I Am the Villain
by Sejji
published by Webtoon (51 chapters – ongoing)
2023 – present
I mentioned in an earlier post that I appreciate the background art for many of these full color, digital manhwa, and that’s what I’d like to emphasize in this review.
Sejji’s work in this story is SO GORGEOUS. I Am The Villain is the sort of comic you just stop scrolling through to appreciate the background art. Let me show you:
Yes, Lucy wakes up in a friend’s novel as the doomed villainess, but LOOK AT THE DRAWINGS! Oh my goodness! The gardens! The interiors! The rooms where the heroine walks in beside enormous flower arrangements! It is so LOVELY.
It’s not only about the scenery and architecture: the attractive characters are also drawn with love and enthusiasm, and each has a different style of costume with different levels of ornament.
There are other comics I’m reading which are more traditional simplified drawing style – strangely proportioned, exaggerated, very limited colors, very simple costumes – and works like this feel like an entirely different category.
The heroine in this story feels more like a ‘normal’ person: she struggles with her isekai (falling into another world) situation. She makes decent decisions to improve her ability to survive (without making much progress), yet is also burdened by a sense of being a fraud (she is a modern person, not the rich woman whose body she is in) worried about the ethics of making life decisions for someone who may… come back? Also, she’s a bit too trusting, though that would fit in with the sheltered woman whose life she has taken over.
I’ll wait to write more about the story once a full season has been released, but I recommend this manhwa now for its art quality.