7th Time Loop is the latest addition to the growing trend of villainess anime, where a girl reincarnates as the villainess in her favorite otome game or an antagonized girl somehow travels back in time to redo her life. This show in particular falls under the latter category. I’ve frankly grown tired of this trend. It was very novel back in 2020 with My Next Life as a Villainess but now, it feels like we’re getting at least one every season or two akin to the stubborn genre bubble that is isekai anime (which villainess anime often intersects with). Despite the fatigue however, I actually found this first episode of 7th Time Loop to be pretty enjoyable.
The show does have the usual hallmarks that’s become standard with this type of show. Its main protagonist Rishe (Ikumi Hasegawwa) gets canceled by her fiancée, Prince Dietrich (Nobuhiko Okamoto), and she dies five years later during a war and finds herself back on the day her engagement is annulled. Where 7th Time Loop deviates from the norm, and this much is obvious given the title, is that Rishe has already gone back in time and she’s now on her seventh rodeo.
One thing I dig about this gimmick is that Rishe is a very experienced person as a result of her time loop. Even on the first timeline, she gets back on her feet pretty quickly by becoming a successful merchant and with each new timeline, she decides to pursue a new profession to broaden her horizons. She’s only an overpowered protagonist in the sense that she has a really good resume with a lot of skills under her belt. Through these different experiences, Rishe becomes more confident and mature. In the second timeline, she’s perfectly okay with getting dumped by Dietrich. By the seventh and current timeline, she has zero problems with verbally humiliating him in public and she even expresses sympathy to Dietrich’s new fiancée Marie (Yui Kondo). Within the span of an episode, the show establishes Rishe as a pretty darn likable and capable character and someone I wouldn’t mind following for a whole cour.
In the sixth timeline, Rishe works as a knight and she gets killed by the emperor of the neighboring Hyne Kingdom, Arnold (Nobunaga Shimazaki). Just minutes into the current timeline, Rishe runs into Arnold again. Arnold has yet to become the emperor and he is instantly drawn to Rishe’s adventurous and headstrong attitude. At the end of the episode, Rishe impresses Arnold some more with her sword skills during a scuffle with one of Dietrich’s men, prompting the crown prince asks her for her hand in marriage. It’s all but confirmed that Arnold is responsible for the war that keeps getting Rishe killed so one has to wonder what will make him declare it and if Rishe can do anything to change that. At the very least, it’s very funny for Arnold to propose to Rishe when he’s the dude that killed her in the last timeline. And even if he wasn’t the murderer, it’s still humorous considering that marriage is the last thing on Rishe’s mind.
The emerging genre that is villainess anime is hitting me with fatigue that’s only getting worse every season. In spite of that however, 7th Time Loop makes a pretty good impression so I’m willing to try it out a couple more episodes.
Watch 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! on Crunchyroll
Xenodude Scribbles 