How to Survive as a Villain Chapters 1-7

In this episode we are discussing the first 7 chapters of the Danmei: How to Survive as a Villain by Yi Yi Yi Yi. Enjoy!

Book Summary: When domineering CEO Xiao Yu’an opens his eyes, he finds himself in the body of a doomed emperor in a third-rate stallion novel—a.k.a. the villain who imprisons the righteous protagonist Yan Heqing and dies a gruesome death for it. 

Not on his watch.

Armed with knowledge of the plot and a strong will to stay alive, Xiao sets out to rewrite his fate. Instead of cruelty, he offers kindness. Instead of power games, he offers friendship. After all, Yan is supposed to build a grand harem and rise to greatness—Xiao’s just here to support him… from a safe distance.

But as fate unfolds, nothing goes according to plan. The story still hurtles toward war, conquest, and betrayal. And Xiao finds himself tangled in misunderstandings, overly helpful courtiers, and a very conflicting relationship with the man he’s supposed to fear.

Link to book: https://yiggybean.com/products/how-to-survive-as-a-villain-vol-1-novel-pre-order-read-details-below?_pos=1&_psq=how+to+survive+as+a&_ss=e&_v=1.0

I use Yiggybean as the USA’s distributor for Rosmei translated books, but you can look on their website (see below) to find if your country has a partner.

