I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)! (Nengan no Akuyaku Reijō (Last Boss) no Karada o Te ni Ireta zo!) is Web Serial Novel by Ryousuke Hata and published on Shousetsuka ni Narou, but better known for its manga adaptation by a four-person team including Hata as the writer, Rei Nakajima (Nurse Witch Komugi, Inumimi) as the artist, Hitoha Ushio as the character designer, and Maruborou Akai (Kamen no Maid Guy) as the storyboarder. The manga started serialization on Shōnen Magazine's online platform "Magazine Pocket" on 20 October 2023 and simultaneously published in English through Kodansha's K Manga service.
A young woman lies dying in a hospital bed, the specter of death watching over her. This had been her life since the day she was born. Upon meeting God, she is given the chance to live again in a world of magic. Leaping at the chance to have a healthy body, she is reborn as the villainess Elizabeth in an Otome Game and lives her life, blissfully unaware that her fate is to be killed by the heroes. She might enjoy a healthy life now, but will she be able to turn fate on its head?!
This series contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Elizabeth's parents banish her to the annex and don't let her go near the main residence, even putting iron bars on her windows, not that it stops her from going out.
- Achievements in Ignorance: According to God, in Elizabeth's past life she has been killing grim reapers left and right all her life without realizing it, causing God to describe her as an Sickly Prodigy. This carries over to her present life: without even realizing she is doing it, she defeats the wraiths and reapers drawn to her dark magic while doing radio exercises, allowing her to level up to that of a soldier at the age of six.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: During Lux's proper introduction in Chapter 16, some girls find him dreamy but are wary of his The Casanova tendencies. At least one girl, however, says that the "bad boy" factor has its own appeal.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Chloe wished her charge would become more energetic. In her perspective, Elizabeth did have a personality change in that direction, which makes Chloe even more beleaguered.
- Bears Are Bad News: Subverted. While a bear is causing problems for the locals, Elizabeth quickly kills it because she wants to eat meat for her birthday and to make things easier for everyone else.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Karen is one of the few people who wants to be Elizabeth's friend so she becomes attached to her rather quickly.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Elizabeth's maid Chloe has to keep up with her antics. The fact that she can run fast enough to keep pace with a dragon in flight is impressive.
- Best Known for the Fanservice: Done In-Universe. A major part of The Saint and the Four Knights' popularity comes from the cut scenes where Karen heals the (usually) male romantic options and then proceeds to strip them to make sure she got everything. This is the one thing Elizabeth wasn't prepared for when she was on the receiving end.
- Big Brother Bully: Elizabeth's eldest brother harasses her until she traumatized him.
- Biomanipulation: While Elizabeth's dark magic includes traditional ones like Casting a Shadow, she is capable of this as well, with her signature move (at least up to Chapter 17/18) being an One-Hit Kill magic that specifically stops the enemies' hearts. She is also implied to have wrung fat out of her Fat Bastard, Big Brother Bully.
- Body Horror: Elizabeth is implied to have wrung the fat out of big brother's body. He's understandably traumatized.
- Bullying a Dragon: The kids at school are quick to accuse Elizabeth of cheating and spread rumors about her but after seeing her "fight" three boys after they take it physically, most of them are too afraid to do it to her face.
- The Casanova: Prince Lux is a playboy who seems to often have girls flanking him. In the game, he fell in love with Karen at first sight and declared her his ladylove. In the manga, he falls in love with Elizabeth instead and tries to do the same with her, who isn't interested.
- Casting a Shadow: Elizabeth, being a dark-elemental, certainly can do this. She can cast darkness over a large radius and shut off all senses from all entities within the area.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Elizabeth has such physical strength that she can yank a tree from the ground, which she got strictly through training.
- The Charmer: In Luna's perspective, Karen is a "Natural-born Charmer who is Dangerously Cute" and was able to conquer all 4 romantic interests of the Game easily. What Luna isn't expecting is that she can even charm women (i.e. Elizabeth) as well.
