This particular WN is remarkable for a lot of reasons. The protagonist of this story is reincarnated in another world as the adopted son of a lich general in the service of Dairokuten Maou (lol, if you can guess who else got reincarnated, I'll clap in congrats), and he joins the demonic armies as a commander while hiding the fact that he is human behind a skull mask and lich's robes. The story itself begins after he has already begun to become famous as a conquering commander but before his real talents have been shown to the world. The protagonist really is the most powerful mage in the story, having survived his grandpa's spartan (and inhuman) training methods, but his major talents actually lie in strategy and administration, meaning he is more general and administrator than he is a mage most of the time.
There is no actual romance in the main story (despite the fact that about seven women have fallen for him by the end), so those who desire romance in their stories shouldn't go after this one. The closest he comes to a romance is his surprisingly intimate relationship with Sati, his maid who was a slave of the lord of a city he conquered in the prologue. Within the story, Sati is the personification of the 'common humankind', whereas Jiron (the protagonist's aide-de-campe, who is an orc) represents the monster races' common people. The viewpoints these two provide during the story just with their comments and actions help to provide perspective, a technique that is often used by skilled writers.
Most of the story goes back and forth between Ike (the protagonist) overcoming incredible odds to push the Demon King's agenda forward and him building up his territory of Ivalice using his knowledge of Earth. I honestly thought a lot that him revealing his true self to Lilith would have made for interesting results, but, unfortunately, to the very end, Ike only reveals himself to a very select group of people who saw through him anyway.
This story is complete, thankfully, with a prequel gaiden story and a single after story attached after. If you like strategist/tactician protagonists in fantasy worlds, it is a good choice to read.
To be honest, this is probably the best of the last six WNs I've read in the last month. It is also complete. This one is a 'same world, different protagonist' story from the same world as Elf Tensei kara no Cheat Kenkokuki, and the protagonist of that one is the father one of the two heroines. However, even if you haven't read the first story, this one stands on its own quite well.
The protagonist, Souji, was a player of a game on Earth that was insanely realistic, with time compression that allowed him to spend 168 years testing everything that world had to offer. The game had several unusual aspects. For one, it was single-player. For another, it had permadeath. One thing all the players noticed was that, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how long they lived, things always ended in tragedy. Souji in particular, lost his beloved Kuna over and over again, and one day when he was about to try to save her again, the end of service for the game was announced. As he was about to despair, he was offered a chance to go to a real world where he would have a chance to save Kuna for real. Naturally, he leaps at this chance and is reborn with all the built-up knowledge of that world's magic and crafting techniques he had put together over the 168 subjective years he spent in the game.
The protagonist is definitely a cheat character, but that doesn't mean there aren't struggles. In actuality, while he doesn't struggle with the day to day issues, dealing with the issues important to him is always a struggle, meaning this isn't just an overpowered protagonist dominating the arena (in fact, for most of the story he is merely overpowered for his rank, not overpowered compared to everyone around him). The romantic parts of the story are fairly cute, but the WN in general is pretty no-frills as a whole, with relatively little normal SOL and a ton of action and drama. Overall, it is a good story if you want something that more or less sticks to the plot for the entirety of the story, but it isn't something you'll enjoy if you want to see a lot of side-tracking and swimsuit scenes, lol.
Niito Dakedo Hello Work ni ittara Isekai ni Tsuretakareta
This is a WN by Katsura Kasuga. An unemployed NEET named Masaru goes to Hello Work (the official Japanese employment agency) and signs a contract for what he thinks is playing a video game, and instead he gets dropped into a world about to be destroyed (or so he is told) and told to test Itou's (apparently that world's god) new skill system for twenty years (incidentally, the amount of time until the end of the world). If he survives the twenty years, he'll be sent back to Japan with twenty years worth of six-figure pay to arrive at the same time he left in his young body, if he dies he... dies.
The draw of this series is, as usual with Isekai these days, harem. The protagonist, Masaru, doesn't have any hesitation about building a harem, and after a bunch of semi-hilarious events early on, he actually manages to form one with four heroines (one cat-girl slave, a priestess, a mage, and a loli judge). The first half of what was written before the author dropped off the face of the earth is mostly SOL with adventurer everyday life. It is the second half where things start to expand into having a real story, where the harem becomes almost incidental to progressing the plot. Perhaps the most frustrating part is that the story cuts off in the middle of the final chapter...
Rettougan no Tensei Majutsushi
This one follows a similar plot to Shikkakumon no Saikyou Kenja and Shijou Saikyou Maou. The protagonist was a great sorcerer who defeated the demon lord with his friends, but because of his eyes, he suffered from persecution. As a result, he decided to use magic to reincarnate himself two hundred years later, where he was reborn in a body he designed from the ground up. This story, before it was cut off by the author's likely demise (given the fact that ALL his works stopped being released within a two-week period).
Honestly, given how high-paced this one was, I would have been happy to read it once it was complete, but the abrupt stop in the middle of things getting interesting pretty much killed any fondness I might have had.
Isekai Shihai no Skill Taker
This one is by the same writer as Rettougan and literally cuts off in the last volume (much to my frustration). However, as summoning isekai go, this one is notable for the protagonist being a pretty fascinating martial artist, as well as a kichiku character with a fondness for tentacles and beautiful women. I honestly enjoyed everything about the story, and while I nearly flew into a rage when I saw it cut off literally in the last part of the story, I can imagine what was likely to happen next fairly easily.
The protagonist of this one has a tendency to indulge in 'enlightened self-interest', which means he is generally selfish but realizes that the world doesn't revolve around him and he is willing to take action to make things better around him.
[Edit]
Maou to Ryuuou ni Sodaterareta Shounen wa Gakuen de Musou suru you desu
I started this WN last night and finished the ten volumes that have come out so far about ten minutes ago. It was too early for me to make a new post, so I chose to include this one in this post.
This story follows a young villager who gets trapped in the seal containing the Maou and Ryuuou from three hundred years before. Unlike them, he is not permanently trapped, so they decide to train him (despite his lack of talent), a task that takes several subjective centuries (time passes slower on the outside than it does on the inside, to the point where a year outside is three hundred inside). The villager, Ruisha, has an intense desire for power, which reaches the levels of madness at times, and as a result, he gladly spends the next three hundred years learning from his teachers (who become closer to surrogate mothers and wives to him as time goes by).
The above chapter is actually the first volume of the WN, and once it was over, he went back into the world and headed for the Kingdom, where he accidentally enrolls in the Magic Academy, where he pretty much does the same thing every op protagonist in this kind of story does... forms an accidental harem and turns the school castes upside down.
This story is incomplete and the writer has slowed down his releases significantly in recent months. However, what is there is fairly high quality. In particular, the quality of the romance/ichaicha is extremely high, as is that of the battle scenes.
(Note: To be clear, this is an unfinished VN with over 500 chapters)
Hell Mode is the WN I recently began (and finished to the current point) reading. It is another reincarnation one, where the protagonist was a heavy gamer who is one of those types that loves high-difficulty setups, reveling in grinding, conquering dungeons, and generally indulging in his desire to see more. He goes to a website where he gets the choice of difficulty and his job, and he picks the hardest difficulty Hell Mode (where everything is 100x harder than Normal Mode) and the high-difficulty job, Summoner.
The world he ends up in is one where people see jobs as 'talents' and talent determines how far a person can go (if they aren't a noble) in life. However, it is also a world threatened by a demon lord, and much of the story past the first fifth of what has already been written is war against the demon king's forces.
The protagonist has terrible 'gamer's brain' and thinks of everything in terms of gaming, to the point where he examines every aspect of his skills, those of his companions, the tools at hands, the powers of his enemies, etc. One of the running jokes of the series is how he keeps dragging his friends into grinding in dungeons to gain levels and skill levels and their reactions to it when he passes certain limits.
Honestly, this one was a fun read, and I'm looking forward to him finishing the latest volume (probably sometime in September, judging by his writing speed and how fast his previous entries were completed). I have the feeling that there will be at least two more volumes after the one he is writing now, so give it a year to a year and a half, and this series will probably come to a conclusion.
One thing that might make people lose interest is that the protagonist has absolutely no interest in romance or the opposite (or same) sex in that way. While there are a lot of indications that girls around him are infatuated with him, he doesn't even notice one way or the other. So don't expect there to be any romance on his end or ecchi situations. This is a story about a guy who loves figuring out how the world works and making it work for him and gains great joy from difficult situations.
Edit: There are other elements that made it attractive for me. In particular, the existence of a friendly rival in the form of the hero Hermios, whose existence is oddly humorous despite the seriousness of the situations they meet in. In addition, the main antagonist (so far) Kyuber is a surprisingly decent villain character who gives off the proper aura of the shadow behind the throne with his own agenda you want to see in any similar situation.
A major downside I failed to mention is that the growth in the story is all grinding (as fits with the MMO-addict's methodology the protagonist loves), which sometimes made it a bit hard to follow the protagonist's gleeful heavy gamerism.
