot make a harem without breaks and daily life segments. You cannot make a harem without giving the heroines time and thoughts on how their feelings develop. You cannot make a harem by just putting pretty ladies with problems and solving them then BOOM: love. I wouldn’t complain about it this much if the novel only stopped making half hearted attempts to having romance scenes. Scenes where they get jealous are horrible and out of character. Overall a good novel with a good world but lacking characters and development.