- Chronic Self-Deprecation: According to Luna, Elizabeth in the The Saint and the Four Knights canon has little self-esteem due to the Fantastic Racism around her, but still confident of her magic powers. So when Karen surpasses her during the Magic Assessment event in the game, she becomes a bullying Alpha Bitch due to Inferiority Superiority Complex from having nowhere else to hinge her self-esteem upon. This is not happening in the current timeline since this Elizabeth is not only the World's Strongest Woman, she's also a Determinator as well as developed a liking towards Karen.
- Colour-Coded Emotions: The Downer Beginning is emphasized by having nearly the entire session painted in a blue overtone—with the exception of one panel which cuts to the outside of the hospital—where a few children are playing—for contrast.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Elizabeth may want to be normal, but she has a very skewed idea of what "normal" is.
- Comically Missing the Point: When the crowd accuses Elizabeth of cheating she sees it as being popular.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Having spent her last life under the shadow of death leaves Elizabeth unfazed by some of the horrors she faces in her new life. While self-imposed, her training has also caused her to shrug off harassment and getting chewed out, as it isn't as bad compared to some of the monsters she has faced.
- Creepy Loner Girl: According to Chloe, before Elizabeth regains her Past-Life Memories, she was always alone in a room darkened by the dark miasma attracted by her dark magic, and barely moved, spoke, or even smiled. She would like the girl to be more energetic, but definitively wasn't expecting a Plucky Girl waiting for her on the latter's sixth birthday.
- The Darkness Before Death: The protagonist's moment of death before reincarnation portrays this using a single panel. That panel applies Fade to Black from the upper right to the lower left, as manga is usually read from right to left. She had her last thoughts in several segments in that panel, inter-spread with EKG beeps, with the long Flatline bleep at the left end.
- Declaration of Protection: At the end of Chapter 9, Elizabeth declares the following to Karen's bullies, enough to make Karen blush in response:Elizabeth: Karen is my First Friend ever. I won't allow anyone to hurt her. It doesn't matter who it is. I'll even fight the entire world for her!
- Delicate and Sickly: Zigzagged. There's no doubt that Elizabeth was a sickly girl in her previous life and spent her entire life in the hospital, and the first scene follows the conventional portrayal of the death of a consumptive heroine, being very depressing as well as her spent a significant part of it lamenting her condition. She was also, at a minimum, generically cute with no physical signs of being a chronically bedridden person. That said, the second scene establishes her being a Determinator, making her a subversion of sorts in that she isn't delicate in spirit.
- Determinator: While she did not realize the Sickly Prodigy aspect of her past life, she was already a determined person despite (or maybe because of) her poor health. This is demonstrated by her explanation to God why she needs no further information about her next life:Elizabeth: If I can get a ticket to a new life, I'll forge my destiny! I'm not too fond of prophecies and predictions, you see! People have been predicting my life expectancy from the moment I was born, and I'm sick of it!
- Disease by Any Other Name: While it's explicitly stated that in her past life, Elizabeth was very frail and sickly, there's no discussion as to what caused it. The fact that she solely mentioned symptoms associated with the heart before and after her reincarnationnote indicates her past-life health problems mainly arises from a congenital heart defect.
- Downer Beginning: The first five pages of the manga are spent on the protagonist realizing she is no longer able to prevent herself from dying, lamenting her lifelong situation, and wishing for a healthy body as she dies, which is rather depressing compared to the rest of the series.
- Elemental Hair Colors: Elizabeth is a dark-elemental mage with jet-black hair. Karen is a light-elemental mage with white/silver hair. Reus is a fire mage with red hair.
- Elemental Personalities: In this timeline, Reus is a Hot-Blooded fire mage.
- Failure Is the Only Option: In the 24 confirmed story branches Elizabeth almost always gets consumed by darkness and becomes a demon lore before getting killed by the heroine and the knights. God may be trying to create a 25th branch by summoning an otherworlder.
