It starts off pretty good. Really good actually. However if you read ahead in the LN and see what will eventually become of this story you would quickly realize you’ve made a grievous error. There is 0 character growth and A LOT of word padding. The author pretends the MC has gaming background but none of that shows through at all in the story. It actually is quite the opposite where the MC will do stupid things almost intentionally just for the authors warped sense of story progression. Not only that but the author inserts quite a bit of sexist and racist comments that show his true colours as a writer.

It's nice to see that not ALL mangas are about teenaged high school dramas. You'd think that the entire whole of the human experience took place in the classroom and the only ones who consume manga are high school kids. And frankly I'm sick to death of the "died and was reincarnated in the swords and sorcery universe" genre which has popped up ad nauseum in manga in the last 2 or 3 years. Dozens if not hundreds of mangas, all with the same exact plot. Someone dies in the real world and is reincarnated in a fantasy world with all their memories from Earth intact which they use to their advantage such as knowledge of guns, to become the dominant force of the planet (like Gun-Ota ga Mahou Sekai ni Tensei shitara), or possibly they just have great magical power (like Konjiki no Moji Tsukai) or physical fighting ability (like Isekai Shihai no Skill Taker), it's always the same world they find themselves in too, the standard Andre Norton or JRR Tolken or Dungeons and Dragons sort of world with dragons and orcs and sorcerers, and of course they become an amazing overpowered Mary Sue/Marty Stu character, and if it's a guy of course he predictably tends to build up a harem (Isekai Shihai no Skill Taker, or Tate no Yuuha no Nariagari, I'm giving these examples but each one has dozens of examples), if it's a girl, it's even more boring. It's vapid wish fulfillment all around.

But this one's a little bit different, because first of all, he's like 40 years old, but also the dude just doesn't give a f. He's been given all this stuff, power like no one else has, and he's like "meh". He now finds himself in much the situation of One Punch Man. He's overpowered, of low social standing, he has attained all his goals and has a choice between vegging out or easily defeating all his enemies. In the latest chapter scanlated as of this writing, chapter 17, a young, pretty girl has thrown herself at his feet, because he has tickled her hypergamy. She previously looked at him like as low as the worms beneath her feet, but he defeats a dragon singlehandedly and now suddenly she wants him bad. And as she is begging him to let her have his babies, she drags along her ex-boyfriend to humiliate him, completely oblivious to the mere possibility that a man might frown upon this and that it would make her unappealing to him, and of course Tanaka does the last thing she expects.... he rejects her! He has no interest in her. She doesn't meet his standards. Because he sees right through her. Both her personality and her sexual history are not up to his standards. She overvalues herself so much, that possibility never even occurred to her. Why on Earth would he settle for some woman who would do that to her man, what she's doing to her ex-boyfriend right there? Nope, he's content to either be alone or hold out for a nice girl who's also a virgin and not settle for one who's been riding the cock carousel since she turned 18. Not quite the same situation as One Punch Man, who seems to be legit asexual, but he's not falling into the horndog stereotype shounen protagonist whose life centers around either his direct pursuit of women or finding himself inexplicably in awkward situations involving them (like Yuki Rito).

So I'm kind of interested in seeing what he does next to subvert the wish fulfillment trope plaguing this unreasonably specialized genre.

... Last updated on April 1st, 2018, 7:27am