I've never played an Otome game before...

I've never played an Otome game before. Is it common for the antagonist/villain to be more attractive than the protagonist/heroine?

Maybe it's the same in most VN genres, and I just don't notice because I'm not into guys?

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ok, so basically you are gay

I don't know about Otome, but in most VNs the protagonist is just a blank selfinsert with a generic design, so is not hard for the rivals to be more interesting design-wise

I was listening to a vtuber talk about it a while ago, and she was saying how these reincarnated as a villainess series were a bit odd, having a villainess is not a common trope in otome games anyways, rarely they have it but generally not

Now that I find surprising. Given how much women hate each other in real life, I figured villains would be super common, to have a hatesink in their fantasy games to represent "that bitch at work/school//family" that she hates.

The "Villainess" trope is almost completely absent in otome games, at least in the way it's presented in these manga and light novels. Essentially, what's being done is transplanting the rival characters from older shoujo series into an otome game setting.

I take it your not into foreheads?

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oh yeah now I remember, that's what the vtuber said too, that it happens in shoujo manga but not in otome games

Why did they play the opening 10 minutes into the episode? that part was a little strange to me.

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That vtuber is correct. There's rarely the rival villainess trend in actual otome games. Experience real otome.

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>Is it common for the antagonist/villain to be more attractive than the protagonist/heroine?
Yes. Let me use an example from something that's practically an old school shoujo manga protag from a work that was explictly inspired by old school shoujo manga. Pic related is Ayaka from Fate/Prototype. She has practically all of the characteristics of an old school shoujo manga protag: seems to be a plain jane, self-esteem problems, hot men being interested in her despite her seeming to be a plain jane who isn't charming, and the reveal that she's not a plain jane but actually beautiful once she gets some confidence and a new wardrobe. Now we'll look at the villainess in our next post.

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Will she do the ojou-sama laugh

I think OniAi still holds the record for latest opening start, but yeah, it's rather stupid. If they don't want to "spoil" anything for the first episode, either skip it, or make it the credits for that first episode.

>Given how much women hate each other in real life
t. someone who has never spoken to a non-relative woman

It's.an export from shoujo manga

No

The girl in the foreground is Manaka. She's the villain(ess) of Fate/Prototype and Ayaka's older sister. The reason Ayaka has self-esteem problems is because of her--Manaka is much, much more talented at everything, seemingly more beautiful, etc, and has been since they were children. This comes to a head when they end up in competition for the love of the same man (King Arthur). The reason Ayaka wins out over her older sister in the Arthurbowl is because she's a kind girl with a strong sense of empathy, where Manaka is anything but. All of these characteristics and developments I have described are practically staple
(and very tired) cliches of shoujo manga, which is why someone got the legitimately great idea to turn these cliches on their head. What if the heroine is using her seeming vulnerability to appeal to the protective instincts of men and thereby manipulate them? What if the villainess isn't actually a bad person and that the uncouth actions she takes in the story are a product of her being serious enough about her love to discard her morals to realize it and/or seeing the heroine for what she is and taking the gloves off as a result? Etc. It opens some interesting possibilities.

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That was 30 years ago. Chinks still have it but nowadays most shoujos and otomes are women love and female friends

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yes

Protags in this genre are meant to be bland self-inserts, and villainesses usually have bad-girl energy. Not very surprising. With that said, I would in fact rate Maria as more attractive than Katarina.

She is so incredibly far from an ojou-sama.

Manaka is considered a Mary Sue and hated even by the regular fate fans.

And the reason Ayaka won is because manaka was a crazy bitch who was killing little girls and was about to kill Ayaka too. Not your typical rival

Worked in fields where woman are the majority of employees my whole life. I'm not implying anything stupid like "THIS IS ALL WOMEN" but it definitely a majority of them.

My experience has been that women tend to classify other women as either "something beneath me" or as "an obstacle to be overcome" with comparatively little middle ground. Is it a cultural thing? An age thing? What have the rest of you experienced on this front?

Women put each other down for male approval This can be seen with the notlikeothergirls trope.

