Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Villainess

Sub-Tags: Reincarnation, Time Loop, Otome

Alphina and an Educators Duty!

Alphina Plays Teacher

All adventures must come to an end. After escaping the princes and journeying off on an adventure with Scarlett and Carl, Alphina’s trip is cut short when Carl needs to go back to school.

Coming back to her homeland under the auspices of protecting Carl, the empire she returns to is a far cry from the one she remembered under the saint. Upon discovering Alphina’s heroic deeds, the nation has gone out of its way to venerate her. People praise her as the greatest vermillion, a saint in absentia, statues bearing her visage have been erected, and even her parents have gotten in on the show creating souvenir foods for the populous. 

However, Alphina has little time to ponder the situation as it isn’t long before she’s back to her old ways – disguising herself to investigate strange movements by remaining members of the Xenos Church.

Disguising herself as a teacher at Carl’s school, her new mission is fraught with danger. Not only could the church’s agents be anywhere, but the prince and his advisor have also arrived at the school to investigate.

Alphina is the first to get a lead on the case as she discovers the church trying to indoctrinate a Havenrose citizen, Hipper, into their ranks. Befriending the lonely child, Alphina’s a little too late to stop the events set in motion by the church. Revealing her true identity in a typical airheaded fashion, she saves Hipper from being sacrificed, only to find herself in a spot of hot water.

The 101st Loop

The second half of the volume gets to the crux of the people, especially the prince’s love for Alphina. Realising that their redheaded hero will escape the first chance she gets, they make the drastic decision to lock her away, doomed to live a life of a caged bird.

A married life with little adventure would be akin to a suffocating and agonising death for Alphina, and her choice to trigger another loop at the height of her wedding is well within character. Even whilst people love her in the 100th loop, apart from Scarlett and Carl, their love for her is for innately selfish reasons, never thinking of her feelings, making it understandable why Alphina would want to start again.

Her latest loop-around allows the author to truly stretch their comedy muscles. A world of complete opposites, characters such as the prince and Kithling are either full-on playboys or just straight-up idiots.

Deciding that this world is even more of a nightmare than the hundredth loop, Alphina’s saving grace this time around comes from a very unlikely source. The saint, true to her hedonistic nature, changes very little, a grounding that helps Alphina restore the two loops.

Alphina ventures deep within the saint’s piggy mind, revealing a vivid world filled with fluff, pigs, and a subservient Alphina used as a chair!

The end of the second volume follows much in the way of the first. A deadly battle against the saint sees Alphina back in the world of the 100th loop with an unresolved wedding to sort out.

To conclude, the sequel in this looped saga manages to keep the light-hearted tone of the first and resolve the leftover plot threads. Whilst this volume finally kills off the remaining vestiges of the church, the more important moments are drawn from the second half as the author deals with the populous’ undying love for Alphina.

Amongst the vivid dreamworlds and slapstick comedy, the 101st loop reveals the rather sad reality that as much as Alphina fights, save for a chosen few, those around will treat her like a doll forcing her into a life no better than that of a caged beast.

Whether the series will resolve its latest cliffhanger or has the legs to move through a third volume remains unclear, but I personally hope so, as the end of this volume leaves much unsaid.