- Faint in Shock: In Chapter 2, Chloe gets this twice when Elizabeth gets into dangerous maneuvers, once accidentally and once intentionally.
- Familiar: Luna's job is supposed to be Elizabeth's guide but since she is already overpowered by the time he shows up, so he becomes Mr. Exposition instead.
- Fantastic Racism: Zelvians consider people with black hair and black eyes as a bad omen owing to being similar to the demon lord in the legends. Luna mentions that in many routes of The Saint and the Four Knights Elizabeth falls into darkness because of this and even worry the current Elizabeth can't handle the discrimination. Fortunately, Elizabeth reassures Luna that she gets used to it thanks to her big brother, not to mention, even with that considered, she still thinks her current life is an improvement over her past life.
- Fiery Redhead: In this timeline, Reus is a fire mage with red hair and is Hot-Blooded.
- First Friend: Between being too weak to do anything in her past life, and being the subject of fear in this life, Karen is the first person Elizabeth befriends in a total of 30 years.
- Flatline: Before her eventual reincarnation, the protagonist's death is demonstrated in a gradual The Darkness Before Death frame when her final wish of reborn into a healthier body is inter-spread with short EKG beeps and ends at a long beep, indicating this. (It's already been established she's in a hospital room with an EKG.)
- Gilded Cage: The annex where Elizabeth is banished to during her childhood has all the luxuries fit for a noble's manor, and Elizabeth is provided with maids and possible private tutors. However, it's also meant to prevent her from leaving it, with iron bars on the windows and barbed fences around it.
- Giving Up the Ghost: It happened several times: In Chapter 2, Chloe has this twice, paired with Faint in Shock, when Elizabeth (1) fell from the windowsill and is likely to land head first (Traumatic Superpower Awakening causes her to land safely) and (2) after trying out her magic, jumps out from the window from her second-floor room (and uses her magic to land safely). Elizabeth herself also gets this in Chapter 7, when Karen befriends her, since this is the first time Elizabeth gets befriended for all her life.
- God Is Good: The actions God has performed so far are for the general good: trying to resolve the issue of The Saint and the Four Knights where Elizabeth turns into a demon lord by specifically choosing a soul to reincarnate as her; and in his perspective, this is also in the protagonist's favor, as he thinks she would have an easier life post-reincarnation.
- Hollywood Genetics: It's been mentioned that all other Maxwells are blonds while Elizabeth is the only one with black hair. In real life, it would be impossible for a blonde couple to have a child with jet-black hair.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Between Elizabeth and Karen. Right from their first meeting, Luna wonders if Karen got into Elizabeth's new route unexpectedly. Karen also does to Elizabeth the stripping and groping that she originally did to her game love interests. Elizabeth even fawns over how cute Karen is.
- Horrifying the Horror: Even at six, Elizabeth can drive the reapers away after killing several of them.
- Hot-Blooded: Reus gets fired up when he smells a fight or a challenge. This is notably different than how he was in the game.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Before reincarnating, Elizabeth was Delicate and Sickly for all her life and was confined to the hospital. She only wished she had a healthier body.
- In a Single Bound: By 14, Elizabeth can leap through 4 "keylometres" (kilometers) in a single leap.
- In-Universe Nickname: Despite having properly introduced himself, Elizabeth keeps calling Luna "Mr. Cat." ("Kuroneko-san", or "Mr. Black Cat" in Japanese).
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: In some routes of the The Saint and the Four Knights canon, Elizabeth becomes an Alpha Bitch due to Chronic Self-Deprecation and having her last source of pride shattered by Karen.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: When the protagonist ascends to Heaven, she's still in the hospital gown she died in.
- Jumped at the Call: When God offered Elizabeth the chance to be reborn in another world she agreed before he could finish explaining everything to her. She cares more about the fact that she'll be in a healthy body.
