WOW I did not expect this manga to be so detailed! I'm LOVING this. Other's might find this boring, but wow I'm honestly completely shooketh.
** disclaimer: ** if you are looking for the typical otome-game-isekai-harem tropes in this series, you will be very disappointed. This series is ** nothing ** like any of the other manga series about aristocratic female leads. This series dives deeply into economic jargons, geopolitics, public infrastructure reform, and civic servitude. I'm a pretty well-read/nerdy 22 year old, and I had a hard time understanding some of the concepts mentioned in this manga!
** But, if you are intrigued by city-planning, trade, geopolitical feuds, and economics, you will undoubtedly find this manga awesome ** Rebuilding a fief from poverty takes priority during the first 2/3 of this manga, so romance definitely took a backseat. But that also allowed a relationship to develop much more naturally between the 2 MC's.
I love that the MC's are so multi-dimensional. We find out in ch.1 that a modern Japanese accountant's soul fuses with that of Iris, the villainess. So unlike other isekai, new Iris still feels the emotions that old Iris would have felt. I love the struggles that Iris faces-- we see her closing off the love receptors in her brain after her brother/ex-fiance abandoned her in favor of the o.g. game heroine. She, understandably, becomes a workaholic to (1) distract herself from trauma and (2) find a new purpose in life. She becomes our mirror into the world of a pre-capitalist strict social hierarchy. Also, the inter-familial relationships depicted are complex but subtle. Unlike a lot of manga, this author doesn't just repeatedly say "so-and-so is brilliant." Instead, we are shown how cunning and knowledgeable the FL and ML are through their interactions with each other and the situations around them.
Long story short, this manga series actually feels like something intelligent. It's not just wish-fulfillment. It's fantastic world-building that comes as a breath of fresh air after all the juvenile isekai stories I've read.