Omake Tenseisha is the story of a girl who lived through hell on earth and had a new hell waiting for her when she was tossed aside by the gods and reincarnated again. For those who have read a Snake's Life or Kumo, this will be a story that is somewhat familiar. The protagonist is fairly similar to Kumoko (naturally ruthless, tends to think cheerfully most of the time, ends up eating everything that is her enemy, lol).
The story itself is one long 'driven out of a town', 'ate everything that got in my way', 'accidentally screwed up the gods' plans', etc. Basically, the protagonist's appearance (black hair, black eyes) makes her a cursed child in the eyes of her new world, and she is inevitably driven out of any town she tries to stay in. She also kills and eats anything she can without any real discrimination (especially after she learns how to transform matter into mana in her stomach), and gets ever more overpowered as the story goes along. She also knocks her fellow reincarnators' lives off the rails the gods put before them on a fairly regular basis (without them or her knowing it).
That brings me back to the gods... think of the gods of her new world as a bunch of sociopaths that think of the souls they reincarnate as characters in a reality tv show and you'll get the picture.
Generally a fun and hilarious read with a somewhat hyperactive writer.
To be blunt, this WN is a straight-out slave harem story in another world. The protagonist is a run-down salaryman who escaped a black company workplace only to end up summoned to a world where the king was raring to put his summoned heroes to work. Quite naturally, the protagonist wants nothing to do with this, so he arranges to get himself thrown out of the castle and goes off on his own.
The protagonist, like most summoned heroes, has a unique skill (typical of this kind of story). In his case, it allows him to take apart and restructure the skills of himself and his slaves (the first of which is the last Mazoku, Cecille). He makes a ton of weird skills during the story that are nonetheless incredibly effective (usually in an amusing way), making his slave wives ever more powerful while seeking to find a way to live the easy life without ever having to work.
This is a story about a guy who saves the world repeatedly by accident while doing his best to avoid becoming famous, getting involved with nobility or royalty, and take care of his adoring wives.
I will say that the story goes off on a tangent a lot, and there a ton of side-stories that break the flow of the story as a whole. While the harem ichaicha was generally good, I got pretty frustrated with the way it never really got serious, even at moments when it probably should have. A lot of it was because he kept creating skills that made his ever-growing harem more and more powerful whenever he got the least bit worried about where things were going (and usually ended up just overpowering the enemies without any real trouble).
This WN, also published in the West as Failure Frame, is a variant on the 'isekai summoning' genre where the summoner is malicious toward the summoned. This particular sub-genre has become more common of late (since the straight-up good people summon heroes out of desperation setup has gotten stale), but this one stands out to me for the sheer evil and brutality of the antagonist (the goddess) and the protagonist (who is probably the epitome of an anti-hero in its most brutal form).
One thing I liked about this story was that Mimori Touka (the protagonist) is extremely self-aware. He knows the blackness of his own heart and revels in it at times, without being malicious toward good people. Rather than calling him a hero, it would be more appropriate to call him a man who takes joy in brutalizing those he thinks are like himself (evil, cruel, brutal, etc). In contrast, he is quite kind - if not gentle - toward those of good heart, unwilling to bring harm to them even if it would bring him some kind of advantage.
This leads to most of the characters misunderstanding his motivations to one extent or another, as those close to him tend to interpret his actions in a positive way.
This story is incomplete, but it is approaching completion pretty rapidly. I estimate that it will probably be complete early next year, for those who prefer to not have to wait.
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n7471fo/34/
This is a very short WN I read on a whim over the course of a few hours. It is complete for what it is, and what it is isn't what you'd think. The protagonist is a reincarnator who was reborn in a game world, where he became a rootless traveling mage, sightseeing in the fantasy world he knew from the game. One day, he comes across a collapsed Dragonkin girl, who turns out to be the demon lord from the game.
This story is one of romance and redemption, as a clumsy man approaching middle age does his best to be a friend to a girl who has lost everything. To be honest, there were several times even in this short story that I cried, simply because the writer was so good at creating the character interactions between Spika and Sanson. As Spika regains her humanity, it turns into an adorable romance that you can't help but cheer on.
This series is a funny little one by the same author as Surviving in another world with Goshujinsama (not to my taste, as the protag is M and a bit of a hetare, but it is really popular in Japan). The protagonist of this story is randomly transported to another world by a mischievous evil god (Pretty sure her/his real name starts with Nyarl, like most evil gods of this type in otaku stories) and left to his own devices. Taking advantage of his high growth rate and ability to pick skills to grow (something the natives don't have), he tries to live freely... but life isn't going to let him be. Before he knows it, he ends up drugged and in bed with an aggressive but incompetent adventurer girl named Marl, and soon after, the country takes interest in him.
Generally speaking, this story is basically a power trip where the protagonist plays hero for a while before ending up as the lord of his own territory with a harem of women who control his life for the most part. It is funny, fun to read, and while the protagonist does struggle at key points, when it comes down to it it remains a power trip to the last. There are a few points in the story that would probably sicken people who don't like barbaric behavior (one particular incident in the first part), and some people won't like the way the women take over his life. However, I found it an amusing story, and it has the advantage of being complete and available on Shousetsuka ni Narou for free.
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n9814bu/
Oh and the protagonist has a really wide strike zone, lol.
This particular WN series falls into the set called 'transference', as opposed to summoning or reincarnation. The protagonist, Takatsuki Makoto and his classmates freeze to death in a bus buried in an avalanche, only to wake up in another world, inside the Temple of Water, where it is explained to them that they have been saved by the mercy of that world's gods. They all receive skills and are more powerful than the natives... except for Makoto, whose status doesn't rise when he levels and only three skills 'Beginner Water Magic' 'Mental Stability' and 'RPG Player'. Since he has almost no magical power and no way to grow through normal methods, he is seen as useless and weak. He is approached by the goddess Noa, who asks him to be her follower, only to find out she is an evil god who is only allowed to have a single follower at any given time.
This story, as you might think, is one about a guy overcoming a lot of obstacles through guts, sheer will, and dedication (well, and an incredible recklessness born of the latter two skills he gets at the beginning). One thing that I loved about this guy is that there is literally no point in the story where he isn't working his ass off with a smile on his face. Makoto is so dedicated to improving his magic (and his control gets ridiculous as the story goes on) that he is constantly startling those who get to know him.
Oh and there is a harem... but it is closer to the 'classic-style' harem where circumstances always converge to keep the protagonist and the girls from actually going all the way (it gets seriously ridiculous there towards the end). This is as opposed to the harem type that has become more common in recent years, where the protagonist is perfectly happy to partake in the pleasures of the flesh wherever he can get them.
The heroines of the story tend to be cheery on the surface while their love is a bit heavy if you look at it from an objective perspective (think more than a little bit of dependence, verging on near-yandere at times). The yandere-ism is hidden, but the girls who actually settle down as heroines all have reasons for becoming dependent on Makoto (and Makoto is your classic dense as lead harem protagonist most of the time, mostly because he finds training and adventuring more interesting than the female body 90% of the time).
Fortunately, this series recently completed the final arc of the WN, so it is possible to read it from beginning to end (as opposed to most, where it just goes on and on). Since it only finished the main story a week ago, it will probably be a while before the after-story becomes sufficiently large to satisfy, but that is a relatively minor downer considering how few series even get this far.
This particular WN falls into a particular sub-genre of isekai where the protagonist is cast out of a group of people summoned as heroes to another world. This particular genre began to become popular with Shield Hero, but it has evolved significantly since then.
In this WN, the protagonist is summoned along with eight hundred other people from the same school and is one of two people who are not granted a gift from the goddess. As a result, he is cast out of the castle and driven from the city... but that doesn't really bother him, because Shindou Jin is not your average guy in the first place. Instead of a blessing/gift, he has his own unique abilities that blossomed upon his arrival, each basically one of those overpowered cheats you would make any individual a monster on any world they ended up in. The most obvious of them are his ability to steal the stats and skills of others permanently and make them his own (to the point where a light breeze will kill them), his ability to see his own stats and those of others, and his ability to see the world from the point of view of an overhead map that has everything revealed from the beginning (no fog of war).
To be blunt, the author presents this story as one where the protagonist never really struggles with anything and one-sidedly slaughters anyone who gets in his way while following his whims (which really are whimsical).
Another thing is that Jin is lucky... and when I mean lucky, I mean that he naturally instigates trouble just by existing and then enjoys it thoroughly. He is also someone with an intensely strong desire for ownership and a collector/pack rat. The fact that he buys a few slave girls just because 'that's what isekai travelers do in stories' then gets addicted to shopping at slave trader shops (usually finding 'hidden bargains') says everything about how little he cares for common sense when it comes to himself (though he likes people who are on the straight and narrow and generally will treat them well). By the time I caught up with the author's writing, he had well over 30,000 slaves, most of which he had never met and were worshipping him (most of his 'slaves' are essentially Jin cultists, lol).