- Kill Steal: This is what Elizabeth wants to avoid when she and Karen enter a battle since she knows Karen wants to become stronger. However, Elizabeth emits such strong Killing Intent that is enough to drive monsters away.
- Last Grasp at Life: While the protagonist didn't die from falling into something, the first thing we see of her in the manga is her doing this, trying (and failing) to prevent her from dying.
- Lord Country: The Kingdom of Zelvia's royal house is the House of Zelvia.
- Madwoman in the Attic: Elizabeth isn't crazy, deformed, or disabled, but her black hair and dark magic are generally seen as bad omen in this universe. As a result, her parents banish her to their manor's annex, put iron bars over the annex's windows, and forbid Elizabeth from entering the main residence. It's more comfortable than most cases of this trope, however, and looks like a Gilded Cage, and Elizabeth is still given the minimal luxury of a noblewoman.
- Maou the Demon King: In the The Saint and the Four Knights canon, Elizabeth Maxwell isn't just the garden-variety Alpha Bitch villainess; she will turn into a literal Demon Lord. Luna once called the character, paraphrased, "Demon Lord in human flesh."
- Medieval European Fantasy: God makes this clear when he explains to the protagonist where she'd be reincarnated.God: It's a world of sword, sorcery, and monsters... The technology level is equivalent to medieval Europe at best.
- Mood Whiplash: The protagonist's dying scene in the first five pages of the manga is rather depressing. The sixth page greets the viewer with a halo and a message that her final wish will be granted.
- Mr. Exposition: Because Elizabeth never actually played The Saint and the Four Knights, Luna has to provide the Infodumps to the reader, explaining the content from the game.
- Mundane Luxury: Upon regaining her Past-Life Memories, Elizabeth spends most of the latter half of the first manga chapter savoring things that are taken for granted to the most, but she was physically incapable of doing in her past life—such as being able to move on the speed of thought (and without causing any palpitations nor shortness of breath), jumping off her bed, and doing simple exercises.
- Never Learned to Read: Subverted. While it's true that Elizabeth's past life never had any formal schooling due to her health problems, a discussion with Karen in Chapter 15 indicates she did read back at the time; she said she learnt of Dances and Balls that way back then.
- Next Life as a Fictional Character: She's reincarnated as the villainess character in a Romance Game (or, according to Luna, a universe similar to it). However, unlike most examples, she doesn't know that fact.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Elizabeth cheerfully lists instant death spells among her likes.
- No Name Given: Per the isekai convention, we never learned Elizabeth's name before she was reincarnated. Several other characters also go without names. None of Elizabeth's relatives are named beyond the assumption their last name is Maxwell. This may have to do with them being irreverent to the plot of the Otome game.
- No Social Skills: Having been socially isolated for 30 years—bedridden for the first 16 and then getting the Madwoman in the Attic treatment for the next 14—Elizabeth is quite eager to make friends when she enters school, but she has no idea how to due to the lack of experience.
- Off the Rails: Elizabeth being overpowered, Karen (at least) being friends with Elizabeth, and Reus' major personality change all make Luna realize this branch has deviated from the previous ones so much that he suspects Prince Lux will not flirt with Karen (as he did in all routes of The Saint and the Four Knights canon).
- Only One Name: Due to Karen being a commoner, based on Japanese medieval traditions she has no family names.
- Page-Turn Surprise: The protagonist's dying scene in the first five pages of the manga is rather depressing, with overall blue overtones. The sixth page greets the viewer with a halo and a line that her final wish of being reborn in a healthier body will be granted. While, being an isekai series, this is to be expected, the Mood Whiplash involved still qualifies for this trope.
- Past-Life Memories: When God reincarnates the protagonist, He mentions he seals her past-life memories until Elizabeth becomes six, to "ensure a healthy physical and mental development." As a result, in Chloe's perspective, her charge gets an unexplained change in personality on the latter's sixth birthday, from a gloomy, quiet girl (which was Elizabeth's original characterization) to something closer to a Plucky Girl.
