Throughout the weekend of July 4, HIDIVE premiered a number of new anime series.  One of those is The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainness to Savior (I'm going to shorten it to Last Boss Queen due to the full title being quite a mouthful).  

Last Boss Queen is part of what you can call the "villainess" genre, which has been growing in popularity.  The story focuses on Pride Royal Ivy (voiced by Fairouz Ai), or more accurately, a girl who has reincarnated as Pride from the fictitious game Our Ray of Light.  That's a fairly common theme in the villain genre, where a person from the modern era dies or is transported to another world and becomes another character.  I'm going to give an introduction and a run down of the first two episodes, and my thoughts overall.

Last Boss Queen started as a novel series by the author Tenichi in 2018, followed by a light novel adaptation in 2019 (published in English by Seven Seas), a manga adaptation in 2020, and now, an anime.

Our protagonist is very familiar with Our Ray of Light and she knows that the person she reincarnates as is the villainess of the game.  As the name might suggest, Pride is what you can consider a "last boss" character.  In other words, the overarching big bad of the game.  Our protagonist is however very regretful of the acts that the original Pride has done, and wants to prevent those transgressions.

I've been familiar with Last Boss Queen for a while now (since 2020) and it's one of my favorite villainess series.  Before now, I had only known Last Boss Queen on a black-and-white, static level.  The anime helps amp things up to a whole new level.  Evil Pride's voice really fits her and gets that "villainess" point across.  There's one point where the music, the lighting, the composition, and Evil Pride's voice all combines into a great horror scene during one flashback sequence.  

One of my favorite scenes of Last Boss Queen comes during episode one of the anime. Allow me to explain a bit about Last Boss Queen's world to set the stage.

In the world of Our Ray of Light, each member of the royal family has an adviser for life.  These advisers are acquired from the commonfolk for their special abilties.  In Pride's case, this is the boy Stale, who has the power of teleporting.  The adviser's job is to help guide the royal member throughout their lives.  As part of the acquisition, the adviser is no longer able to see or contact their biological family.  Furthermore, the adviser is placed under a subordinate contract so they are unable to harm the royal member.

In another life, the Evil Pride is a very sadistic girl and mentally abuses Stale, pushing him to the brink.  She even goes as far as to order him to kill his own mother, which, due to the contract, he is unable to refuse.  Stale begs her to just kill him if she's going to torture him, and in response, Evil Pride orders him to never harm himself, as to not allow him to end his own suffering.

But our new Pride does not want to repeat any of what the Evil Pride has done.  Our new Pride wants to be a queen for the people and not be the enemy of the people that Evil Pride was.  Our new Pride wants to take care of Stale and values him as an adoptive part of the royal family.

At one point, when Stale comes down sick after overworking, Pride weeps heavily at his bedside.  She pledges to be a queen for the people and that she'll do her best protect everyone, lamenting that she could not even protect Stale, a member of her family.  She furthermore tells Stale, "Please, if I become a despecible, evil queen, kill me." "Watashi wo koroshite ne."
 
This request makes Stale wonder, "What is she so afraid of?  What drives her to request that I kill her?"  

This self sacrifice is one of the things that really drew me to this series, and this is one of my favorite parts of the series. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't waiting for this moment the entire episode.  This was a great point to end the first episode.

In the second episode, Pride goes as far as to make a special request so Stale's mother can contact him again.  Stale's mother is allowed to write a letter to Stale every month, and once a year, Stale will be allowed to write her a letter himself.  He will not be cut off from his mother.

At this point, Stale pledges to support Pride through thick and thin. and vows to become crafty and knowledgeable so that he can help support and protect her.  He establishes this publicly at the ball where Pride is confirmed as the next queen of the kingdom.  The second princess, Tiara, who is originally the protagonist of Our Ray of Light, is also introduced to the public at large. Evil Pride was full of disdain for Tiara, but our Pride calls Tiara her "precious little sister," and decides she will not repeat the past.

The queen has the power of precognition and had previously saw the future of Evil Pride. But with our Pride's actions, she says the future is now unclear and changing. Our Pride is both saving her own life, and changing that of others.

The two episodes might have totalled fifty minutes but it certainly didn't feel that long.  Fifty minutes went by in a flash.  I'm looking forward to the third episode because it has one of my other favorite moments in the series.  Without going too much into spoiler territory, it's another demonstration of our Pride's self-sacrifice.

HIDIVE will be broadcast Last Boss Queen in English starting on July 6, with a new episode every week thereafter. If you're a fan of the genre, please take a look. I hope you'll fall in love with it like I have.