Various Thoughts

The first Zenmetsu End o Shinimonogurui de Kaihi shita. Party ga Yanda. novel has an interesting setup but suffers from a couple annoying character archetypes. Mainly the protagonist and his mentor. The former is the type that apologizes for everything and constantly gets lost in his own head; I know the setting is a grimdark fantasy world and you really hate that and love happy endings, you told me, you don’t need to keep bringing it up every other chapter. The latter… is a century-old nonhuman that inexplicably both looks and acts like a human child. Really could’ve done without her.

Venus Mission (English subtitle: I Was an Assassin-for-Hire Who Died, Now I’m Hunting Heroes in Another World) is closer to what I expected Ansatsushadearu Ore no Status ga Yuusha yori mo Akiraka ni Tsuyoi nodaga to be like. That said, it’s only barely tolerable if you completely turn off your brain and even then there’s the notable technical issue of it often being difficult to tell who’s talking at any given time.

Despite the annoyances, I’ll probably follow them both for at least one more volume since I’m kind of starved for LNs when anything published by J-Novel Club is out of the running.