Kenja no Mago

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Kenja No Mago is for two types of people. Rabid fans of the isekai genre, or people who haven't been introduced to the isekai genre. Why? Because Kenja No Mago is the definition of mediocre. It's both what isekai fans want, and what new readers to isekai should, on average, expect.

The story is utterly average. Self insert protagonist is reborn into another world and ridiculously overpowered. Which isn't a bad thing, it's just unoriginal. The protagonist is liked by everyone and talented since birth, has a lovely love interest, good friends, and evil enemy. There is literally not one ounce of originality in the ... story. The typical fantasy world, with it's typical magic, and typical evil demons are utterly devoid uniqueness.

The characters are carbon copy cutouts of archetypes of the major character types you'll find in any manga, let alone isekai manga. Again, not a single ounce of originality. The self insert, OP, kind, boring Protagonist. The Powerful, royal best friend. The deredere, cute love interest, who is oh so shy. The evil demon lord archenemy with the tragic past (which is laughable in how poorly written it is). And then the mob characters, who are forgettable at best.

Art is pretty average as well, nothing to write home about or particularly critique. That said, being average in something like entertainment, isn't a good thing.

Enjoyment is subjective, I personally don't have any attachment to isekai or particularly like insert protagonists, so I'll leave this one up to the reader.

Overall, Kenja No Mago is a master of cliche, king of average, and lord of unoriginal. Filled with an OP mc, undetailed world, forgettable characters, and a complete lack of originality. If this is your first time reading isekai, this would be a fine read, and maybe a 7, and if you're a rabid isekai fan, I'm this, like every other isekai is a 9 or 10. But to anyone else, this is utterly mediocre.

Welcome to the second decade of 21st century where every other series somehow has an MC who gets teleported to another world where is he/she is either reborn or swap bodies. The land where he/she is now is full of magic. There is mana, there are elves, dwarves, shamans, lizardmen, goblins, spirits, faeries, insert-any-Tolkein-fiction-character or trope etc. Our MC somehow retains memories of his/her past life but doesn't really cares because he/she was either a loser/hikikomori or a wage slave and is now really excited with the prospect to explore this brave new world. He/she is open to challenges that this new world awaits but ... there is one catch- our MC is very powerful and by powerful, I mean his power level far exceeds the geniuses of this realm. Nevertheless, he still decides to join a guild/school, form his own adventuring party and explore new frontiers. Throw in some beautiful girls and now he has his own harem.

Gentlemen, this is what Kenja no Mago is about (minus the harem part). This series has nothing new to offer and is what I would call, 'the most below average isekai' series out there. It's the shovelware product of manga world where the author decides to throws in a bunch of character tropes with a rinse-and-repeated plot in a giant cauldron, stirs it and ends up with this as a finished product.

Story - 1/10, Character - 1/10

Can you read and write? Do you know what isekai is? If yes, congratulations, you can easily conjure a plot far better than what this manga offers.
Throw in an insanely overpowered protagonist, an evil lord creating an equally evil army, a kingdom, a bunch of classmates as your party member and you get KnM. Our characters offer nothing good in terms of personality, just another recycled shounen trash. If there is a pandora box of cliche out there, then it was possibly opened during this series' inception.

Art- 6/10

Just average; nothing new, nothing groundbreaking.

Enjoyment- 3/10

I don't think I can give a point above 3. This manga is honestly suited for those who want to get an introduction to the isekai genre and can even act as a foundation for their entry into the world of fantasy manga.

Overall- 1/10

Self-explanatory. If you are someone who has been reading manga for a long time, you will chuck this one to the bin.

For some reason, i dont dislike the isekai genre even after all those years of overuse. Thus I gave kenja no mago it's chance to shine on my manga list and... Well you see the ranking I gave it.
Let's not lose our time, reading the summary is enough to convince oneself that this manga is generic. Once again we've got the loner loser boy. Then he saves someone from an accident and then dies (well I guess it's what happened cuz everything was so fast and poorly explained...)

Like Mushoku and The beginning after the end (two excellent mangas/manhuas I highly recommend plus they're both highly ... similar to kenja), MC reborns as a newly born kid without forgetting his past life. Unlike those 2 examples, we dont see the MC growing up and understanding how this new world works nor how he trained to gain his astonishing strenght. And that's the first red flag about kenja.

As a reader, I dont know what is this world, how the magic elements work and the outcome is that i'm already bored, lost and more than anything, fights feel like trash because there are no explained limits. In those 2 examples previously quoted, there are elements that divide magic casts = fire or water for example. Or healing, casting abilities, strenghtening abilities. In a nutschell, we understand how fights work and what the MC is doing when he fights. He doesnt come from nowhere and there is no need to explain it in the middle of the fight which is very annoying (gonna come back on later on dialogues).
In kenja, there is nothing. The MC casts things, he is strong and we dont know why, we dont know what he does nor why what he does is special comapared to others. In the end, fights are just a mix with random abilities without any strategy.

Now let's talk about the narrative aspect (dialogues). God it's a hell. Dialogues are everywhere, we cant rest I feel like i'm reading a light novel which isn't normal because picture and drawings in a manga should explain things. We're constantly bullied with rhetoric questions by the characters, useless bubbles (wow MC how did you do that ? that's impressive !!!) and long explanations for nothing. It's crazy how the fighting mecanic and the world were both ruined by the lack of explanations but the author still found a way to give us random explanations about useless elements we dont care about. Explaining how the theory about general relativity from Einstein does work is useless to someone who cant even do an addition. That's the feeling I get from this manga so please stop it's uninteresting.

About characters, well the MC is your random dull boy. The main girl is the cliche of the shy girl who fell in love with the MC quickly for no real reasons without even knowing him. For those woh read/watch nantsu no taizai, she's the princess. It's exactly her. I dont even know what to say about other characters cuz they gave me no feeling at all. They're bland.

Another interesting point, i've hardly critized negatively art in mangas till now but we need to talk about it. First thing first, it has been made on a computer or i dont know what kind of modern tech, maybe a tab. It's not the first time I read those kind of mangas and it's not a shame, dont miss my point. But god it's bland aswell... Characters are poorly detailed, colours are bland (not any mix of colours, there is some white, some black and a sort of grey made using some kind of ugly pixels I dont even know what this is but it's disgusting to see). Backgrounds are white, there is no detail whatsoeve. Hairs are just made using the painting bucket and an eraser to make a "cool" white effect on hairs to give the feeling that it's been worked. The perfect example of quantity over quality. It also explains why it's so full of dialogue. Believe me, if the quality choice had been made, the author would have made more straightforward panels with shorter chapters aswell and it would have been way better that way.

Overall, kenja no mago is probably one of the worst isekai manga i've ever seen. I was bored since the second chapter which is a first not gonna lie... Absolutely everything feels bland and generic. Drawings, fights, characters, the story. I honestly and objectively cant find any way to be positive about it. It's not just the story in itself and its characters that are poor. The whole manga is poor. Even if the story were great, I would have hated it because of how unbearable those overused and uninteresting dialogues are. And EVEN with good dialogues, I would have given up reading this because of how bland the art feels. Sorry but if you wanna see a similar story in 100x better everywhere, go to read the beginning after the end.