HOLY. SHIT. This is bad. If there is ever a reason to indulge in genres fully its that it really begins to put other works into perspective. It is hard for me to imagine a more frustrating void of a production than I Became the Villains Mother. Firstly baseline. Does it look good? Ever? No. Characters designs are not simply flat but should be considered onedimensional despite this making zero geometrical sense because I would happily deduct a dimension for a staggering lack of value. There is ZERO effort to create expression background and activity in these panels. Despite the story and characters relationships theoretically moving forward everything portrayed is stultified for the lack of variability in art from scenario to scenario. This compounds what can only be described as the most cookiecutter template driven approach to storywriting and characters conceivable: I am the mother of the villain. He will become real nasty if I dont get mothering as hard as possible Oh hes so cute. But this nasty duke god he is acting such an antagonist to me and my sons loveydovey playtime The only interesting aspect to this story is that the son is already an asshole but this is so quickly paved over as a potential avenue for conflict with the isekaid MC that it is barely worth mentioning. His bad boy side only comes out to play when its time to turn up the gapmoe because god its real cute when he acts murderous and authoritative about his mother? The duke then suddenly has some cosmic epiphany secondary to brain aneurysm because hes been seeing his psychoson suddenly acting like a mommys boy and this bothers him. Hmm my wife and son are awfully close all of a sudden and I feel uncomfortable I guess despite all my years of growing up in this environment totally devoid of familial love I really want to try something new all of a sudden This issue here is not so much the transition existing from a formalistic cold perspective on family and familial bonds to one considered more normal/romantic in the modern sense. But that the paperthin dialogue and imagery does nothing to sell us on this fantasy. Lets not even get into how blatantly ridiculous it is to have a story that has this aristocratic family where poisoning their children to prevent assassination is normal yet the Duke seems to have zero sexual interest in his wife despite them presumably getting married with the explicit agreement of production of muh heirs and muh children for muh legacy. Or something something. Im not against stories like this having their cake and eating it too. Yes we know that the darkmurdering tendencies of the duke and his son are meant to sweeten how they become such good boys when dealing with their wife/mother. But if the duke is really such a callous and pragmatic individual would he really give into the spontaneous whimsy of his wife with so little fanfare? Villains are Destined to Die is an example of a story in this vein with MUCH stronger presentation which means selling the inherent silliness in the plot is so much easier. As previously mentioned my perspective has changed. When the Villainess is in Love moves to a 3 and this takes the prestigious spot of my 2 rating. Good god girl get a grip.