If you like stories where the protagonist does whatever the hell he wants at a given moment, this is an excellent read. If you like standard stories of heroism and kindness, this isn't your WN.
Edit: Oh and yes, I am an isekai junkie, if you guys hadn't figured it out. About 90% of what I'm reading is either isekai or fantasy, since non-anime Japanese sci-fi never feels as complex and interesting as western ones (to be blunt, I think part of that is once you've watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes, everything else feels pale and weak in comparison).
Seija Musou, better known as the Great Cleric for its English release (which I haven't read), is an interesting story about an isekai reincarnator who becomes a cleric purely because he wants to die of old age this time around.
In a way, Luciel, the protagonist, is fairly similar to Satou, the protagonist of Death March, in that his goal isn't to save the world but he ends up doing it anyway. The biggest difference is that Luciel isn't all-powerful (well, at least not until VERY late in the story) but rather just an incredibly hard worker who puts his all into his primary goals of surviving (which translates into getting skilled and strong enough to survive any situation) and growing old with his family.
Unlike many isekai stories, this one isn't a harem, though there are a lot of hints that it could go that way in an instant. There is only the mildest of romance (a really slow-burn romance that starts near the beginning and only comes to its natural conclusion at the very end of the story). There is truly a ton of combat, training montages (if there was music and video), and Luciel being driven up the wall by events conspiring to show him he 'still isn't strong enough to survive' and shove him into saving the world.
A lot of the story's humor comes from Luciel's companions going behind his back to do things that are for his benefit but are particularly displeasing or unpleasant for him. There are also a lot of moments where Luciel's common sense (which is greatly divergent from most of those around him) stuns those around him.
To be clear, I haven't finished this particular WN series (at over 900 chapters, all of them of reasonable length, that would take a long time). I have gotten around halfway through the story, enough to get a solid impression of how this is going to go. Like most of the LNs/WNs I have been reading lately, it is an isekai story. This particular story has a different approach compared to the ones I've posted about so far. First, this story doesn't have a specific antagonist or group of antagonists to worry about. The protagonist is too whimsical to really be considered solidly on any side in particular (very much an amoral type, except when it comes to women) except his own and those of the people he likes at any given moment.
Shuuya, the protagonist, is, at first glance, your common isekai reincarnation protagonist. However, he quickly diverges from the classic style in that he neither clings to his Japanese mores nor does he become an amoral half-villain. Instead, he becomes a freedom-loving adventurer who pretty much does whatever he wants to. His partner, the black cat with tentacles, Rorodine, is an adorable mascot character who can be easily compared to her partner in terms of whimsical behavior (typical cat behavior a lot of the time). By the point of the story I'm at, Shuuya has a rather massive circle of allies, friends, and subordinates (as in triple digits), so one thing that most will have trouble with is keeping his list of lovers, wives, friends, and family straight. Actually, keeping them straight is pretty close to impossible, since he never seems to stop adding to it.
Because of his mercurial nature, you might think that Shuuya would be considered insincere, but he is the type that keeps a promise once made, no matter what it might require of him. Because he picked a half-vampire type of race, he doesn't need to worry about aging, so he naturally takes a long-term view on how life will turn out in the end, not hesitating to make friends and enemies along the way. There are a ton of actually well-written combat scenes (with an increasingly odd combat style as the story goes along) in this story, and that is one of the attractions, since Shuuya is always looking to improve himself along the way and loves nothing more than testing out his skills.
However, the very whimsical nature of Shuuya's behavior becomes more and more of an issue later on. The feeling that nothing is happening for chapters even though a lot of things are happening begins to press down on you, and I actually started to burn out on this story somewhere around the 200 chapters mark.
These three I'm only going to introduce to yall because they were the most memorable of the Web Novels/LNs that I read through in the last month.
Chiyu Mahou
Chiyu Mahou has the protagonist, Usato Ken, being summoned by accident along with two heroes. Usato, being a kind-hearted young man to the core, isn't particularly annoyed or angered by this (Kazuki, one of the two heroes is more bothered by it than he is), but he has the misfortune to have a talent for healing magic, meaning he falls under the jurisdiction of the country's Lifesaving Squad. Taken to the Lifesaving Squad, he is put through the wringer in a way only a healer (who can heal himself) can be, to increasingly hilarious results (from the reader's perspective) even as he is prepared to save lives on the battlefield. This particular story is mostly enjoyable for the way the protagonist's common sense gets completely turned on its head (especially regarding his magic). So, what is the mistaken use of healing magic? 1) Using magic to repair your body during and after extreme training, 2) Using healing magic to make sure the people you punch aren't hurt, 3) Using healing magic like a martial artist would use chi.
To be honest, a great portion of the hilarity of this story comes from Usato himself becoming more and more of a 'muscle brain' as his solution to everything becomes 'punch it' or 'train myself'.
Magan to Dangan o Tsukatte Isekai o Buchnuku
This is the weakest of the three WN/LNs I picked up for this month. I say this because the concept is the most straightforward and it is one that most people will wince at. Essentially, the protagonist, Ataru, is offered a chance to reincarnate in a fantasy world full of violence, and he selects as his 'gifts' a gun that doesn't break, the ability to create various bullets, and a special eye. The best part of this story, unfortunately, is the early parts, where he is just getting used to the world and his relationship with Kyaro (a bunny-girl slave who he healed then eventually released). The worst part is how repetitive and predictable the story becomes as things continue. This is one of a number of isekai LNs where I simply couldn't find it in myself to put it down but didn't enjoy nearly as much as I would have liked.
Kage no Jitsuryokusha
First thing anyone should know about the protagonist of this story... he is a total and unashamed chuunibyou that works hard to make his chuunibyou into reality both on earth and in the world he gets reincarnated in. To give you an example, his source of despair on Earth was that he couldn't become strong enough to defeat a nuclear weapon, so he began trying to discover magical energy, and just when he was about to succeed, he died. His greatest desire is to be the mysterious powerful figure who lives in the shadows and appears to alter the field of battle at key points in the story. To that end, he creates an organization of girls he saves from a particular curse, Shadow Garden, unknowing that the goal he thought up out of nowhere (defeating a Diabolist organization that was working toward the resurrection of a Demon God that controls the church) is actually a real one and everyone else in the organization but him knows it. This results in some seriously hilarious situations as he believes they are creating scenarios for him to have his fun (as in his mind, there is no way they wouldn't see through him), even as his subordinates really are setting him against the organization in question.
Yondome wa Iyana Shizokusei Majutsushi
Yondome is a series that would probably be traumatic to watch but is ideal for reading. I say this because the things done to the protagonist and he does to others are pretty horrifying from an objective perspective. He spends most of his first reincarnation being tortured as an experimental subject, his magical energy drawn out to make convenient tools, and his second reincarnation has him cursed and living his life surrounded by undead of his own making.
However, for someone reading this story, it is surprisingly touching at times, with interesting and amusing characters. Yes, imagining a lot of the scenes is pretty guro and reminded me of Tokyo Necro. However, the story of Vandalieu has become quite dear to my heart. Most likely because of how ingenious the author's portrayal of Vandalieu's life is. It is proof positive that there are things you can get away with when writing that would only alienate people watching an anime.
Sacchi Sarenai Rule Breaker
Rule Breaker is your standard 'protagonist is overpowered and has an absolute advantage' series, with the twist that he has a solid girlfriend almost from the beginning. Hikaru is an unusual character type, in that he is someone who is a bit overly impressed with his own cleverness, but he is aware that this quality is a personality flaw. The story itself has Hikaru sorta-kinda reincarnating into the body of a guy who tasks him with avenging his death inside one hour by killing a local nobleman. Hikaru, in order to succeed, uses his new ability - the Soul Board - to specialize in stealth so he can get away with it.
This essentially begins a story where the protagonist essentially does amazing things because he is overspecialized to an insane degree in stealth and detection. Unlike a lot of stories of this type, where the protagonist is exceedingly capable in all areas, Hikaru is definitely a min-max character for most of the story. His personality is also one that some people will have trouble with, but on the flip side, he has a lot more foresight than the average isekai protagonist and actually manages to keep his public persona in the background, something few overpowered isekai protagonists can manage.
Kuro no Maou
There is only one phrase that sums up Kuro no Maou... 'Yandere Harem in another world'. The protagonist of the story, Kurono Maou (lol, yes his name is a pun) begins the story as a fierce-looking but kind-hearted high schooler... until he is summoned to another world to be experimented upon by a bunch of religious fanatics to turn him into a black magic using living weapon. Counter to tradition, he manages to break free only after losing a surprising amount of his humanity. By the time he gains his freedom, he has killed other people on numerous occasions, including other summoned Japanese people. He also loses the ability to hesitate when killing is needed, which cuts off one of the more annoying character tropes that tend to follow around isekai protagonists.
