The 17-book Zettai ni Hatarakitakunai Dungeon Master ga Damin o Musaboru made series brings to mind several others: Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu (the protagonist’s attempts to abdicate responsibility constantly backfiring), No Game No Life (the comedy, fanservice, and to a lesser extent strategic aspects), and Overlord (the nonhuman subordinates and occasional dips into bloody ruthlessness).
While it starts off shaky due to all the problematic aspects (slavery, rape, potential loli love interest), that first novel’s contents are not indicative of (most of) the rest of the series. Only the slavery aspect remains a central theme, and it both has a plausible justification and isn’t used as a source of fanservice. The series is first and foremost a comedy and it absolutely delivers on that front with only the sixth (gets pretty dark), seventh (heavy trap and brainwash content), and fifteenth (the foot fetish returns with a vengeance) novels containing notably drop-worthy red flags.
That said, it does take a bit of a dive in the fourteenth volume and doesn’t really recover its earlier energy until about halfway through the sixteenth. Not sure what it is exactly but the events in that period just come across as forced/half-assed. To be honest, had I not been aware that there were only a few more books to go I probably would’ve dropped it at that point.
And I’m glad I stuck it out because the ending ends up pretty damn good all things considered, even managing to tie in the differences from the web novel version.
