- #1
I think this story is quite interesting. Alicia's personality has me constantly smiling, and her interactions with the other characters are great as well. I was worried if she had what it took to be a proper villainess, but she manages just fine on the surface. The problems mainly start after she enrolls in the academy. 80% of the male characters become completely hostile towards her and are practically brain dead. The main heroine's philosophy is extremely naive, and she doesn't appear to learn anything from any of the encounters she has with Alicia. Alicia herself shows no signs of character development outside of the very, very weird romance with Duke. Her desire to be a villainess is so strong that she would willingly burn everything to the ground, including the people close to her. I have yet to learn a single reason behind her burning desire besides, "it's cool, so I want to do it." I refuse to believe that the entire reason for her realistic thought process and lack of interest in her family's feelings is that she thinks it's cool.Spoiler
Her father asked her to stop monitoring the heroine because he worried for her safety after the kidnapping incident. She disregards all his worrying and insists that "she must finish what she started." That leads her to go through 2 years of solitude and fracturing her family in the process. Another instance is with the whole exiled thing. Just so she could be known as the first person in decades to be exiled, she ignored Gilles's feelings and could have said, "f*ck off."
[collapse]Another problem is the romance. The romance between the main heroine and male characters is just terrible. They lose all semblance of their original personalities and become braindead freaks that do nothing but spout slander towards Alicia, and praise for the heroine. They never even question why Alicia had such a drastic change in character within so little time.The problem with Duke x Alicia is the age gap. It's seriously gross. 5 years. A 5-year age gap is just too large. When she was 7/8 and he was 12/13, I could handle it... barely. But when she was 13 and he was 18, I hated every time he appeared. It was so creepy and off-putting. Now that she's 15 and he's 20, the situation is a little bit better though. At the same time, the romance feels extremely forced for no apparent reason.My third problem is worldbuilding. I haven't the faintest clue as to what this world's geography looks like. I can't tell if everything is going on within the same city or if they live in different regions. There's also a major issue with the magic system. All that is known is that commoners can't use magic, there are levels to magic, and if you skip any of those levels you can lose your ability to use magic. The issue is that there is no other explanation for magic. It's unknown if there's only one spell per level, or multiple. It's unknown how one advances these magic levels. It's unknown if magic can be used limitlessly or if there is an element that restricts it's usage. There are too many uncertainties about magic, and it's simply become a convenient tool for the story.Overall, 3/5 story. Get rid of the romance and give a proper reason to Alicia's desire, and it'll easily be 5/5.