The author describes Kurono as a 'Yandere Seizouki' (a yandere-producing machine) because he is not only dense but somehow manages to say and do the right things to tip girls over the cliff into yandere-ism. While this is highly amusing, it also means that even the SOL toward the middle and end of the story is quite a bit more stressful than is common to fantasy and isekai. Moreover, his density is made worse by the fact that his magic mastery actually suppresses his sexual desires, meaning he mostly just fails to notice the girls are aiming for him for most of the story, despite them being rather obvious to people looking at the situation from the outside.
Let's be clear about something first. I will be the first person to admit that I am really, seriously strange for actually enjoying the anime version of this. However, it turns out this story is a lot less frustrating in the written form, so I imagine that those that hated how the anime went might still enjoy the books. To be clear, Death March is, despite the whole setup, essentially a story of Satou touring the isekai to see the sights and eat good food while incidentally (to his mind) saving the world again and again. His overpowered nature never really changes from beginning to end, and I feel that he is a nice contrast to Hajime, the protagonist of Arifureta, in that he is the epitome of what you would expect from a good-hearted Japanese person with ultimate power and no real ambition.
For those who are curious, the web novel and the light novel versions diverge massively. The anime follows (imperfectly) the light novel, where a lot of events were changed from the WN version, most likely because the WN has some tragic points early on that the writer thought didn't fit with the atmosphere of the story when he put it in LN form. The essential points of the story don't change a lot, but there are certain arcs - such as the Lalakie arc - that simply don't exist in the WN version and some characters that exist in the Web Novel don't exist in the Light Novel.
One thing that frustrated me as time went on was the way Satou consistently ignored the feelings of the (adult) women around him, even when they were blatantly obvious about it. Considering this was an isekai anime, you would think he would just give in and enjoy the harem, given that he doesn't have any hesitation about using brothels, lol. His ignoring the feelings of Arisa and Lulu (for the most part) made sense since he didn't have any sort of loli fetish, though.
If you were to ask me how good the story is, I would say it is significantly lower in quality than Arifureta. If I were to say that Arifureta is at the level of my favorite VNs of all time, I would say that Death March falls somewhere just above the average. If it weren't for the fact that the series fit my tastes almost perfectly, I probably would have dropped it after the third LN, and I certainly wouldn't have gone through the trouble to read both the LN and WN versions. So, unless you liked the anime during the first half of the season (as unlikely as that might be), I can't honestly recommend the books to you.
Rather than being a series that gives me extreme laughs or feels, this one is one that makes me smile, more like comfort food than anything else.
Some people may have seen the relatively low-quality anime for Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou and are probably wondering why I am bothering to spout about this. Lately I've been plowing through LNs and web novels because I ran out of interesting VNs, but this is the first one I feel a need to expound on at length. Let's be clear, I am one of the freaks who enjoyed the anime, though I did so while wincing constantly at the animators' choices and the horrible monster CGs. To me, Hajime's story just stood out as being that good, despite the crippling weakness of having used up half the season on the 'buildup arc' that is the content of the first LN.
However, I wasn't anticipating just how high in quality the web novel version would be. To be blunt, Ryo Shirakome is one of those rare Japanese writers who really is as good as the hype and has a very obvious love of the material he is writing. More importantly, he is very consistent with how he portrays his characters and their growth.
Story Intro
For those unfamiliar with this series, it focuses on Nagumo Hajime, a young man summoned with his class to another world, only to turn out to be the overall weakest of the group and in possession of a class that is both common and unsuited for battle. In the beginning, Hajime is a kind-hearted, pacifistic young man with a great deal of courage (and enough of an otaku that it survives all his travails) but no standout abilities. However, when delving into the depths of the Orcus Labyrinth, his fellow classmates get caught in a trap and they are all sent to a much lower floor... to face a Behemoth, a monster that is beyond their abilities. Hajime, despite his weakness, manages to help greatly in holding it off, but just as he is about to make his own escape, one of his classmates betrays him, directing a fireball to stray and hit him so that he will fall into the abyss with the Behemoth.
He survives the fall only to have his right arm eaten by one of the beasts in the depths in front of his own eyes. In order to survive, he is forced into a corner where his previously kind heart is shattered and reforged in the fires of despair and hatred, reforming him into a man who sees the world in only two colors, those who are enemies and those who are not... and responds to enemies with death. This is further reinforced when he eats a monster and has to endure immense agony as his body is broken and remade again and again, shaving away at his humanity with each cycle, until what remains is only one step short of a true monster.
Main Story assessment
That's a pretty bare bones prologue for you and essentially covers the content of the first episode of the anime and the first three chapters of the web novel. Oddly, despite the horrific beginnings, this is as much a story about love as it is of hate and killing. Yue, the story's main heroine, is the reason for this. She is also the reason that this didn't turn into just another 'dark anti-hero goes out and gets revenge' story. His meeting with Yue is one of several turning points in Hajime's growth as a character and one of the most well-orchestrated ones I've ever seen (regardless of whether it is the anime or the web novel). Yue is the kindred spirit who helps Hajime stay one step away from the abyss of endless carnage he would otherwise have stepped into. This is despite the fact that she is just as broken as he is, psychologically.
The way this story uses the various heroines to help Hajime regain bits and pieces of his humanity is perhaps the most emotionally powerful aspect in retrospect. Yue helps him stop short of losing his humanity, Shia (the bunny-girl) stops Yue and Hajime from becoming completely isolated from the rest of the world, Aiko reminds him of what it is to be human, and Kaori reconnects him to his past, solidifying his reasons for his journey. Without all of these heroines, it is likely this story would not have been nearly as powerful, as Hajime's journey would have probably just been a series of 'kill this, kill that, have sex with Yue, kill more'.
I didn't mention Tio, Shizuku and Myuu in the previous paragraph because they serve slightly different roles from the other girls. Tio is pretty much just comedy relief as a character, despite being as in love with Hajime and the other girls. Shizuku is, surprisingly, the most 'normal' girl in the group and the one who serves as the most solid connection between the self-isolating harem of girls who are mostly disinterested in anything other than Hajime (with Aiko being the exception, given her sense of duty to her students). Myuu... well lets just say Myuu's role is fairly similar to Yue's, except that she awakens Hajime's obsessively protective instincts that come to define him later on.
The story itself is dark and brutal despite the frequent humorous interactions between the characters. This is inevitable, as the world of Tortus is a world ruled by an insane god whose greatest pleasure lies in ruining the lives of his slaves. There are a lot of hugely powerful battle scenes, crazy plot twists, and hilarious results of Hajime's trip through Tortus. The ending of the main story (which will probably be published sometime next year in the LNs) is as hugely dramatic as the beginning.
After Story Assessment
The After Story, which is still ongoing, is HUGE. It is almost as big as the main story, but it is told in non-chronological order as a bunch of arcs and one-off postings rather than in order. Despite this, the After Story has provided me with probably fifty times as many laughs as the main story did. Part of this is because what trials and tribulations that occur are mostly overcome by Hajime's already beyond-divine power gained during the main story or the power of his OP friends, wives, allies, and classmates. Whether it is Myuu attracting UMAs, demons, ghosts, and youkai like a bug lamp attracts flies or Kousuke falling deeper into the chuuni abyss as he builds his accidental harem in Hajime's service, I haven't stopped laughing in weeks.
Of course, there are some deadly serious points, perhaps the most powerful of which are the stories involving Kouki, who struggles with the after-effects of his time on Tortus more than anybody else (for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has already read the existing LNs or the main story of the web novel). However, even in these, Shirokome does an excellent job of keeping the balance from taking you too far into grimdark to truly enjoy.
Overall assessment up to the present
Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou does great at every aspect of what I want from this kind of story. It has great feels, it has great comedy, it has awesome characters, and its plot is close to sublime. More importantly, it is put together in such a way that all the elements enhance one another nearly to perfection. If you like isekai with a wide dark streak that can make fun of itself, this is an excellent choice.
Princess x Princess is the sequel/extension of Rishia's route from Shuffle 2. Essentially, it begins with Rishia enthusiastically searching out extra wives for Raito while he has difficulty adjusting to his girlfriend's values. However, this quickly expands into a game that, to some extent, can actually be called a sequel rather than a fandisc. This is similar to how the original Shuffle's 'extras' functioned more like true additions to the original game than fandiscs.
I'm going to be blunt... this is better than the original game, to a significant degree. A lot of the things I hated about how they handled Shuffle 2 are done differently in this game, and the style in general is much closer to how the original Shuffle was put together in terms of humor and character interactions. For fanboys of the original Shuffle who hated or just weren't satisfied with Shuffle 2, this game is a saving grace.
That said, this game has the characters traveling to different parallel worlds, where they are inserted into their own roles (with varying degrees of memory alterations) in them. In each, there are differences big and small (there is even one world where every character holds a near-perfect replication of the personality and role of a corresponding heroine from the original Shuffle), but the theme is mostly centered around Raito dealing with the issues in his own life using the experiences he has in these parallel worlds.