Thankfully women are becoming more and more aware to that

>Is it common for the antagonist/villain to be more attractive than the protagonist/heroine
of course.
Just look at something like F/SN and notice how Gil and Archer, the rivals, are much more attractive than Shirou.

manaka literally ruined fragments. They had to mention how pretty and perfect she was every 5 seconds. Id rather have had more Elsa and Arash

>With that said, I would in fact rate Maria as more attractive than Katarina.

Fair enough, personal taste and all that. I think I'm just burnt out on the blonde hair, blue eyes combo. At this point, if the girl isn't wearing some kind of Alice in Wonderland motif, it does nothing for me.

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>archer
Hes not a rival
>Gilgamesh
Too based to be a rival

Shinji is more of a rival. Literally the epitome of the villaness trope

>Hes not a rival
Rin clearly wants to fuck him.

>Too based to be a rival
But he wants to take your Saber away and have sex with her.

>Shinji is more of a rival.
The only reason Shinji isn't a rival is that he doesn't try to have sex Rin or Saber without raping them and he already does so with Sakura every other day.

fate is not a fucking shoujo

>But he wants to take your Saber away and have sex with her.

God I wish that were me

You can analyze it through a shoujo lens, though.
Also Prototype is absolutely a shoujo.
I mean, have you seen Prototype Saber?

Look at this dude.

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he tried to rape rin before Lancer intervened

Gilgamesh is definitely the rival in Fate he fits it to a T in the initial two routes and is conceptually built as someone Shirou has to overcome.

It isn't but Nasu has talked about being influenced by shojo manga because of his sisters.

Been too busy to check this out yet. However, I know the premise, but isn't this a rather easy problem to solve? Seems like all she has to do is not be an evil bitch. How are they going to stretch this out for 12 episodes?

The antagonist is always better looking than the mc, even in normal VNs. Look at FSN, Shirou looks like shit in comparison to Gilgamesh.

So do these pairings have any meaning, or did they just pick a random spot for everyone and it has no deeper meaning behind it? Because it seems like a pretty blatant way to spoil things if that's the case.

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Gilgachad is also the rival in protyotpe too, the literal "no one can you but me" type

Well theres gonna be a large harem with Bakarina asnqueen then sub pairs for legal reasons

that's how it tends to go, she not evil, that strikes down most of the flags and it basically a sol

He generally already looks pretty shoujo, if anything the finalized design made him look more like a shoujo love interest

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Fate was going to be a shoujo, with a female mc who had a reversed harem since Kinoko-chan self inserts.

otome games almost never have a villainess

Nasu cited shoujo manga as one of his creative foundations along with things like tabletop games, and it shows. If you look at his first couple of works (the drafts of original Fate, Witch on the Holy Night, Kara no Kyoukai) you could be excused for thinking he's secretly a woman or some shit.

hate sinks occasionally exist via nameless faceless fangirls. Mystic messenger also has 3 antagonistic girls but one never even knows the protagonist exists, we barely talk to the second, and the last is less your rival in love and more the final boss of the game considering she owns a fucking cult

>Is it common for the antagonist/villain to be more attractive than the protagonist/heroine?
Yes, because Japanese are herbivores and hate sex.
So therefore, Main heroine=Pure wholesome girl, Villainess=Sexy unpure succubus.

No one can defeat you but me*
Its funny he dosent look attractive in fsn but as muramasa hes a chad

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I want to go out with him so badly.

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also lesbian end too with the final boss

No, it's more of an audience surrogate problem. The MC is meant to be a 'view point' character, so there's a tendency for them to be the normal person for the audience to relate to. This shit happens outside of nip media too.

You know for an eroge fsn had a lot of attractive men

I think Misaya fits the role of rival better than Manaka.

I want to fuck Catalina.

Is this a...

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I see. So despite being the kind of girl who plays these kind of games, she actually doesn't want dick? Figured she would have tried to power game or something and "win" all the guys, just to be extra safe she doesn't get a bad ending.

>little sister talks to the guy you like once and is accidentally a positive influence on him

>obviously the next course of action is to drag her by her collar and feed her to the beast of revelation

dubs of truth
Assassin was actually pretty fuckable not gonna lie.

That doesn't disprove my point.
The MC being an audience surrogate, when said audience is Japanese men, means that Pure wife good, sex wife bad.

That's because it was initially conceptualized as Otome game. Hence why some of the pretty boy's morphed into other characters or were re-purposed.