From J-Novel Club:
Upon being reincarnated into a fantasy world, Ryo wants to live out his days in peace with his newfound water magic. He can only conjure a cupful at a time, but it’s enough to eek out a comfortable existence or so he thought. The powers that be cast him into the wild outlands with nothing more than a humble shack, a single knife, some food and abilities that are yet beyond his comprehension. The area is overrun by monsters and there’s nary another human in sight. Ryo must now figure out how to survive above all else, but he’s ready to take on bulls, boars, and a whole host of other monsters by the horns if it means seizing the life he wants for himself. Each new victory brings a new challenge, but what could a fateful encounter with a headless horseman, a dragon, and a castaway swordsman have in common? They’re the first steps on a grand journey that will take Ryo beyond the borders of all he knows to become the greatest water magician the world has ever seen, one adventure at a time.
7 Volumes (Ongoing)
(-148)
(+468)(-84)(-1246)(-3703)
This manga had the potential to be something great in what the original story tried to do with its cast, but the story sabotaged itself and the manga hacked out part of what did work. The characters—especially the main character—change personality so fast and so abruptly that, for example, the main character goes from someone with a stereotypical mindset from Japan to an eccentric hermit-troll with no real explanation for why.
Reading the other comments, there's apparently a lot of story cut out, which might explain this. However, even with so much of the story cut out, it still takes forever to do even basic tasks. And despite all this time taken to do things, there are a lot of characters the story follows—and does so to its detriment. How?
The main plot is only experienced by the main character about half the time, and the manga almost always follows the main plot. That's right, we see half the story through various side-characters perspectives with no maim character present. The main character will disappear for chapters, only to show up and do something for a couple of pages. If done right, this can be amazing. But this story doesn't do it right often enough (it occasionally gets it right), so it's frustrating.
And the art is below average, too. If the manga had any redeeming qualities, it's that it tries to do something different with its cast and some of the villains hint at something interesting much later down the road. This mangaka at least tries, and you can tell.
... Last updated 2 weeks ago
@ch19
So there's a LOT missing from the manga. The webnovel has entire chapters that aren't adapted.
But even so, the webnovel itself isn't great, either. It's a very typical reincarnation story with scant good point.
Mizu Zokusei clearly has lots of content from the novels to draw from. The manga has chosen to to time skip most of that. Which irritated me, because the bones are there for an epic isekai. MC gets dropped in a deadly forest with a safehouse and only the ability to grow. MC fully commits to training and trial-and-error learning. Annnnd we time skip a year to him being a loincloth-wearing supreme being. All that was 3 issues. Thats not the end of the glossing over important info, or possible story arcs. Later, there is a chapter of the webnovel put in the manga. There is so much character depth added in those words. But the manga forgot to use anything like that. Then, in a complete reversal, the adventurers guild arc is going day by day into what MC is learning, and who he meets. They could have had 20-30 chapters each for the storylines before this. But no, those two story arcs only got 6 issues total. This is a frustrating read.
Read thru chapter 11 2025-01-11