The 'paths' in this game are either threesome or harem combinations with Rishia, based on how Raito takes in his experiences in the various worlds. There is a threesome with Selena, Ai, and Lapis, with a full-on harem path and a Rishia-only path put in for kicks.
For fanboys of the original, this game also succeeds in clarifying the 'canon' of continuity to this game from the original Shuffle. The canon apparently is that Rin married Shia but died a significant period of time before she did.
Kurogane Kaikitan part 1
Kurogane Kaikitan is the port of the Vita game by Minato Carnival. It is a somewhat more action-focused game than is the norm for Minato Soft and its subsidiaries, with a much more serious subject matter. The protagonist, Habaki Masamune is the leader of a student anti-terrorist task force using mystical weapons called Kurogane that manifest certain 'recorded' phenomena that can be controlled by the user (this is not explained on the official website, which annoyed the hell out of me when I was reading up on the game beforehand). Masamune is a heavily-scarred victim of terrorism that hates terrorists to an incredibly strong degree, to the point where he is willing to cut them down mercilessly at a moment's notice.
In Kurogane Kaikitan's world, Manhattan was destroyed by a mysterious explosion, obliterating the city and allowing Japan to sign a peace treaty with more of its political and military power intact. As a result of Wall Street being gone and America's resulting economic downturn, Japan was able to take the helm of the world's economy, becoming a special financial zone and the battleground for various countries proxy terrorist activities. This necessitated the creation of units devoted to dealing with this, which at first was the Special Police but more recently a militarized unit called SWAM. The protagonist and his comrades are in training to join the Special Police.
The first thing most people will notice on beginning the game is the horrid use of Live 2d that can't be turned off. I will say that it was a huge quality of life crapfest that they didn't allow the turning off of the sprite motion system, since it isn't that good. Normally, I don't comment on visual aspects, but this was worthy of mention for its negative impact on the experience.
The prologue/common route of the game is pretty long, at just over seven hours on its own (though I wasn't reading it hurriedly, so I probably could have shortened the experience to five or six if I tried). In exchange, the first two paths I did, Amakuni's and Kotetsu's, were roughly four hours in length each. The prologue does an excellent job of developing the cast of characters to the point where you know which heroine you want to pick first (though you have to do Amakuni's or Fusehime's path first), as well as introducing the most important elements of the setting and setting the stage for the events that follow.
Amakuni
Amakuni is the protagonist's childhood friend, who was sickly as a child but became healthy by the time the story begins. She is a master of combat iaido (the action of drawing the katana, slashing, then returning it to the sheath), and she is the classic 'self-proclaimed fiance' heroine. Her path has a good mix of action, ichaicha, and feels, with two arcs (a 'buildup arc' and a finishing arc) that succeed in making her path feel like an extension of the prologue instead of being a random story based loosely on what happened before (as is common with a lot of VNs). Her ending is highly emotional and somewhat bittersweet (a theme for this game as a whole).
Kotetsu
Kotetsu is a different animal entirely from the aggressive and tennenboke Amakuni, as she begins as a quiet loner who turns into a koakuma heroine later on. I mostly picked her for my second heroine because I was extremely curious about her reactions to various events in the prologue and Amakuni's path. She is the type of heroine who, once she falls for the protagonist, becomes somewhat emotionally dependent on him. Her path is cute up until the point where events start rapidly occurring and certain facts about what was going on behind the scenes come to light. Kotetsu's situation is one that draws pity naturally from the reader, so don't be surprised if you find yourself tearing up or wanting to look away because of some of the events of the story. The ending is somewhat less satisfying than Amakuni's unfortunately, but that was perhaps inevitable considering the situation in both paths.
Nene
Nene is the teacher of the protagonist's class and the overseer/handler of the Kurogane unit for the First School. Her path is significantly more twisty and labyrinthine than Kotetsu's or Amakuni's paths, whose trials were mostly personal for the characters involved. Nene is that classic 'older heroine who falls apart in private' that Minato Soft and its subsidiaries love to put into their games. She is also the equivalent of this game's Momoyo (in other words, the trump card/ultimate power that can flip the game board if put into play), albeit with none of Momoyo's whims. I enjoyed this path, but like Kotetsu's path, the epilogue was somewhat unsatisfying.
Tamane
Tamane is the oldest member of the Kurogane unit, a member of a military family famous for its skills with the bayonet and rifle. She often plays the mature and stern older sister role in the group, except that she, like Nene, tends to fall apart in private due to her weakness to those she cares for. Her path, like Nene's, is pretty twisty and complex in comparison to the first two routes I played. I enjoyed this path (the action toward the end, in particular) a lot, and the epilogue for this path is as good or better than Amakuni's, with the parting point in taste being whether you want sweet or bittersweet.
Fusehime
I don't like Fusehime.
I have messed around with a lot of heroines I didn't like over the years, especially in serious games, but Fusehime is this game's Victim A, an out of place character who should have been just another class member. I know that there is this temptation to put a morally naive party member into every 'group of friends', no matter how dark the setting, but Fusehime is particularly bad this way. Naive, idealistic, and full of delusions about what her job is about... just about everything about her rubbed me wrong. So, don't be surprised that I skipped this path, bwahahaha!
Kaikitan Path
This is the game's true path, devoid of romance. It is also the path where a lot of the story's hidden elements come into the open and some of the best battles occur. However, it is also a path that is somewhat rough emotionally on the reader if they came to like the main cast. Honestly, I thought it was a bit too predictable compared to what it could have been with a little bit less teasing in the other routes.
Extra Endings
All the heroines have extra path/endings after the Kaikitan path, based in a different timeline (specifically stated). Like the original timeline, it is a 'what-if' world that is meant for those who like happy endings. These secondary paths are actually reasonably enjoyable, but I honestly enjoyed the main game's paths more.
Conclusion
An enjoyable game based in a what-if world. The world it is based in isn't the one of Majikoi, Tsujidou, and Tsuyokiss, for those who are curious. It could have been a great deal better if they spent less time on SOL, but considering that this is Minato Soft (well, one of their subsidiaries), I suppose it was inevitable that it wouldn't be like that. In a lot of ways, the version of Japan portrayed in the game reminds me of a Japanese-flavored America, in that it suffers from many of the same problems.
I love 'psychologically challenged' characters, whether they are heroines, protagonists, or antagonists. That said, I don't mean those cookie-cutter 'villains' and 'serial killer' types when I say this. I mean characters who are twisted up inside and as a result have a completely different outlook on life or appear inconsistent on the surface as a result. Villain and serial killer types, who just cause harm because they want to, just aren't that interesting. Here is a shortlist of good VNs that also have a few psychotic characters that are interesting to me.
Ojou-sama wa Gokigen Naname (Yuuzenji Tsurumi)- Antagonist of the story, she is passionately and with utter seriousness in love with money. She will honestly and totally love anyone who gives her money, but that love disappears the moment that they have nothing left to give her.
Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier (Okada Iori)- Iori is the partner heroine of Ryouma. She is the very picture of someone twisted by her job, as she is an assassin for the anti-Shogunate forces who is more than a bit yandere. Her twisted need to be controlled and have sex with the one who tells her to kill is a primary personality trait for her.
Devils Devel Concept (all heroines and Sora)- Sora is a young man with a domineering and tyrannical personality and an obsession with transactional interactions with others in the form of 'contracts' (not to mention a psyche that reacts to violence, pain, and inflicting pain with joy). All the heroines are a bit broken in various ways, though each has a different broken point. There are also a lot of other broken characters, lol.
Draculius (Jun and Belche)- Jun is normally an easygoing and kind-hearted young man, but he is insanely protective of 'family', to the point of extreme ruthless cruelty if he feels it necessary. Belche is an ancient Irish vampire who bases her entire worldview on her service to a master and just how much she can give to him, while also being a coldly ruthless monster who would willingly kill entire towns if her master asked it of her.
Grisaia trilogy (seriously, does anyone need me to point out all the broken characters here?)
Comyu (Kagome)- ... anyone who has played this game knows Kagome is crazy, so I don't know any reason why I should continue.
Silverio Vendetta (Zephyr and Valzeride)- Zephyr is a cowardly deserter who is normally happy to drink himself into a stupor and engage the services of easy women, but when cornered he becomes a sadistically brutal monster who will happily torment and slaughter those who oppose him using any tool that comes to hand. Valzeride is on the surface the ultimate, perfect patriotic hero. However, his hard-working nature goes beyond the norm, as he is quite literally incapable of not pushing his own limits and enduring the most hellish of experiences solely to be the 'Enemy of Evil' as he terms it. He fundamentally loves destroying evil as the root part of his nature, and he naturally seeks to turn the ruined lives he leaves in his wake into the base for his nation's prosperity.
