hi!! so your posts about the one within the villainess got my best friend and i super into it, and i was wondering if you had any recs with similar vibes! hope you're having a good day :))
Oh! Well, honestly, I'm not a very good source for transmigration/isekai stories becauuuse they usually kinda bug me a little? But here are some I've been enjoying because they subvert most of my annoyances:
Somehow I've Become A Crow / The Crow's Prince: Our heroine is a modern day zookeeper who gets thrown into a game she only knows a little bit, and instead of becoming one of the named characters, she winds up in the body of a perfectly ordinary crow. Her plan is to fix things up for the prince who takes her as a pet/friend and then bow out when the actual protagonist shows up, but things don't go that way. The villains in this are... pretty meh, honestly, and the plot related to them is kinda thin. But the relationships between our heroine and the other characters, especially (Game Protagonist Spoiler) are super adorable, the comedy is great, and the art is gorgeous.
May I Ask For One Final Thing?: Our heroine is not the transmigrator (but I won't say who is because that's a spoiler), but when she ends up in the typical Villainess Condemnation, everything goes sideways as it turns out she's more than capable of just beating the shit out of her asshole ex-fiance and all his cronies, then sets out to continue making craters of all manner of wrongdoers. Again, the art is stunningly pretty, and the character interactions are hilarious. Bonus points is that is has an anime coming out this year, which I am super hyped for.
A Splendid Revenge Story of a Super-Dreadnought Cheat Villainess: This one's a liiiittle more formulaic in its storytelling than the others, but it's basically an inverse of TOWTV, in which the transmigrator arrives because the original villainess has killed herself, and on seeing her memories and realizing just how shitty her fiance and the rest of her family were to her, the transmigrator decides she'll be the one to get revenge for the lost villainess. This one's in the very early scanlation stage, so if you wanna wait until there's more available, that's understandable. But it also has a good supporting cast and pretty art and the main character is delightfully sharp like Remilia.
So I'm a Spider, So What?: I've only just started reading this one, so I may or may not recommend it as much in the future, but it has a similar premise to The Crow's Prince where the isekai'd character finds herself in the body of one of the piddly dungeon spiders that are usually only good for level grinding, which she's gonna have to do a lot of if she wants to survive. So far, it's very funny, and she's so cute that even I, a notorious arachnophobe, wanna cuddle her.
Aaaaand, that's it! I hope you find something you like here!
Adding more:
Surviving Romance: This one is fucked up, but so satisfying. The protagonist winds up trapped as the lead in her own novel, but things have gone entirely off the rails. As if being thrown into a zombie apocalypse wasn't bad enough, the original version of the character she's stuck as has come back as an antagonist after being driven mad by the knowledge she's fictional. Lots of meta on the nature of roles, fourth wall breaks, psychological horror, and batshit insane art.
Concubine Walkthrough: I'm almost done with this one but I won't drop spoilers. The lead is stuck in a VR game that never made it to market, but can't remember how she ended up there or why it's so buggy. Certain other characters turn out to be players, the story goes absolutely wild, and this is another one that has a lot on the nature of game creation and the roles characters play. It also has the lead being very sympathetic towards and worried about the character she has replaced, and actively trying to find out if there's a way to restore her, which tends to get skipped over in a lot of transmigration as everyone usually decides "whatever, they're gone, this one's better so who cares?".
Hiiiii, another recommendation!
Cheating Men Must Die!: Oh, y'all, this one is so fun. It's extremely long, but it's broken up into "episodes" that makes it easy to take breaks. Our protagonist is a professional transmigrator, whose job is hopping into fictional worlds to take revenge for characters who've been screwed over by the narrative (or other selfish transmigrators using them as point fodder). She is super smart and super vicious about it, the relationship between her and her system companion is adorable and hilarious, the creator has an incredible knack for knowing and subverting tropes, and the art is stunning.
OK I wasn't gonna add another rec so soon, but I literally shotgunned all 75 available chapters in one day, so!
Mother's Contract Marriage: This one is not in fact an isekai, it's a regressor (yanno, someone sent back to their own past instead of being stuffed into someone else). What makes it refreshing is that 1) the regressor does not instantly become perfect because she knows the future. She struggles with the trauma and repeatedly has to correct herself from the same mistakes and behavior. And 2) she isn't actually the main lead. Our protagonist is actually her precocious and adorable daughter. Primarily, the story is fluff and politics, but I do have to hand out a trigger warning that there are some uncomfortably true to life scenes of alcoholism and child abuse in the very first chapters, and then later when one of the main villains of the piece shows up. Also the art is incredible, but I recommend not trying to read it in a dark room because it's also shiny. Currently on hiatus between seasons 2 and 3.
I'm The Brave Puppy That Will Save The Villainess! / The Brave Puppy On A Mission to Rescue A Villainous Sister!: This one is a... idk the actual term... lateral-transmigration? Where one character ends up as another character in the same world? The protagonist is, as the title says, a puppy that is the only bright spot in the otherwise miserable life of her owner. (warning, animal death ahead) When the puppy dies and goes to doggy heaven, she's upset that all she can do from there is watch her owner continue to be treated horribly and sink into despair, so she convinces the dog god to let her be reborn in the body of a newly-adopted child of the family (who is implied to have just died) so she can make her owner happy again and prevent a terrible fate. Toothrottingly adorable, since she still has a puppy mind and all the love and determination that comes with it. This one kind of sidesteps the OG Body Owner issue that usually bothers me in that no one actually knew the OG, and thus have nothing to compare her to.
New addition!
The Otome Heroine's Fight For Survival: This is another one where the main character is a native of the world, but this one has two added twists: 1) she would have been the protagonist of the fictional world, not the villainess, and 2) after receiving the memories of the transmigrator who wanted to steal her body, she decides her fated life is a heap of bullshit and she becomes a shonen rpg protagonist instead. The art is fun, especially the fight scenes.
Update!
This Isekai Maid Is Forming A Union!: I'm about halfway through the chapters that have been posted, and this is an incredibly good 20-car pileup. Multiple transmigrators, some who are becoming better people and others who just suck, a protagonist who is a multi-reincarnator (among other things), alternate timeline asshole nutjobs, a bunch of well-written maids just trying to survive a load of political bullshit, and some chef's kiss worldbuilding.
Trapped With the Male Lead of A Horror Game: I'm 40 chapters into this one, and the interesting spin it has is that the NPC the transmigrator is stuck as is both literally a NPC (as in, there is no "soul" that she's replacing/stuck with, the System actually *takes her body over* whenever she's expected to play "Charlotte") and tied to one of the backstory characters. My only complaint so far is that the male lead is kind of dense (fr ex, it takes a headdeskingly long time for him to clue in that Blue Eyes = Our Lead/Red Eyes = Whomst The Fuck?), but a lot of it can be attributed to the Horror house actively fucking with his head, so it's mostly forgivable.
