This is a review of the book “Cross-Dressing Villainess Cecilia Sylvie” by Hiroro Akizakura. It is the first book in the series.
After being reincarnated as the villainess of her favorite dating sim, Cecilia Sylvie realises she’s slated for an untimely demise no matter how the game’s story unfolds. Convinced she can cheat death by assuming a new identity, she becomes Cecil Admina, the dashing son of a baron. Unfortunately, Cecilia adapts to the role a little too well – and ends up replacing her brother as one of the knights who protects the heroine! TO top it all off, the prince betrothed to Cecilia is now catching feelings for her alter ego…?! This villainess will do whatever it takes to achieve a carefree life, but if her guise ever slips, it’s Game Over!
The world isn’t very special, just the regular fantasy world with magic. Everything is happening in a school for the country’s noble children, a normal school by all accounts. The surroundings aren’t very well explored or described, but there is no need to bog the story down with details. It is a quick read, and the lack of descriptions helps to keep the pace going.
The characters are recognisable as the usual personalities one would find in a manga/anime, but they don’t rely solely on those definitions to give them personalities. They are familiar enough to easily understand their role in the story, but they are different enough that they are interesting to read, and you can’t quite predict them as much as you think you can.
Cecilia herself is the main character, obviously, and she is interesting to read about. She is determined to avoid her game-counterpart’s fate, and so takes steps to do that. It was good to read about a main character who not only cross-dresses but also learns to fight from a guard, and takes action against the enemies. It is only a shame that most of that is undermined by her becoming surprisingly useless when the events of the original game start happening.
The biggest point of the story is the way Cecilia keeps comparing things to how things were and progressed in the game compared to what actually happens in the book. Things spiral completely off track as soon as the canon event are supposed to start happening, leading to a whole host of amusing situations.
The ending was an unexpected twist but it certainly explained a lot. Excellently done by the author!
There are very few bad things about this story. One of them being Cecilia turning rather useless during the important bits, becoming the stereotypical damsel in distress even if she plays a guy.
The other thing that is a bit of an annoyance is that Cecilia still keeps on thinking of the people around her as characters in a game. She has lived in that world for 17-ish years, she has already changed how her adopted brother was treated and so changed his personality, and events happen differently and people act differently. And still she keeps expecting everything to go exactly as in the game?
That just doesn’t seem logical.
But, on the other hand, her inability to see the canon characters as real people also makes it more amusing, so it’s not the biggest peeve.
This is a quick, fun romp of a start to Cecilia’s cross-dressing adventures. The story manags to avoid the usual pitfalls and doesn’t drag things out, so it’s a quick and simple read.
Definitely worth the short time it took to read.
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