Silverio Trinity (Gilbert and Dainsleif)- Gilbert is a hero-obsessed strategist who always has a scenario ready to get the best result out of any situation. Dainsleif is also obsessed with Valzeride and those like him, desiring nothing more than to be the one to oppose and destroy heroes as a self-styled evil dragon.
Dies Irae (Reinhard Heydrich and friends)- That there is something wrong with the psychology of every single person on Reinhardt Heydrich's side, as well as most of Ren's side is a self-evident reality.
Tokyo Babel (Setsuna) - Seriously, talk about overweening arrogance hidden in a huge lump of self-pity and self-hatred, lol.
Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary (Souji)- With Souji it is mostly a result of his upbringing, but he seems so normal... even as he kills.
Yurikago yori Tenshi Made (everyone)- No normies in this game, nothing but psychos.
Izuna Zanshinken (lots of people)- Lots of crazies and oddballs in this game.
Vermillion Bind of Blood- Toshirou, Ariya and Tri-finger. Figure the rest out yourself, lol.
Hapymaher (Maia)- Say what you want about Maia, but she is probably one of the most internally conflicted characters I've seen. The reasons make perfect sense, if you know what to look for. Tohru is a bit crazy too (anyone who has to fight that much with his own desire to dream forever is a bit brain-screwed).
Butterfly Seeker- Another game with a lot of messed up people.
Psychologic Love Comedy- Craziness everywhere
All the Smee Seasons games (Harumade, Natsukumo, etc)- craziness is this series' selling point.
Let's first get this out there... I did not play the original game. The reasons? Well, mostly because it was supposedly horribly buggy and I have no patience for bugs and glitches. The other part was that it didn't sound that interesting to me. It sounded like an occult take on SAO. However, I decided when this came out that I would buy it and later play it. Why? Because Touyama Mai is a much more interesting protagonist than Shina or Arata.
The game begins with Mai being driven to murder her father after he threatens the life of her younger sister. Her younger sister, who was at an orphanage/school in a small town called La Choara, stopped contacting her, so Mai decided to use the opportunity of being a recently-made orphan to search for her sister, Sanae. Her arrival in La Choara and the Wordsworth Dorm begins a series of horrific incidents that sometimes made me wonder if Clock-up had decided to make an all-ages game.
Now, it needs to be said... this game is made by Idea Factory, so it has an 'innovative' battle system with tons of problems, lol (this is essentially what IF is known for in jrpgs). I'm just glad that Idea Factory's glitches no longer include ridiculously long load times and sudden game freezes for no particular reason, hahaha. The gameplay is that of a dungeon-crawler, with some puzzle elements and a battle system based around positioning and skill combos where you can position yourself freely. The key to most battles is positioning your character and using a knockback skill to knock enemies into one another like pool balls (and making them hit your allies), thus magnifying damage greatly... sometimes even exponentially. There is a special mode in battle called 'glitch mode', where the characters transform into a battle form. Mai's is particularly... yander-ish? I mean, she wields a hatchet that looks like it is straight out Higurashi and her finishing move completes with her splatting the enemy with it.
For story, this game is split into SOL events with the orphans, story events at the end of each day, and events during the night exploration period. Needless to say, most of the important events happen at night, and they are often gruesome and horrifying. The mystery of La Choara is pretty horrifying, and insanity seems to be the name of the game at times. I do think that it stretches the limits of belief how Lottie and Lilliana fool themselves about people and what is going on while Mai keeps her mouth shut and her expression flat. Of course, that is part of the point... there is at least one point in every chapter where you can pick an option that kills you because you pushed too hard by making a certain choice or just stumbled down the wrong street.
In the end, the story was fun while it lasted, but this game is only around twenty hours long, so I blew through it in a week of playing it on and off. The question is, what did I think in the end? Well, I feel like I got my money's worth (All hail Steam sales!!!), and yuri-guro-horror-mystery is a genre I hadn't yet experienced, so that was new. However, I do feel like there were numerous points were just changing a few lines or adding in a little more detail would have made the events more emotionally powerful or impactful. If I had to give this game a rating on my VN scale, it would probably fall short of VN of the Month quality while still being worth having played.
Ryuusei World Actor Badge and Dagger
I'm going to be blunt, I'm not fond of what was done with the previous game, and I felt like this one was a repeat of the same mistakes. That's not to say there aren't a lot of good points to this game and its predecessor. Kinugasa Shougo is an excellent writer (as VN writers go) with a great skill in characterization and scenario design. However, just like the first game, this one cuts off without completing the story.
I'm not nearly as angry this time, as I was expecting it. This game was obviously meant to be just another part of a longer series of games (probably a trilogy, given the situation with Ruka at the end). I don't feel this game deserves a horrible rating, but I also feel that it doesn't deserve to be rated overly well until the series ends.
For those interested in the paths, a similar tactic to the original was taken here, where the heroines are mostly irrelevant except as characters. In a sense, that is even more true this time around. Ryouko and Fuyumi are never really presented as real heroines (for one, because their characterization is ridiculously weak), and one can't really call Ryouko's path Ryouko's path, since it is essentially semi-casual H on the way to progressing the main story instead of actual romance or a connection between the two.
Honestly, I felt that Kinugasa managed to be slightly less haphazard with the 'ending' while completely mishandling the heroines this time around. The cut-off for this game feels more like building up for another episode than an abrupt severing of the plot like the first game. However, in exchange, he botched the heroines.
I am not going to hate on this game as much as I did on the first... but I recommend that most people wait until the series concludes before playing to avoid frustration.
Dies Irae Interview with Kaziklu Bey
Yes, I finally pulled this one out of the dusty bin for a rainy day last week. My need for chuunige has been great lately, with there having been no new good ones since Silverio Ragnarok a little over a year ago and nothing since Trinity before that. I'm going to start out with a clear statement for those who have played Dies Irae but not this game... it quite surprisingly doesn't really add anything significant to the canon or exceed expectations, at least in my eyes.
This game is essentially an opportunity to get to know a character who was central to both KKK and Dies Irae but who generally took on the role of being kicked around in the latter and had an odder role in the former. Wilhelm Ehrinburg is a man who considers himself to be a vampire, reborn in the mud of the slums of Hamburg before World War II and the killing of his own parents. He is the kind of psychopathic monster that pops up periodically throughout human history (more often lately), and he was a perfect fit for the Black Round Table and its soul-sucking adherents. In Dies Irae, it is easy to perceive him for his humanity because there is a much crazier person in his immediate vicinity (Schrieber), but the fact is, he is the kind of person that would have ended up on death row in any peaceful era.
This game does a very, very good job of showing you Wilhelm's personality flaws, his hangups, and his particular 'curse' (if you are unfamiliar with Dies Irae, Mercurius essentially proclaims the 'curse' of each of the Black Round Table's members' destiny). The girl who serves as the heroine of the story is a perfect foil to his dark nature, a pure-hearted girl who, while born under similar circumstances, managed to be a person of virtue and piety.
This game is based in the 'blank period' between the historical assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich and the events of 1945 Berlin set in Dies Irae. This period is not referred to in the Dies Irae story in any significant fashion, and most of the characters tend to focus on the period before that assassination when reminiscing about the past in the original game. The exception would be Kristoff, whose fate was decided shortly after this game's ending.
This game was written by Masada, so it is obviously well-written and excessively wordy. Due to DMM's drm, I had to read it without aids of any sort, so my head was hurting seriously by the end (really, why does Masada feel the need to use so many obscure kanji I don't normally find in paper books, much less VNs?). Yes, I could have read it in English... but I think most of you know my hangups about reading other people's translations by this point.
There is only one serious battle in this game, which occurs toward the very end, and the game as a whole is much more predictable than most Masada games (mostly because it is made to fit within the canon, so you know certain people won't die and certain people probably are dead). However, I will say this game has a great deal of charm for someone who liked Dies Irae. Seeing the Black Round Table characters without the distraction of Ren's perspective or a short side-story was enlightening in some ways and in others only confirmed my impressions from the original.
In the end, the only conclusion I can give you as potential readers is that this game really is only valuable to fanboys of Dies Irae. Despite the chronological order, I don't recommend playing this first, as it spoils certain aspects of the setting you aren't supposed to know about to enjoy the story of the original. As a stand-alone chuunige, it just doesn't work, but as a side-story prequel, it is just fine.
This is the latest kemomomi VN from Lump of Sugar, whose best VNs all have kemomimi girls, lol. In this one, the protagonist Takuto and his little sister Shiina are transported to the world of the gods, where human perceptions of the world, mythology and legends come to life. As a game, this story feels a lot like a 'gentle and slow nakige'.
To be blunt, the first thing I think most people will note upon getting past the prologue of this game is... that Roka is the most moe-moe heroine they've seen in a VN in years. Roka, the kitsune, is probably the most perfectly moe character I've seen in an anime or VN since before 2010. The desire to pat her on the head and spoil her rotten was the first emotion I felt in this VN.
