Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi
Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

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Too many Japanese authors think that people in fantasy worlds would love soy sauce, miso, and red-bean bread.

This story is played out in a medieval Europe-like world. And yet everyone (including divine beings) loves Japanese food. Seriously? Are Japanese authors too egoistical to write that one character says "sorry, but this bitter black sauce is not for me"??? Hey, if this was a true Fantasy World, everyone could drink soy sauce as water for all I care. But the author was lazy and used the word "Europe", thus I believe I'm allowed to use my European palate, after all, this is a Gourmet ... story.


Story: *sigh* A goddess begs for red bean bread. Seriously. A goddess is begging for a gift of Japanese sweets. That's what this story is like. Honestly, It's not even a fantasy gourmet story. The author tries so use "fantasy world ingredients", such as Big Boar, or Big Deer, or Big Snake, or Big Octopus. Or maybe even a Big Bird? See my point?.. There's a gourmet manga (don't remember the name) where they eat FANATSY stuff, like living armors, or actual grotesque monsters. But this light novel series is just using safe options that you would be able to use in real life. A huge boar? Make me some huge bacon...

Art: The black'n white art is really rough, but not necessarily bad. (Resembling Attack on Titan) But for a light novel, where illustrations are few, I really wished that they would skip the cool-looking gimmick and just make normal illustrations.

Characters: So, in the beginning (Note: like in the first two chapters) the main character was so weak, he had to hire bodyguards. The kingdom he was summoned to has a royal family that consists of human supremacists. It was a really interesting start and the characters were all fairly original. And then the protagonist meets new characters, all of which are copy-pasted from other isekai novels. I mean, I get it. Why live in a country with only humans? It simply feels like a missed opportunity. After all, "Shield Hero" has proved that it could be nice with some darker tones in isekai.

Overall. The biggest flaw is the reactions to the food. The protagonist was an office worker, okay? And yet his food is so good that gods will start begging for a taste of it. I mean, yeah, a modern amateur with good ingredients can make better food than a chef from the middle ages. But it's all too exaggerated. Though the biggest flaw is still that the author has exclusively bragged about how good Japanese food is. Not "Food from the 21th century", but Japanese specifically. I mean, I just believe that donuts would be more generally likable than red-bean buns. Especially since the protagonist (in other words, the author) said it was a fantasy world based on specifically "Europe".

So this Light Novel started off as a good and refreshing one, but by volume 4, I was already tired of it. Why, you may ask?
Simple, it was the same trope over and over again. There was no attempt in making the next volume have new content and it most of the time followed the basic line of tame a strong companion, get a blessing from a god because of the things I buy, go to dungeons to gain more levels, and repeat. One of the few things that I found decent was the way they described the food the Main Character made, which made ... the food sound tasty, which in the end made me hungry. I would only recommend this light novel to the person that likes something that does not change at all in time.