Various Thoughts

Although filled to the brim with tropes of all sorts, the first Isekai Tensei no Boukensha novel starts out pretty good and manages to stay moderately engaging for quite some time. Unfortunately, the last part is a total mess. Just ludicrous development after ludicrous development crammed into far too small a space.

Still, bad endings/cliffhangers are basically par for the course. So I decided to continue on into the second novel and… it turned out okay, I guess? There’s some issues with repetitive prose and ill-defined power levels but it’s readable enough. The problem lies in the roadmap (based on the web version) the author lays out in the Afterword; future events do not sound particularly interesting. So at this point I’m on the fence as to whether or not to keep following it.

The Meccha Shoukan sareta Ken series meanwhile is a completely different beast. The English title evokes something a bit goofy, but it’s only lighthearted in the same way Overlord or Goblin Slayer is. Which is to say the silly parts are there to make the fairly dark/heavy content go down easier.

The protagonist of this series is an odd flavor of sociopath in that while most of the time he doesn’t care what others think, as something of a hobby he enjoys actively making people dislike/hate him. So unlike the protagonist of Overlord, who has fun playing the villain, the one here goes all-out in being a villain… when he can be bothered to do anything at all. Which brings us to the second oddity: The overpowered protagonist is only overpowered at night. During the day he’s weaker than most normal humans and would like nothing more than to sleep or just laze about.

It’s a curious mix of elements and I’m definitely interested in seeing where it goes.