Past Life Countess, Present Life Otome Game NPC?!

“…I see. I understand now. Hehehe.”

When she finally managed to get something out, her voice was raspy. Maybe she had hit her harder than I thought?

“You’re quite a strange NPC, aren’t you? You’re a character whose existence I can’t seem to override. And yet that very existence makes this different from the world in my game.”

My existence itself was being rejected.

“I mean, I wasn’t selected as the scholarship student…”

Isn’t that simply due to your grades? I tried my hardest to get in for free!

“…and it wasn’t me the Prince rescued…”

Prince? She must mean Mochizuki. But it would so crass for someone to actually try to force a rescue by throwing themselves onto—No a lady never points out the obvious.

“…my hair wasn’t even pink…”

Urara Tendou was reborn into a land with more advanced technology after a life as nobility in the kingdom of Lacrofine, which she found was similar to medieval Europe. But that’s less important—what’s important is that she’s a commoner! She’s free! She’s happy. But she could never shake off the habits from her past life, growing up to be a lady courteous to even her parents. So when she enters to St something Delia something School, she’s mistaken for someone from a rich family, and not a student on a scholarship.

But it’s also when she begins high school her troubles begin, with the seemingly crazy girl Shizuku Arimoto being on her case about… interfering with her “events”?? What does that even mean?

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NOTE: Spoilers ahead, scroll down to Final Thoughts for spoiler free TL;DR.

This book has a pretty slow start. If you like reincarnated into an otome game as a trope, you might enjoy, but it certainly wasn’t my cup of tea when I began reading.

Note that “heroine” refers to the character who is the supposed player character, and not the main character (the NPC) of the novel. I’ll just refer to her as Urara, while I refer to the player characters as heroine because most games allow one to change the name of the heroine.

Let me start with the setting of the novel, though. I really want to talk about that. Maybe I’m too obsessed with otoge.

The otome game that Urara is reincarnated into is a typical romance-focused stat-raiser with five love interests and an antagonist who has to accept the heroine or else the player won’t get to marry the dude of her dreams. The setting is very familiar as an otome game, with the heroine beginning high school at a prestigious on a scholarship, going from well-off to holy-shit-I’m-rich level of rich, I guess. And the goal seems to be to marry the filthy rich dream dude.

Uh… right.

Basically, not the most common otome game you’d find on this blog. The closest we get might be Hatoful Boyfriend. Starry*Sky doesn’t quite fit the bill. (Gosh, it’s been a while since I played these.)

And I mean, all this sounds alright, but also… not that exciting. I don’t know which is less exciting — the otome game of the setting or the novel.

Urara interferes with the heroine’s quest to trigger the events she knows of though, which frustrates the heroine, and she takes it out on Urara who just tries to live her life as a commoner with endless freedom and no noble etiquette or expectations on her. And by “take it out” I include her forcibly dragging Urara into the “gaming” of the game.

I don’t understand the heroine’s motivations either. From what it seems it’s all “I want it to play out as the game”, and then she gets pissed at what she calls and NPC. NPCs have set behaviours and lines, so why would she get angry when it’s like shouting at a wall because you want to walk through a door not right there?

Yeah, this made so little sense to me it very much affected my experience reading it.

It somewhat bothered me how Urara feels to me like a half-not a modern girl. She was born into the family when reincarnated, so it seems she lacks half of the normal knowledge. Like the basic stuff. And I’m not talking about the smartphone, because letters are charming and I love getting letters and I’m actually sad we don’t send letters, and wait in excitement or anxiety for the reply. And her feelings about instant replies are completely justified.

The art is very cute. Very, very cute. Very nice. Why is it that when I don’t like a novel or game I praise the art, but still have essentially nothing to day? Well, maybe because there’s not much to say. But I really loved the illustration of Urara feeding Chouko. BUT HOW WAS THAT AN INDIRECT KISS?! I’m confused. Please explain. They’re chopsticks, not a bottle. It’s not really a “kiss” then.

I have no qualms with the translation, but I admit that I got so bored at times my eyes glazed over, and “how is this translated?” wasn’t my main thought, just “please let me get through this!”

However, I did notice the difference in Urara’s speech and other characters. However, it wasn’t obvious when she greeted her siblings at first and I frowned when it explicitly said later she was polite with her siblings, and I hadn’t seen it yet. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the translator’s fault, so I’m not putting any blame for that on that end.

Overall, this book bored me out of my mind.

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FINAL THOUGHTS
This book was a letdown. To sum up my thoughts, the story didn’t pull me in and the characters made little sense to me. It definitely wasn’t for me. I haven’t finished this book in its entirety yet, but I know it’s not for me. And that’s cool. I just struggle with whom to recommend it. Otome gamers might have some interest in it.

I promise to pick up more otome game novels like this one though and we can hope I like them better! I have a few I’m interested in. There are some webcomics that I could read as well, if anyone’s interested. I’ll try to get through something in my backlog next though, haha! Though I’m also trying to take it easy because of my injuries.

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Side Note: Bravonovel added teen mode, and it’s hilariously only classics. It’s actually well thought out as a feature itself, as it locks with a code to turn off, but it’s still not all that useful unless you want your teens to read a small selection of literature within the Public Domain. I haven’t added this piece of info to my Master Post yet, because I’m still waiting to see if there will be any new novels added for teen consumption, or if the feature will remain not all that useful at all.

I also reached VIP membership, and realised I’ve been reading too much on that platform and it was time to move on. *profuse sweating*

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What would you like to see a review of next? Let me know in a comment!

And don’t forget to vote on the current poll on the home page!

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