- Plucky Girl: The post-reincarnation Elizabeth is stubborn about what she wants. This is to be expected, owing to the person reincarnated as she is a Determinator.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: In her past life, the protagonist is implied to have lived in the 2010s/2020s, at a time when the "Reborn as Villainess" Story genre became popular. The fact that she's confined to the hospital, however, means she does not know the idea of the stock villainess.
- Punched Across the Room: Prince Lux gets this treatment after he does the Wall Pin of Love to Elizabeth.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: When Luna checked Elizabeth's level after a few years of absence it only showed she was level 45. It was actually 945, the third digit just didn't show.
- Readings Blew Up the Scale: When taking the entrance exam, Elizabeth gets distracted for a moment and shatters the crystal meant to measure her magic.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The headmaster is more concerned about punishing a trio of bullies despite their connections than dealing with Elizabeth's antics who didn't physically harm them when she retaliated. He shut down opposition by making anyone who objects have to fight Elizabeth in a duel.
- "Reborn as Villainess" Story: Elizabeth is given the chance to live again but doesn't put too much stock in her title as the “Villainess Elizabeth” other than it has a nice ring to it. As a result, unlike most stories in the genre, the readers know she's been reborn as a Villainess while she's completely unaware of it.
- Red Baron: "Saint" Karen, "Mad Dog" Reus, and "Dark Princess of Slaughter" Elizabeth, to give a few. These epithets come quite early in the story.
- Riddle for the Ages: Even Luna can't explain why one of the universes God manages is the same as a Romance Game on Earth.
- Running Gag: Elizabeth explains everything she does as for "health," to the point of Wild Card Excuse. The Freudian Excuse behind it is clear, but the gag remains since Elizabeth Maxwell has no health issues to speak of.
- Screw Destiny: The fact that she has been beating doctors' life expectancies on her made her skeptical of the idea of You Can't Fight Fate. She makes it clear to God that, since she no longer has any physical limitations after reincarnation, she'd forge her own destiny, anything else be damned.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: When some students try to pull Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! after attacking Karen and Elizabeth, the headmaster punishes them anyway. To counter calls for punishing Elizabeth, he puts a rule in place that anyone who objects to her enrollment must fight her in a duel.
- Shockwave Stomp: In Chapter 8, upon seeing Karen being bullied during training, Elizabeth's first response is to stomp the ground really hard such that people thought it was an earthquake, and the ground even cracks.
- Shout-Out: When the girl who becomes Elizabeth is dying at the beginning of the manga, several panels feature a branch outside the girl's room with only one leaf left on it, and the leaf is blown away as she dies. This imagery is a reference to O. Henry's The Last Leaf, which is extremely well-known in Japan. The same imagery repeats every time post-reincarnation Elizabeth refers to her past life by using a stock frame of her looking at the same branch from a hospital bed.
- The Shut-In: Elizabeth was mostly bedridden in her past life, too frail to do anything other than trying her best to not die.
- Sickly Prodigy: Elizabeth does consider herself fighting against death in her past life, but only figuratively—she was too frail back then to even leave the bed. However, in God's perspective, she's been killing reapers without realizing it throughout her past life and considers her a veteran in this aspect, and her health problems "the worst handicap she could have had."
- Something Only They Would Say: When Elizabeth wins the Present Day duel between the two, she suggests Reus should do more radio exercises. Reus recognizes from the phrase "radio exercise" that Elizabeth is the "Dark Princess of Slaughter" he saw years ago, the latter of which also called their slaying of dragons "radio exercises." Elizabeth is a reincarnator from modern Japan, so she's using a phrase that nobody else in her current Medieval European Fantasy universe understands.