That said, I could do without her being a heroine. Does that sound odd to you? Well, I've never been fond of lolis as heroines, and lolis like Roka really seem like they shouldn't be heroines to me. Her mother, Kuzuha is much more to my tastes... to the point where I'm a bit irritated there isn't an extra H-scene for her, hahaha.
I got a bit off track with my kitsune moe obsession there...
Anyway, this VN has four heroines: Mikoto, the combined avatar of the Rabbit of Inaba and Tsukuyomi, who is a natural mischief-maker; Roka, the avatar of the concept of the nine-tailed fox, who is basically an adorable child being mothered by he predecessor; Chiyo, the embodiment of the concept of the Tsukumogami (objects that gained sentience from Japanese myth); and Shiina, the protagonist's stoic but mischievous little sister.
This VN is heavily winter-themed, based in an old-style Japanese town. The backgrounds are all beautiful and well-done, and it leads to a very 'cozy' feeling that enhances the slow and quiet feel of the game's atmosphere.
The common route of this VN is focused on the protagonist living a quiet life in the gods' realm while he waits for the chance to go back to the human realm, and it is pretty much a lot of cute and/or comedic sol with a surprising amount of traditional 'lucky sukebe'. While there isn't a lot to remark on here, I will say that the common route does a great job of filling out the heroines' personalities and background, thus fulfilling the role of helping you decide who to pursue first.
Roka
As I said above, I could have done without H content for Roka. However, seeing Roka's adorableness increase in her path made it worth playing. If you paid attention to the world-building in the common route, you can probably guess what the drama in the path is about. However, I will say that the ichaicha here is very reminiscent of the odd relationships between Makina and Yuuji in Grisaia and Tonoko and Tsukasa in Kamishino (hint-hint) at least in general outline. I found this path enjoyable and emotional, even if I didn't want any H for it.
Mikoto
Once you've played the common route, you'll probably be able to guess what the conflict of Mikoto's path is (they foreshadow both paths during the world-building). So, I'll focus on her personality. Mikoto is a 'stereotypical bunny girl' in some ways, and not so in others. Like the stereotypical bunnygirl, she gets lonely easily and has a somewhat dependent personality that she covers up with her smile. Unlike the stereotypical bunnygirl, its causes are a bit more esoteric and deeper than simply 'she is a bunny'. Overall, her path is even more emotional than Roka's, though there is a lot less cuteness (you all know from above about how I feel about Roka, lol). It also has a very, very extensive epilogue that made me smile through the catharsis of the main part of the path.
Chiyo
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, a tsukumogami is generally an object that has been treated well and used constantly for over a century, causing it to become self-aware (this is why tsukumogami are usually things that would normally be well-preserved, like antique bowls, cups, chairs, swords, etc). Chiyo is the embodiment of the 'concept' of the tsukumogami rather than an actual tsukumogami, which means she doesn't have an object that serves as her real body.
Chiyo's path was the first one that wasn't foreshadowed in the world-building. It was also the strangest romance so far... not the least of which because Chiyo's desires are a bit different from human desires in some ways (well, I imagine there are people who have similar hangups, lol). It was actually a pretty decent path, but the drama felt more forced than either of the previous two paths, perhaps because Chiyo's character had no obvious issues that would cause drama on their own.
Shiina
If there was one word that would describe Shiina, it would be 'eccentric'. At first glance, Shiina seems like a stoic, unemotional heroine, but she frequently teases and makes jokes with a straight face. Her reactions are often off-center/odd compared to normal people.
I'm honestly glad I left this path to last, because my intuition screamed at me to do so from the beginning. I recommend that anyone who plays this game do this path after Mikoto's, at the very least, as playing this path will spoil the experience somewhat. Shiina's path is the most dramatic path in the game (and not for the usual incest reasons). It also has a large infodump about the general setting toward the end. For those who like incest paths, Shiina is a great imouto character, as well.
Conclusion
Lump of Sugar games tend to vary widely in quality, from total kusoge to kamige. While this one falls short of kamige level, it is nonetheless a first-class VN with a good story, excellent characters, and great characterization. I wouldn't object to future games being based in this setting, either, lol.
This game is a peculiar one. This is the third time I've played the game, and the second time I've posted on it. If you want to see my original review, please look here:
I'm going to focus here on coloring in some of the details of why I like this game and think it is underrated amongst Western readers of untranslated VNs. First, the factors that lead to it being underrated.
1) The protagonist takes on a man-whore role through large swathes of the game and isn't a pure-hearted boy by any standard. For some reason, man-whores aren't received very well by a lot of Western readers, especially ones that are calculating and intentionally act that way.
2) The visual style of the game differs significantly, if subtly, from the more common styles of the post-2010 era. It is rougher in some places and more elegant in others.
3) A large portion of the readers don't like Arika. Now, there are good reasons not to like her in many's eyes. She is whimsical, manipulative, and lazy as all hell when she isn't interested in an activity. However, she is also hyper-intelligent, intuitive, and has the same kind of super-luck that Cap did in Majikoi. Unfortunately, she is the kind of character that seriously divides readers.
4) People's expectations of trap protagonists. Most people going into a trap protagonist game expect a lot of comedy antics related to the cross-dressing. However, Hajime doesn't bungle things and doesn't panic the way a lot of trap protagonists do. In addition, 'calculating' is a quality that many who actually like trap protagonist games don't like in them... and Hajime is nothing of not calculating.
5) The surprising darkness of the setting. People go into trap protagonist games thinking they will be comedic and moe-moe festivals. Ojomasu is neither. There isn't a lot of comedy in the game, and there is very little in the way of moe fanservice.
6) The prologue H-scene. Probably the thing that annoys a lot of people is the h-scene in the prologue and how it came to be. For people that go into this game with a 'I want to see pure love romance from beginning to end' attitude, this is a huge downer. That it is followed by Hajime using the affections of a number of other women during the course of the story only enhances this impression for this part of the crowd.
7) Ginko isn't one of the heroines. Yes, in any other game, Ginko would have been one of the heroines.
The things that make this game worth playing.
1) Everything above. Seriously, the fact is that a lot of the people who play this game aren't the intended audience. In some ways, this is a more down-to-earth version of the 'guy infiltrates a girls' school' trope.
2) Despite only having three heroines, those heroines provide a full spectrum of personalities. The whimsical Arika, the stoic and straightforward Benio, and the sweet-natured Peko provide a lot of variety without any real overlap. If Ginko or Rion (the ones the largest part of the fanbase seemed to want routes for) were heroines in this game, it would distract from things greatly. Moreover, there is way too much overlap between Ginko and Arika personality-wise.
3) There is just enough darkness to the setting and story to create a firm contrast to the soft atmosphere of the girls' school. In a lot of cases with these 'girls school infiltration' VNs, there is a sense of unreality created as a result of poor buildup of the setting.
4) This game doesn't even attempt to imitate the success of other companies. I honestly think they should have named this game something else, because the title makes it seem like a game that should be a soft romance rather than the more complex story it is.
5) Hajime is a protagonist you can enjoy self-inserting into. He is capable, intelligent, and ambitious, a combination that is a refreshing change from most VN protagonists in general.
This is the second game in Hulotte's Yabai trilogy. It is also, by far, the highest quality of the three. Like the other two, it is a harem-ge/charage with slight rom-com elements. Where it differs from more modern charage/moege is that it is more of an issue of 'who' he picks rather than falling in love in the normal way. The why of this makes sense (and not in totally forced way) within the setting and story, so that isn't necessarily an issue.
The protagonist, Ashihara Daiki, is the descendent of a local mountain god, possessing immense power, and one day he has a precognitive dream about a potential wife whose face he can't make out. His sister, Kirino, points out that it likely involves the Yagami family, whose daughters are the only girls of his age he has had contact with and even then only in his early childhood. Because of this, he ends up going to a larger town where the Yagami family lives to discover who his promised wife is.
Now the thing you need to keep in mind is that most of the heroines are straight-out attracted to him to one degree or another from the beginning. They aren't 'deredere' but because of his inherent honesty, they are aware that he is looking at them that way, so there is none of the usual awkward obfuscation common in these kind of situations (except with Kirino). As such, when the shift to the heroine paths occur, it feels surprisingly natural, unlike many such shifts.
The seven heroines (yes, there are seven heroines) are: Kanna, the middle sister with the soft manner and kind heart; Mihono, the eldest of the three Yagami sisters, a generous young woman with a strong mischievous side that is something of a school idol; Serika, the shy but cute youngest Yagami sister who loves animals; Nanaka, the mysterious senpai who gives advice freely while tempting Daiki; Kirino, the protagonist's brocon (though she hides it) sister; the young fake loli teacher, Shindou Meika; and the ojousama waitress classmate Tamano Yui.
I need to say that replaying this VN opened my eyes to one of the sadder realities of the industry in Japan... the fact that more modern SOL games were a drastic drop in quality compared to this era. It was gradual enough that I didn't really notice (because I was playing so many), but the quality difference between charage/moege of this era and ones even four or five years later is almost ridiculous to contemplate. While my burnout undoubtedly contributed to my negative feelings about latter-era charage/moege, the fact is that most of it was just a general fall in quality.
