Reviews

Aug 27, 2023
Mixed Feelings
Like many others I picked up this series due to the high score and many good reviews. I generally like fantasy isekai so it was going to make it on my list eventually, but the good reviews pushed it up the "watch asap" list. I don't usually write reviews for things I watch, anime or otherwise, so excuse the lack of structure. However, I just felt the need to express my opinion for this one because I have some pretty strong mixed feelings about it after watching all 3 seasons. This series can be summed up as having an interesting premise, a good story but terrible characters.

I won't be commenting on the quality of the animation or soundtrack because I don't care or know enough about drawing and music to be able to responsibly critique it. What matters to me most when I watch an anime is whether it tells a good story and whether i enjoy it overall.

Story:

We of course have a lot of the usual isekai stuff, MC dies and gets reincarnated with powers and quirks etc. Here the MC's power is largely her retained knowledge from her previous life and her quirk is her obsession with books and reading them. That is not to say the MC isn't OP cos it's pretty obvious that she'll only get more OP as the series goes along, it is just not presented in the typical isekai-OP-MC way. The entire series pretty much revolves around the MC using her knowledge to build and change the new world to feed her obsession with books. The world presented is an interesting one and world building is good. We get to see the MC gradually progress through the world, gaining power and influence both economically and politically, the pacing was good in my opinion. There were also no stupid romances or unnecessary fanservice and I came out of it feeling like I enjoyed it overall.

Unfortunately, that is the biggest strength of this series and this is where my mixed feelings come in.

Characters:

The MC is annoying, borderline frustrating. Her personality is extremely inconsistent throughout the series, at times behaving like a child and at times behaving like the adult she is supposed to be(mentally). One could argue that it is to be expected since she is an adult who reincarnated as a child but the personality switches often make no sense. It is hard to express this clearly without spoiling it so I'll just say that a lot of the drama in the series tends to be of her own doing. She doesn't seem to learn from her mistakes, or rather, she learns only from insignificant mistakes but doesn't learn from the meaningful ones that would drive her growth as a character. This results in a lot of time spent setting her up for growth but ultimately ending up with her not growing much at all. She works hard for her goals and they do show her working for it, but she very often proceeds to screw everything up on her own because "I'm suddenly a child", and now others have to fix it for her cos "you'll fix it for me, won't you?" and while she attains the goal eventually, this makes a lot of her achievements feel undeserved and that is a source of frustration for me.

As for the other characters, the series does a good job building a pretty diverse bunch of supporting characters around the MC with some interesting and very wholesome ones, but overall most of the characters are pretty one dimensional and show little growth throughout the series. Most of the cast's core motivations are overly simplistic and sometimes illogical, with many of the key supporting characters clearly existing simply to help the MC "fix" all the stupid unnecessary mistakes she makes.

Overall:

All that said, as mentioned before, I enjoyed it overall, which is the most important thing to me when watching anything and I'd watch the next season if there is one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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