Should I read this? This is a list of the most important to least important aspects to who you are as a reader.
Most Important – Least Important
1. Are you between the ages of 12-17?
2. Can you stop reading stories halfway through?
3. Do you read very little or have little familiarity with Japanese story tropes?
At this point if you have answered “yes” to 2/3 of these first questions I would highly suggest you go read this, don’t even bother reading the more in depth reasoning’s given later until you’ve finished the first few volumes of the story.
4. I love the “trapped in a video game” genre. (Or I have no idea what this point means)
5. Do you enjoy turning your brain off to read?
6. I rarely analyse stories.
7. I don’t mind characters acting strange for the sake of the plot.
I could go on with this list but you get the point, I will speak about each of these points more in depth below but if you haven’t started reading yet then I would suggest starting right after this paragraph and ignoring everything else I say. The only point that needs some light explanation before you go is number 2. I read up to volume 13 and I can say that the story goes from amazing to steadily worse, so don’t hold on if you feel yourself getting bored, at that point come back here to complain / praise the story and see if it matches up with the rest of this review.
1. Are you between the ages of 12-17?
Now there are a few generic reasons I think this is important, first off you are closer to the protagonist for the parts of the story that are the most entertaining. Being closer to the main characters age is always nice in a wish fulfillment since you relate so much better to them, also, as far as I can tell that age is the target demographic as the Main Character (I’ll be calling him Rudi) seems to have the disposition of a teenage boy the entire story. Another rather generic one is that you have less life experience to compare to an actual story, for instance the younger you are the more you’ll enjoy your first stories, and the older you get it seems you become more critical comparing the story to other stories as well as your own life. Since this story relies quite a bit on suspension of disbelief (more so than a normal wish fulfillment) the less you think the better it seems to be. Now generic stuff out of the way the story just seems less weird if you’re younger. When I was reading I was generally able to look over lots of the perverted stuff, since I’m more or less used to the fan servicy stuff (nudity) and a rather quick reader I just skimmed over it. However the sheer amount of incredibly detailed perversion in this story is rather absurd, so much so I would say it’s impossible to avoid. A lot of it is generic panties, boobs, and buts sort of stuff and some of it is done in an ok manner, so while not being a strong point of the story it doesn’t really drag it down. The problem comes up when you get back to the perspective of the story. Two characters banging for no real reason without any romantic buildup? Well I guess that’s ok. Oh it happens fairly often you say? Well still ok. Oh, they’re younger than 14? Well sorta weird but not a deal breaker. And one of those “kids” is actually a 40 year old in a kid’s body? Well, fuck, that’s really messed up then isn’t it? So you sorta see what I’m getting at, it’s weird, and more than that it’s unavoidably in your face about it as well, it’s not something that is addressed as being weird either, it’s more just “perverted people gonna do perverted things” and everyone’s sorta ok with it. But back to how this relates to being a teenager who’s reading this. If you’re 14 say, you get to avoid all the weird stuff about the random sex scenes being between kids, cuz hey, that’s your age! Lucky you! All you have to get over is the fact that one of them is actually 40 but hey, that’s way less of a barrier than someone over 18 will have. In all seriousness this is a large factor in me dropping the books, the ridiculous perversion is just too over the top, I don’t know if it’s a culture thing with the younger characters banging or what but it got to a point that I became aware of it too much, and then it bothered me forever.