- Squee: After she befriends Karen, Elizabeth often squees at the former's cuteness. In Chapter 15, she even makes her mental squees a Wall of Blather to the point that Luna is annoyed (since he can read her mind using Telepathy.Elizabeth: (mentally) WHOAA SHE'S SO ADORBS SHE'S SO ADORBS OMIGOSH SHE'S JUST LIKE A DANDELION SO ADORBS...note
- Status Buff: According to Luna's exposition in Chapter, this is one of Karen's main magical powers.
- Stone Wall: Lux plays this role in The Saint and the Four Knights, being mostly used as a tank. Suitably, his elemental affinity is earth.
- Summon Everyman Hero: Subverted. At first, Luna thought God conned a simple-minded girl into playing Elizabeth's role, but after showing Elizabeth defeating the wraiths and reapers drawn to her dark magic while indulging in radio exercises, God explains his choice is very much deliberate, due to Him seeing the person He summoned being a Sickly Prodigy.
- Super-Breath: Part of Elizabeth's Charles Atlas Superpower. She can just use her lungs to blow out Reus' fire magic.
- Telepathy: Luna practices telepathy, which means she communicates to Elizabeth voicelessly, and he can also read what she's thinking at the moment.
- Telephone Polearm: During a training session a pair of bullies hurt Karen. Instead of using one of the wooden weapons, Elizabeth yanks a tree out of the ground and uses it as a massive staff/hammer.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Luna can't interfere with Elizabeth's life before the game starts but checks in on her remotely. Her antics freak him out to the point where he dreads becoming her familiar and avoids even watching her for six years.
- Title Drop: The first thing Elizabeth says when she regains her Past-Life Memories is "I got my wish and reincarnated in the villainess' body!" Unlike the title, though, the word "villainess" is glossed with the Japanese for "healthy" rather than "Last Boss," reflecting what she's thinking at the moment.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: On the day Elizabeth regains her Past-Life Memories, she also awakens her magic when she falls from the windowsill head first when she attempts to open it when the magic allows her to land on her feet.
- Underestimating Badassery: When Elizabeth yanks the tree out of the ground and holds it over her head with one hand, the lead bully assumes she is simply bluffing, enhancing herself with magic & unable to move, so they attack anyway. She wasn't using magic yet, she simply was that strong.
- The Un-Favourite: Because of her black hair and eyes, the Maxwells separate Elizabeth from the rest of the family, banishing her to the annex and locking her in her room. She doesn't let it get her down though.
- Wall Pin of Love: In the game, Lux does the wall slam when declaring Karen his ladylove. In the manga, he tries to do the same with Elizabeth, only to find himself in the fountain outside a moment later.
- White Magician Girl: Karen, whose powers are mainly that of healing and Status Buff, and being a Romance Game protagonist she has the All-Loving Hero personality as well.
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Happens twice in the first chapter: once when the protagonist is told her wish will be granted, and when God explains to Luna that the girl he reincarnated into Elizabeth's body isn't just a random girl and she was more of a Sickly Prodigy.
- Wingding Eyes: Elizabeth can get literally starry-eyed when she gets excited, for example when she's enjoying her new body in Chapter 1, or finding Karen cute in Chapter 6.
- World's Strongest Woman: By the time the story starts properly, Elizabeth is level 945 and stated to be stronger than all the other demon lords to come before her. Reus being level 99 is an oddity that Luna concludes is a result of the world trying to balance itself. And in some ways, Luna is right, albeit with an in-universe explanation: Reus was inspired by the "Dark Princess of Slaughter" he saw to become stronger, not knowing the latter is Elizabeth.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Subverted. Before her incarnation, Elizabeth was born so sickly that doctors initially predicted she couldn't survive through her third birthday. However, she kept beating these predictions, causing the doctors to Moving the Goalposts regarding how long she could live. When she finally died at the age of 16, her doctors had already given up giving her firm predictions on her lifespan, just predicting her parents wouldn't see the day she married. Her Screw Destiny worldview partly comes from her having repeatedly beating these forecasts.