Kanna
Kanna is the most straightforward of the seven heroines. She is sweet-natured, has a strong jealous streak, and she can generally be trusted to react in an adorable manner, even when she is angry. While she is essentially passive by nature, when she falls head over heels, she is one of the more aggressive of the heroines. Due to a lock on the routes, you have to do her path first. However, that isn't really much trouble, since the romance and ichaicha here stays just inside the lines between 'cute' and 'annoying'. Her path has some drama due to her past with Daiki and Daiki's nature, but the drama is resolved relatively quickly (though not as abruptly as later-era charage tended to be). Her epilogue is just extensive enough to satisfy, meeting the 'graduate' line in my mind.
Serika
Serika is the youngest of the three Yagami sisters, a shy animal-loving girl who quickly develops a crush on Daiki that falls on the line between 'imouto' and 'romantic love'. While her speech is generally slow and halting due to her shyness, this only makes her cuteness a perpetual aspect of every interaction with her. Like Kanna, she is also very kind by nature, subtly acting to try to help those she cares about without caring for recognition.
As a heroine, Serika is about what you'd expect from a shy heroine in a JVN, save that she has moments where she becomes surprisingly aggressive. Serika's path's drama is a lot more serious than Kanna's, and the couple have a great deal of trouble resolving it... thus making their victory all the more poignant for what it cost them. However, I think the epilogue is significantly weaker than Kanna's.
Mihono
Mihono is the eldest of the three Yagami sisters and something of a school idol. She is something of a 'mischievous older sister' character, with a side of 'mimidoshima' (a Japanese term referring to young women who talk about love and sex without any personal experience). Like her sisters, she too is kind-hearted, but her tendency to want to tease her sisters and Daiki can cover that up at times.
Mihono's path is the weakest of the three Yagami sisters. I say this because Mihono's character's limitations become really obvious once you get onto her path. While she is reasonably cute, she pales in comparison to her sisters when it comes to the ichaicha love stuff, and it felt like they pushed the drama into the story solely for the sake of drama, thus making it feel weaker than it should have been. This is because the reasons behind the drama were less solid than those of Serika or Kanna. The epilogue was probably the best of the three, but that doesn't make up for how weak the path was.
Nanaka
Nanaka is available in the 'second round of heroines', along with Mihono and Serika. While she takes an advisory role in most of the routes due to her cool manner and mature personality, her real personality is that of a desperately lonely young woman with a powerful need to find a place to belong that accepts her for what she is. Despite her manner, she is easily the most ero-obsessed of the heroines, openly telling Daiki she wants him from the first time they talked.
In her path, the full reasons behind her behavior are revealed, though she does her best to maintain the 'aura of mystery' wherever she can. She is one of those rare heroines who is difficult to read because she is so used to obfuscation, and as a result, it is easy to misunderstand her. She is one of those heroines that make it extremely difficult to pick any other once you've played the game once, because she is the one that needs the protagonist the most. Of the paths up to this point, this is the only one that made me cry outright... and that was relatively early in the path.
This path is really emotional, but it also has a lot of funny moments, mostly because Nanaka keeps showing unexpected aspects to her personality through the ichaicha period. While there is drama, the drama is actually less impactful than watching her overcome her past. The epilogue in this path is the longest so far, with the most extensive after-time (four years, marriage, child, etc). Honestly, if I play this game again, I'll probably just use the save file to play Nanaka's path again.
Kirino
Kirino is Daiki's little sister, a young woman with immense power (particularly reading minds, the past, and the future). She loves her big brother but she also loves teasing him almost as much. Her role in the other paths is supporting, with her usually popping up right before the drama starts. As such, she gets less character development in the common route and other heroine routes than any other heroine, including the two sub-heroines, Meika and Yui. She is something of a mischief-maker, but whenever he falls in love, she serves in whatever role is necessary to bring about her brother's happiness.
Now this should be apparent from above, but Kirino is a serious brocon. She is subtler about it than most, but the fact that her first obsession is simply helping her niisan says everything. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that her path begins with an almost literal explosion of brocon energy, lol.
Kirino's path splits off at the beginning, for reasons that become obvious when you get onto it. Typical of paths like this the VN world over, Kirino's path is full of foreboding even in the happiest of moments. If I say that one of the paths in Aoi Tori was inspired by this path, those who played it would probably get the point.
In any case, this is a high quality path, though I hesitate to call it a true path (since apparently the harem ending is the true path). The epilogue is cute but isn't as extensive as Nanaka's, which was something I was puzzled about, since you have to play the other four heroines to get this route.
Yui
Yui is Kanna's best friend, a cheerful girl who serves as a waitress for the cafe that serves as the school cafeteria (dressed as a maid, for some reason). She is actually one of the cuter of the heroines even outside her path, which made me question why she wasn't given a stronger path instead of the classic 'side-heroine shuffle'.
There isn't a ton of detail to her path. It is essentially a 'we worked together and realized we loved each other, so we got married' sort of path. Sadly, this means that this path is short and doesn't have any real drama.
Meika
Meika is the protagonist's homeroom teacher, a loli (yes, a loli) who is apparently of adult age. Like Yui, she plays an excellent supporting role in all the other paths, but she isn't given much of a path of her own. This path is almost identical to Yui's path, in that it lacks any real drama and is basically a smooth road to marriage. As such, there really isn't a whole lot to talk about here.
Harem
The harem route... is pretty much a nukige harem ending with slightly more story to it. This is considered to be the 'true' route in the sense that this is the result the routes were working toward (for reasons that will make sense once you've played Kirino's route). However, it isn't really much beyond a bunch of h-scenes.
Conclusion
A high quality game that set the stage for Hulotte's post-Yabai games. Like those, it has just enough fantasy and a strong enough plot to keep you interested, while romance SOL still lies at the center. I recommend this to people who like the old style of charage where drama was actually present and something that needed to be overcome for the characters' happiness (instead of the essentially smooth sailing that became common as the genre began to rot).
Raillore is 3rdeye's most recent chuunige, made back in 2019. At the time, I tried to play it and dropped it after the prologue, for a number of reasons. The primary reason was the lack of narration in combat scenes... For some reason, 3rdEye has almost no narration in this game, comparative even to charage. Instead, battle scenes are done using CGs, brief animations, and sound-effects. Unfortunately, this means you generally have no idea of what is going on, due to the limitations of such things. The second issue was the second protagonist, who is your classic sorta former-criminal dameningen, Grey. Grey is... very familiar. He is the type of guy who has frustrated anime, manga, and LN fans for decades with being the lazy and feckless bastard who is only good at tricking people. This type of protagonist makes for a very predictable story that is not in the least bit interesting, at least in my experience. The last was the pacing... which is generally awful. Though, it is hard not to be awful when no real effort is put into explaining the world outside of the ever-increasing number of encyclopedia terms hidden behind the game's clunky menu.
Supposedly, Raillore is at least a few generations later than us, after some kind of apocalypse that destroys civilizations and leaves pockets of people with weak superpowers excavating the ruins of their ancestors living in primitive cities like Raillore. At some point before the story began, some people began losing their original superpower and gaining the power to transform relics of the old civilization into working artifacts. Unfortunately, due to several incidents, these poor individuals experience extreme persecution and, at first, are hunted to death then later are inserted into a machine that erases their power and memories.
The first of the protagonists is Reno, one of the two boys in the prologue, who has been through enough hell that his personality seems to have been cut down until he became a machine-like warrior existing only to follow orders. He is a Snatcher, (so is Grey), his power allowing him to take others' superpowers temporarily and convert them into power to fuel is much more powerful superpower, which increases all of his physical abilities in exchange for transforming his personality into a berserker of sorts. Since Reno is already at Cloud (from FF7) levels of physical ability even before the transformation, this means stone buildings blowing apart at a blow and tiles cracking just from him running around, lol.
Snatchers seem to suffer under a similar - if less intense- level of prejudice from the population of the city. Snatchers are generally feared and used as weapons by the authorities, partnering them with powerful supers who are tasked with judging when is best to give them permission to 'Plunder' others' powers.
All of this means that if I hadn't had to dig for every, single, frigging detail by going through the encyclopedia there was an immense amount of potential for this setting. There is a lot that could be played with to make the story interesting, but the fact that you have to actually search for even vague details means that there is no real enjoyment from the world-building aspect.
Similarly, this game's story should have been interesting, the battles should have been epic, and the characters should have been memorable...
Unfortunately, 3rdEye's approach to the game meant that none of these promises were fulfilled. In a VN, especially an action VN and/or a plotge, narration is the foundation of the story. You can fool around with visuals all you want to color in the gaps and give people something to build on, but it is the narration that makes the story. The near-complete lack of narration in this game, particularly in battle scenes and important story scenes, is fatal to this game's quality.