2. Can you stop reading stories halfway through? (Or, where’d all that cool shit I was promised go!)
This story dives harder than a base jumper. If I were to have stopped reading after volume 2 I’d give the series an 8/10. Actually up till volume 4 it would be an arguable 8/10 still, but it can’t keep it up. This story abandons its good points, and it doesn't really explain why. The 2 big ones are the change in themes / tones, and ideas never really being expanded on despite being really interesting. The main theme in this story is rebirth and new chances, and that’s an awesome theme to have with this type of story. However Rudi doesn’t keep changing, he sorta just ends up as complicated as he’s gonna get around volume 4 and then almost loses development slipping backwards to who he was in his previous life. It’s almost as if Rudi just becomes the same as his past self except with determination, like that’s really it. When I stopped reading Rudi’s past self was basically a generic NEET, and by basically I mean exactly. The problem here is that NEET’s are pretty much people without determination, so just add determination and you’ll get a relatively standard human being. Rudi’s first life had the traits of, shut in, pervert, and selfish. Seeing Rudi overcome his shut in self was great, and to a degree the selfishness is gone as well, but the perversion is almost grandiose, it goes against the message of the story. Rudi is essentially the same person as his past life just with more confidence and power. But this isn’t a bad thing. If you wanted to delve into this it would be amazing to see the contrast of how people treat you based off appearance and success despite still being a normal bordering on lousy human being. This doesn’t happen. Rather everyone just sorta treats Rudi like a god, and well, he pretty much is in terms of power, but he’s not a good guy. He still struggles with his relationships with people as he did in his past life and still has his perversion to a hyperbolic degree, but you’re supposed to believe he’s truly changed. The disconnect between the Rudi the reader sees and how other characters treat Rudi is absurd, and that’s an issue. There’s really no conflict surrounding Rudi’s personality, he’s never forced to change so he never does, and that’s fine, but it’s not fine in a story where the main theme is changing oneself with new opportunities. Another thing that gets thrown away is the whole melding of worlds which would allow Rudi to use magic and science combined to beat up everyone. Sounds awesome. Is awesome. But no, scrap that idea, we need more school life and panty stealing. The ideas just sorta pitter out and it’s rather annoying. Since the story is so long I gave it a ton of leeway in its buildup, I kept reading thinking things would improve, things were looking good as well, and characters were seeing development and it was more a slice of life genre getting to know more about the world. A tad boring but it seemed like a great set up, but no. The shift in tones is almost unavoidable in a series of this length, and since I’d thoroughly enjoyed the start so much I kept on reading. Personally what ended up driving me away was this really weird love / harem / relationship? Stuff that was going on. I really don’t mind the harem genre, it’s sort of always just below average quality but usually entertaining, however this story seemed to do things differently. We had important family values presented early on, we also had a whole subplot about what it means to be faithful. Alright, this is good. I expected standard harem from the cover but this is nice, and for a long time it is. Then we get a random sex scene, well ok, little weird but sure makes enough sense I guess. Wait now we have a misunderstanding between the 2? Well ok, little generic but ok. Now we don’t see that other character at all? WTF, (Like legit when I stopped this character was still off on their own doing random adventure things.) But still it’s largely ok. Wait another random sex scene? Well I guess not that random... But far from logical. And that’s the problem, the relationships surrounding Rudi are pretty good, even the female characters are pretty good on their own, but at some point Rudi just bangs em then they become super generic and boring. It makes no sense. For instance Rudi gets married, really weird tonal shift I thought, we’ve got this pervert getting married? Why? Seems like a bad mix for someone who wants to bang everyone. But it sorta worked, like in a creepy “my wife is a sex doll” sorta way, but it worked, 6/10. Rudi seems hella serious about it and is seeming to be a good guy about the whole thing. O no! A succubus! But wait, that wasn’t the reason for Rudi to break his marriage vows, really impressive honestly that it was written that way, points for not taking the easy way out Mr. Writer. But later Rudi breaks his vows anyways, in a super illogical dumb way, so I had to stop reading because it was getting too dumb and all the female characters I liked became sex objects. The drop in character quality is annoying, the lack of continuation of ideas is annoying, the pacing is annoying, the tonal shifts are annoying, all of these combined resulted in my dropping the series. If you are someone who has to finish a series once started be wary of this one.
3. Do you read very little or have little familiarity with Japanese story tropes?
This story has been done before, and it’s generic to boot. The main appeals that stood out to me was some solid characters and humour. If you’ve never been exposed to these types of characters before you’ll immensely enjoy the story. If you’ve read a lot of these types of stories and enjoyed them then still give it a go, but if you’ve seen it all before maybe let this one slide.
4. I love the “trapped in a video game” genre. (Or I have no idea what this point means)
Like I said earlier, if this is your niche type of story you’ll find everything you’re looking for here.
5. Do you enjoy turning your brain off to read?
This is not an in depth deep thought “I am so edgy kind of story”, it’s largely an upbeat adventure where you go around beating the crap out of everything. It has some good mental parts but if you think about the story too much it becomes worse, this is a pure good time kill the baddies bang the ladies video game type plot.
