Picked up My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- again and polished off the Alan route. Well, mostly. I didn’t seek out both the Good End and Happy End this time, I was just satisfied with whichever positive ending I got. And with that, that marks me finishing (mostly) the canon boys.

Alan’s route also continues the trend I’ve seen in all routes I’ve played of having the LI do most of the work in saving Katarina and himself from danger, but also allowing Katarina to contribute a bit to getting out of the situation. And I appreciate that. It helps appeal to the fantasy of being protected, but it also doesn’t make her wildly out-of-character—the entire source anime and manga is about the actions she takes to avert a nasty fate, naturally she wouldn’t just be passive in a dangerous situation.

Chapter 7 in particular was pretty rom-com-y, with awkwardness and feelings, and it’s something I enjoy seeing in an otome.

Again, the small attention to detail in the game makes me happy, the many many typos I discovered in Alan’s route notwithstanding. (I’ve been keeping a running count. We got to 45 total, 73 if I’m also counting some more minor mistakes like “no where” instead of “nowhere”. And I just got tired of keeping track somewhere during Chapter 7 and skipped a couple. Meanwhile, over the course of Nicol, Geordo, and Keith’s route I counted 21 total, 26 if also counting minor mistakes. So Alan had 24 or 47 mistakes to his route. One character carrying more errors than 3 others combined… oof, poor Alan.) I enjoyed stuff like voices being all echoey in a flashback.

Alan route spoilers concerning Frederic

In this route we learn why Frederic hates women. And oh wow, I’m not sure how realistic that motive is, it being because of his awful stepmother and stepsisters who mistreat him—maybe blame the family but not an entire gender? Maybe it makes sense if that’s most of his exposure to women—but boy is it disappointing. Villainous motive revelations in this game continue to disappoint me. At least his motivation for trying to help with kidnapping Maria, something about being impressive despite him being abandoned and maybe something something personal achievement in the face of an awful dismissive family makes sense.

Frederic seems to parallel Keith, it’s just that Keith’s stepfamily bullying him in canon turned into a playboy who didn’t seem to have any particular misogyny about him—serial infidelity and being casual in relationships does not a misogynist make—although it’s still a woman-related indiscretion. Frederic’s mistreatment just made him a misogynist.

I also just realized during this route that Alan’s earring matches Katarina’s. Hers are two blue teardrops stacked on each other, his is one blue teardrop. It looks really similar.

I feel like Alan is an interesting tsundere because as far as I remember he seems to lack the denial stuff. And he is like, actually childhood friends with Katarina, and not that harsh. More of a gentle one I guess?

general Alan route spoilers

It was hilarious that someone else had to point out that Alan’s feelings for Katarina are romantic in my opinion.

Katarina: Is that because we’re childhood friends? Silva: Uh, clearly he meant it in a romantic way. Catarina… this prince loves you.

Also, Katarina’s thoughts after thinking about how awkward things are between her and Alan:

(That’s right. I need to talk it out with Alan.) so proud of her for having the guts to just do that, especially since a lot of romance stories wouldn’t have the protagonist just go talk it out.

Also, I talked about feeling a little trolled because certain decisions in the common route are framed like you picking between Katarina’s different female friends, choosing which one to get affection up with, only for none of them to have an ending. I did go into the game knowing that only the men were LIs, but given the girls are canonically in love with her in the source material and this game acknowledges it too, I can absolutely see how someone might get the wrong impression. Well, on Alan’s route, I got myself an ending where Katarina ran off with Mary to a foreign country just like she was dreaming of. It feels like more of a joke ending but also just like a certain ending it’s classed as “Another Ending” instead of “Bad Ending” so…

Geordo route spoilers

I also find it super interesting that the man can cage Katarina, but he’s also capable of stepping down from the running and letting the route’s LI have her.

Looking back, I feel like the possibility of Silva being the secret character is the highest.

…says Katarina, in the game where you have to unlock Silva as an LI…

I was planning to do the non-canon LIs but I might just take a break from this game and put it away till next summer. Nothing against it, just a mood change. Although it was wild picking up Alan’s route after at least a month of not playing the game, and having forgotten some of the story. Good thing the chapter select gives you a bit of a summary blurb of what happened.