I'm reading the novel and I do feel bad for him at times, but whenever I do, the story never fails to remind me how much of a trash he is. Not evil per se, just trash.
Yeah, I feel the second part of that. One of my biggest pet peeves is when these stories act as if "remembering my past life" and "possession" are the same thing, when they shouldn't be! The complete personality swift makes sense when it comes to possession, as the possessor has their own sense of self/ego left over from their previous world. Even if they receive the memories of the body they possessed, their "self" is still the one from before the possession. Reincarnation w/ memories from the beginning counts for this, as you already have that sense of self and have yet to develop one for the current body specifically.
"Remembering my past life" is, or at least should be, the opposite of that. In those cases, your main sense of self should be your current self, regardless whether you've lived that life for 5, 10, 15, or 20 years, and regardless of how long you lived your past life. I can see some personality changes be possible, but for the most part it shouldn't change much. Similarly how a possessor views the memories of the body as someone else's, this type of reincarnator should be viewing their previous life memories as someone else's. Close yet distant.
It frustrates me so much whenever I see this reincarnation trope and the moment they remember the past, their personality swifts completely and/or they start talking about themselves in third person, as if the life they lived so far wasn't theirs. The same goes for the people they've known, typically these stories make the MC start thinking about the world they live in as just "a world in a novel" and the people around her as "characters". Like, hello??? This has been your reality for who knows however many years, your perspective on this shouldn't suddenly shift unless you were experiencing existencial dread about it.
Those make sense for a possessor, but not for this type of reincarnator.
This is all my personal opinion ofc, you are free to disagree.
As for this story, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, she was "time-skipped" into the present, so she technically should have her past ego still (as MC still has the same memories), but on the other, she was essentially transported from her past life directly onto the present, thus keeping her old ego.
I feel like they just wanted a slightly more interesting take on the possessor trope, they def could've done the simpler route where she just possesses the villainess and also receives the body's memories, no need for anyrhing about a time skip imo.
Yeah I can tell this is one of those stories that'll make me feel bad for the og male lead, and the character who gets possessed (this usually gets glossed over, but when their entire existence is so completely disregarded like in that promo onesot, by the FL, unless they're absolutely evil, I just feel bad for them). I'll give it a pass for now, but I might read it after checking out some spoilers.