6. I rarely analyse stories.
So I do this very little, and I try to do it even less, but even I got caught up in the flaws that come up throughout the story. Basically the plot is really bad as the story goes on. If you want to test this ask yourself “Why are the characters acting the way they do,” now that’s the next part of the review, but it also applies here. Rudi is pretty powerful, but he’s no god. Well fuck. Now how will he know everything and anything and decide what to do to save the day? “Why don’t we just have a vague character who calls himself god tell him exactly what to do?” Brilliant! This is a weak point in the plot, it’s the equivalent of “go here” “Do this,” well a little better. At the start it was interesting to know if the advice was malicious or not, and I see this being a major plot point in the story past where I stopped reading, but it’s so slow and not explained. So the result is just super strong Rudi being told to do things by an even stronger character who is apparently on his side for some reason. A second issue is the pure randomness that happens and lack of knowledge the reader gets. Like are we being real when the strongest fighter in the ENTIRE world just sort of shows up, beats the shit out of everyone, and then goes and fucks off having almost no impact on the story? Like that was crazy? Why did that happen? We’ve got OP Rudi being guided by even more OP random character and the hardest fight they have is just randomly wrong place wrong time? Like c’mon. And there’s no answers! It makes no sense, why are we having this random panty bullshit when I still don’t know what’s happening? Like we get Rudi’s perspective, but we also get that Rudi’s a small part in a big world, but we know shit about shit about this world’s politics. Strong enemies show up all but unexplained and Rudi just sort of beats them..? What? Rudi is strong, we get it, but how he gets stronger is really random, like having a power level for the opponents could help a lot. Like Oh, this guy is 5000, Rudi is 5250, that was a close fight. Like I had no idea who was strong or not when I finished, it just seems that Rudi beats everyone except like 4 people, only one of which he’s ever actually fought. Rudi just sorta gets stronger, and it's ok I guess but really poorly represented. Also what the fuck happened to caring about the giant explosion teleportation thing? We just accept it as a natural disaster and that’s it? It was one of the most random plot points I’ve ever seen and it still didn’t make any sense as to who made it happen. This book focuses on the wrong things, ideas that should be flushed out aren’t, why Rudi only uses a rock bullet every fucking fight but still wins is also a mystery, too many inconsistencies and point A to point B plot lines. Its fine for a journey but having what basically amounts to a narrator telling Rudi what to do all the time is ridiculous without any context. Also some of these may seem bordering on spoilers, but fear not, you get about a paragraph of buildup or knowledge that these events could happen, yeah, it’s that sudden.
7. I don’t mind characters acting strange for the sake of the plot.
These characters do the dumbest things for the sake of entertainment. Overall it’s pretty straightforward characters act how they are represented throughout the story, but you need a little better than “most of the time act reasonably” to convince me these are real people. While a lot of this can be attributed to forcing the plot along and characters we don’t know just sorta doing their own things that we may or may not find out about later on, some of the things just get ridiculous. There’s 2 main parts to this that I really noticed, first off is that everyone’s relationships are bullshit. Like bring sex into the equation and it’s used almost as a magical tool to fix things. Characters never build into liking each other, well maybe they sorta do if you wanna argue it, but relationships go from friends to sex in a paragraph. And some of the characters make a lot of sense when this happens, it suits them to go have random sex and fall in love, but that’s not how relationships work as a rule, that’s more the exception. For instance characters it makes no sense for them to seek out sex, like it’s been built up that they’re innocent and the like, then they just go for it no holds barred style. And the issue with this is Rudi. Female characters act so dumb around him it’s unbelievable at times. But that’s spoiler talk so let’s stop that. An easy spoiler free example is Rudi’s reaction, have sex = marriage. What? Well I guess a plot twist on his personality..? Have sex = ignore the person and leave them alone. But last time you didn’t do that… Have sex = yeah that was great, (O that’s normal, you can fit that in anywhere), but my wife is gonna be pissed. GOD DAMMIT. The inconsistency is so bad it hurts. Another part of Rudi is that he’s portrayed as super rational and not emotional, then like 10 pages later he’s all depressed. Well ok I guess that makes sense, big events, character development, a weird tonal shift but we’ll bounce back. O, what? We’re not bouncing back? Well shit, this is not really in line with the rest of your character, let’s see this new and developed Rudi. O you had sex and now you feel better and are back to the exact way you were before? O right, this is the second time this has happened now that I think about it. You have to suspend a lot of belief to grow attached to some of these characters, almost all of the complicated characters seem to fall apart somewhere in the story whether it be for the sake of the plot or the sake of sexy times.
My Enjoyment
Story: 4
Characters: 4
Enjoyment: 5
Overall 4
I had so much fun with this at the start, but the drag on and on just killed it for me. I would highly recommend the first 2 volumes and say if you liked them continue reading until your interest fades out. I’m not sure why this work is as popular as it is but to hazard a guess since the intro was so good people stayed with it as it came out and kept it in high regard, overall a slightly below average story for me. But it is rather niche so even as I say it’s a 4/10 it can easily be your 9/10.
Random Thoughts
Why is any of this happening? Why are characters acting this way? Why is rock bullet the most overpowered spell in the universe? Is this the plot of an MMO? How is “pervert” a character trait?
