Is I Became the Villain the Hero Is Obsessed With Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manhwa, 60 chapters
Run	ongoing
Community score	MangaUpdates 7.3

Overview

Da-in is a fan of a dystopian webtoon, and when he ends up possessing its villain, Egoistic, he doesn't try to fight his fate — he leans into it. His favorite character, Stardust, is the story's heroine, and the plot only lets her grow stronger through hardship he's supposed to cause. So Da-in sets out to be exactly the villain the story needs while secretly steering events so she comes out ahead, all without letting her figure out what he's really doing.

It's a premise built on dramatic irony: the reader knows Da-in is protecting Stardust, but everyone in the story — including Stardust herself — sees him as the enemy. That gap is where the manhwa gets most of its mileage, and it works because Da-in's reasoning for each move is actually explained instead of just asserted.

What it does well

The biggest strength here is how legible Da-in's plan is. A lot of 'secretly the good guy' stories rely on the lead being vaguely clever off-page and just winning; this one shows the thinking, so when a scheme pays off it feels earned rather than convenient. That matters more than it sounds like it should, because the whole conceit depends on Da-in staying two steps ahead of a story he already knows the ending to.

Stardust's side of the romance is handled with more patience than you'd expect. She starts out treating Da-in as a genuine threat, and her shift toward obsession comes in visible stages — first confusion about why the 'villain' keeps helping her, then grudging respect, then something more possessive. It doesn't just snap from hostility to affection between chapters.

The art carries both ends of the story well. Quieter scenes where Stardust is puzzling out Da-in's motives get room to breathe, and the bigger confrontations — where Da-in has to actually perform villainy in front of an audience that can't know the truth — land with real weight.

Where it falls short

The premise itself isn't doing anything new. Transmigration into a villain who's secretly protecting the heroine is a well-worn shape at this point, and if you've read even a couple of series built on it, you'll clock the beats early. This manhwa runs the formula well, but it is still the formula.

Outside the two leads, the supporting cast mostly exists to react to Da-in and Stardust rather than pull their own weight. And there are stretches, especially once the romance takes over as the main engine, where the plot slows to let the relationship catch up — fine if you're here for the romance, less so if you wanted the fantasy plot to keep moving.

Verdict

If you know what you're signing up for — a villain-obsession romance with a lead whose scheming actually holds together — this delivers a solid version of it. It's not reinventing the trope, but it executes it with enough care in the romance pacing and the art that it's an easy recommendation for fans of the genre, and a reasonable one even if you're just curious what the fuss is about.