How many times has this happened to you? You're reading an isekai story that takes place in an otome game, but as you go on, you begin to realize that the story's creator has never played an otome game. Maybe it's the weird way they talk about game mechanics, or maybe it's the simple fact that very few (if any) otome games have "villainess" characters, but something about the way the story is told smacks of a lack of research or willful ignorance of the very thing they claim to be writing about. Even if it doesn't actively annoy you, you notice it.

If this sounds like you or like something that would bother you, pick up Gwon Gyeoeul and SUOL's Villains are Destined to Die right now. Even without the fact that it's an addictively crafted and engaging story, it's also one of, if not the, only otome isekai stories I've read that appears to have been written by someone who has played otome games, particularly the mobile versions with their microtransactions. Although fidelity to things like this isn't necessarily a requirement for the genre (as many an enjoyable but flawed series has shown), there's something satisfying about a story that understands its source, and this series has that in spades.

The plot follows an unnamed young Korean woman who finds herself suddenly living inside a mobile otome game she played to escape from her own life, Daughter of the Duke's Super Love Project. The game is pretty basic – you play as Ivonne, the long-lost daughter of Duke Eckhart, who is suddenly returned to her birth family and thrown into high society, where she pursues several romanceable characters. But that's only on easy mode – hard mode starts before Ivonne returns, and the playable character is Penelope, the daughter Duke Eckhart adopted to fill the void when Ivonne was taken. Spoiled and bratty, Penelope is portrayed as an antagonist in easy mode, but hard mode reveals her to be struggling with feelings of displacement and forces the player to try to snap Penelope out of her self-destructive state while offering her a chance to romance one of the male characters. The caveat? Most of the love interests' affections start in the negative numbers, and as a certain other villainess once noted, all routes can lead to doom.

Penelope's anguish is something that the woman who comes to inhabit her body knows all too well. The illegitimate child of a wealthy man in South Korea, she's spurned by her father and older brothers when she's forced to go live with them and is made continually to feel like she's not a "real" daughter and doesn't belong. That means that when she finds herself as Penelope, she's able to understand how the girl's seemingly idyllic life could be anything but – Penelope may be less spoiled and bratty and more deeply unhappy at being treated more as Not Ivonne than as Penelope. But this understanding also carries the risk that her trauma will get in the way of what she needs to do as Penelope, namely raise the affections of her two older brothers and her father. In her mind, they're analogous to her real-life half-brothers and father, which prejudices her against them, which isn't in Penelope's best interests. Even without the other three potential love targets, this stands to work against her goal of not dying, affecting her choices.

In many a reborn-in-an-otome-game story, the heroine's greatest obstacle is her inability to see the world she inhabits as real rather than a game. That's not Penelope's issue because we have plenty of hints that this is, in fact, still a game. Volume one shows her having to choose between preset dialogue options until she raises enough points to turn that option off, and volume five introduces micro-transactions that use her actual accumulated gold. She can always see the men's affection meters above their heads, and she gets quest notifications from the game engine. While plenty of game-based media have used these tropes, the combination of them here feels more real than in your average power fantasy plot, and that's a definite draw. It also very much influences the way Penelope navigates her world; she has one character she's determined to go "all in" on – in other words, a specific route she's trying to clear – and she's carefully selecting her actions based on that fact. But her inability to completely separate her game brothers from her real ones makes things more difficult (particularly in volume five when she writes off Derrick as someone she's just not going to interact with), something that might not be a great idea.

Of course, we could say that about almost any choice she makes between the five available love interests. None of them are perfect (or possibly even good), and the closer the game gets to the start of Ivonne's story, the more panicked Penelope becomes. Volumes four and five turn up the heat as she's forced to interact with Prince Callisto, the one love interest she wants to avoid, and her reputation points become ever more critical to her survival. It's also when the line between "game" and "life" begins to blur more; unlike many titles in the subgenre, it's difficult to decide how much of this is truly a game and how much its characters are actual people. It's impressively well-written, and the fact that the translator changes between volumes three and four isn't noticeable at all; in fact, I only realized it because I checked the copyright pages before writing this review.

Like many full-color Korean comics, Villains are Destined to Die began its life online, in this case on the Tapas site/app. Unlike others, the transition from vertical scrolling to book format is very smooth, possibly because artist SUOL doesn't use as much blank space as other webtoon artists do. Ize, Yen Press' imprint for Korean comics, puts out a very nice edition – heavy (which admittedly could be an issue if you have wrist or hand issues), on thick paper, and with a flexible enough spine that no art or text is lost to the crease. That's a major plus because the art is gorgeous and uses some very nice details, both in the backgrounds and costumes and as visual indicators of Penelope's choices.

This is an excellent series, even if you aren't a die-hard villainess isekai fan. Well-written, making use of actual game mechanics in ways that benefit the story, and with a heroine whose issues come more from her life experience than her preconceived notions about the game she's living, Villains are Destined to Die is simply a good series, if not my favorite of Ize's current titles. It's a good place to start if you're curious about the line or full-color manhwa in general.