https://rosmeihey.top/pages/partners-1

Intro and Outro Music: New Year | Chinese New Year by Alex-Productions - youtu.be/zsKpO3KDzEQ - Music promoted by onsound.eu/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hi everyone and welcome to the eighth episode of the Donmei Digest, where I talk about whatever Don May novel catches my interest. I will be discussing How to Survive as a Villain by EEEE, translated by Rosme. That's a hard author's name to read. You can read the full summary of the book in this podcast description. Right off the bat, this book is very different in tone from the previous books I've discussed. In the parts I've read so far, the tone is much lighter and there is a lot of satire-style humor. The book starts off by giving us some color to our main character, Xiao Yuan. It's a very strong start because it basically makes fun of your classic CEO K drama, C drama, and Webtoon. In his world, he is raised by his parents to be a domineering CEO. A domineering CEO needs to be both loving and tyrannical and memorize the 300 classic quotes of domineering CEOs. They must be prepared to fall in love with a girl who is of the common class, who is kind even to people who are mean to her, and tries to solve problems with that kindness and without deception. Now, we all know this is a classic CEO type plotline. I found this hilarious because in those types of stories, the CEOs are just like that naturally. But in this case, he's being purposely trained to fulfill the specific romance path. It's also really funny because Xiao Yuan reacts completely off script to the typical CEO drama scenarios. Case in point, he runs into a girl who yells at him for trying to give her money for accidentally breaking her flower pot. A typical domineering CEO would be like, wow, she's so special and unique to not want money. But Xiao Yuan is like, why is she yelling at me for no reason? I already apologized. Then his parents introduced him to a different archetype, female love interest. The girl's name is Lin Enchanting Butterfly, Ice, Crystal, Violet, Soul Leaving the Night, Phoenix Liang. That's ridiculous, right? And clearly it makes fun of a different type of character typically seen in these types of dramas. So you can kind of get a sense of the type of humor found in this book. And honestly, this satire type humor works really well for me. Maybe because I've read some web tunes with these typical domineering CEO characters. So Xiao Yuan was trained to be a domineering CEO but failed miserably. Unfortunately, in this world, he was also diagnosed with a terminal illness. When he died, he was transmigrated into the body of the villainous emperor of a web novel he was reading. Step one, of course, in transmigration is to, of course, find the protagonist to try and get him to not want to kill you. Unfortunately, the original emperor is a piece of work, so he has his work cut out for him. Now for our other main character, Yan He Qing, the protagonist of this web novel who will amass a large harem and kill the scum emperor fairly early on in the book. Xiao Yuan rescues Yan He Qing from getting tortured in a dungeon and does his best to set him up nicely in the palace. However, enemies are everywhere, and the next place Yan He Ching gets sent to, the Imperial Household Department, has a head eunuch who treats him very poorly. When Xiao Yuan sees him being beaten and abused by Yunuch Zhao, he brings Yan Hu Ching into his pleasure slave house to protect him. One common issue in these transmigration stories is the main character not seeing everyone else as real people, only as characters on a page. I mean, you can't exactly blame them. It's such a huge change and not easy to adjust to. The characters who you are rooting for are now after your head. Xiao Yu Yuan just wants to survive and see Yen Hu Ching fall in love with the emperor's sister. Although this is a common plot point, it's still frustrating to see Xiao Yuan's mindset. He doesn't want to help Yan Hu Ching because he genuinely wants to see him unharmed, but more so to save his own life. I'm sure this will change as they fall in love and Xiao Yuan lives longer in this new world, but hopefully it's not dragged on for too long. Another point that has caused me a bit of frustration is how blatantly Xiao Yuan doesn't try to fit into his role at all. I'm not saying I want him to act like a cruel emperor, but he could at least try to use a more formal language. It's a bit weird to see, bro, wake up in a Palace-era novel. But that's maybe because Xiao Yuan grew up with such a dramatic and unorthodox upbringing. Despite not being the typical domineering CEO, he was still raised in luxury without too many hardships. And my goodness, he is a huge drama queen. He likes to randomly recite modern poems, which confuses the shit out of everyone around him. But here's the he's the emperor, so they can't exactly say anything. He outright calls Yen Ho Ching the protagonist. Like to his face. But I know I might be frustrated about this simply because I'm just not used to it. So maybe it'll be okay as I kind of get used to it and continue reading the book. So right now, Yen Ho Ching is living in the quarters for the pleasure slaves of the Emperor. Xiao Yuan dotes on him, not sexually, but you know, um, and does his best to take care of him, to the bafflement of everyone else. But then he does something that I never expected. He actually tells Yen Ho Ching that he's a trans migrator. I've never seen anything like this happen before, and it gives the story a unique twist and flavor that I'm excited to see unfold. I've never read a trans migrator who doesn't even care about staying in character. I guess in this case, his out-of-character behavior works in his favor because Yen Ho Cheng does believe him. This sets the groundwork for their relationship to finally start growing, or at least for some trust to grow on Yen Ho Ching's part. I feel like the characterization feels a bit uneven at this point. Xiao Yuan just has such a strong and unique character, whereas Yen Ho Ching really does still feel like a character on a page, which is maybe intentional. The author might reveal more of his personality as Xiao Yuan starts to see the people in this world as real. If so, that is pretty genius. But yeah, Xiao Yuan is very quirky. At some point on an excursion, he sprains his ankle and Yen Ho Ching carries him back. To commemorate this new stage in their friendship, he sings a little friendship song. Another funny instance is when Xiao Yuyan freaks out when his sister feeds him the super rare soup meant for Yen Ho Ching. Then he forces Yen Ho Ching to drink the soup, and he's just like, eh, it's okay. And Xiao Yuan is like, what do you mean it's just okay? Don't you feel a stirring in your heart? Okay, so then the plot starts to kick into gear a little bit. Qin Yu, one of the pleasure slaves, is paranoid of the attention that Yen He Ching is getting, as he used to be the Emperor's favorite. He could have very easily become just a typical scheming side character, but he does get a small backstory that made me feel sad for him. He was going to be a promising official, but caught the eye of the emperor and was forced to be a pleasure slave. He had to pretend to fawn over the emperor when inside he hated every second. And because of this, his former upright personality became paranoid in scheming. While I do feel bad for him, the scheme he concocted almost ended in disaster. There are two other side characters who play a minor role in this first half of the book. Xiao Feng Yu is one of the pleasure slaves who fell in love with a palace guard named Yang Liuan. Unfortunately, Qin Yu saw them exchanging tokens of love, which is cause for both of them to be put to death. So Qin Yu blackmails Xiao Feng Yu to pretend to sleep with Yen Ho Ching, which would cause both of them to be executed. But it would save Yang Liuan's life, the palace guard. Luckily, this plan fails because Xiao Yuan sees right through it. I was quite impressed by his intelligence, which we haven't really seen much of so far. He was able to put the pieces together and determine that Yan Ho Ching was framed, and that Xiao Feng Yu was being blackmailed. Xiao Feng Yu tried to commit suicide, but he was luckily able to be saved thanks to Xiao Yuan performing CPR on him. Very lucky that domineering CEO training included CPR in case you need to use it on your future wife. This whole mini plot line is wrapped up quite nicely in the end. Xiao Yuan sends the two lovers away so they can live their lives together, and he disbands the pleasure slaves, giving them back their old positions in gold so they can live comfortably. This shows that Xiao Yuan is truly a kind person deep down. We haven't really seen this yet since we know from his inner thoughts that he's mainly kind to Yen Ho Ching to preserve his own life. But these actions do show that he is capable of being kind without any sort of reward, which is a good foundation for his future relationships in this world. It does feel a bit weird that just like that, a couple side characters just disappear from the rest of the story because, and because of that, the pacing does feel a little bit off. Um, but I am getting more invested in seeing where the story goes and how the relationship between the two main characters continue to develop. Yan Ho Cheng was assigned to be Xiao Yuyan's personal guard, so they'll be interacting a lot more. But as I mentioned earlier, a relationship can never truly happen until Xiao Yuyan sees Yan Ho Ching as an individual and not a character in a story. So we'll see what happens. Commenting on the translation itself, this book doesn't have the internal full page art that other translation companies do, but there is a nice hand-drawn lotus flower and crane in the top corners of the pages, and also a small T-set on the first page of each chapter. And I love the covers, art style, just such vibrant colors, with the main characters at presumably some sort of festival with lanterns. Overall, there are things I liked about this book, the humor being the biggest thing. But as I mentioned earlier, the characters aren't very developed yet, and the pacing feels a bit off, so we'll have to see how I feel once I finish this book. But yeah, thank you all so much for listening, and until next time.