https://ncode.syosetu.com/n6442ez/
This particular series is another reincarnation story, but it stands out because the entirety of the story so far is concentrated in his childhood, where he is constantly dealing with problems beyond his abilities, faced with situations where revealing his true abilities would harm his family, and generally trying to keep his yanderish little sister from being lonely. His name is Alto Cranepot, and he is the bastard son of a noble who married into an Earl's family with the man's mistress, Ryuushka. Al, as he is called most of the time, died of overwork in his previous life and is often described as having the atmosphere of a worn-out worker that is at odds with his beautiful features inherited from his mother. Due to the fact that he had to touch his sister's soul while in the womb to help her and his mother survive, his sister is totally obsessed with him from the moment she is born.
His teacher, Eibelle, is the series heroine, one of the two remaining ancestors of the elven race, the Arch Elves, her nickname being 'hametsu' (Ruin) for the fact that she was always the one to destroy threats in the previous ages (she is at least ten thousand years old, but as innocent in matters of romance as a girl can get). She is not only his love interest but his teacher of sorcery and easily the most adorable character in the series. It helps that Al loves her from almost the first time he meets her, and she shares that feeling.
The entirety of the seven hundred and so chapters that have come out so far has only resulted in him turning eight years old, as the author is cramming an immense amount of detail into every year of his life. As such, there is no way you can consider this to be a complete story. However, it is an immensely enjoyable read, as Al struggles to have a normal life while ruining those plans with his own hands and efforts.
Overall, this is a great choice for people who like isekai stories that are mostly daily life with a side of comedy and action/adventure. I don't recommend this to people who want fast-paced stories. I do recommend it for people who like their stories to have a lot of details.
This particular series follows a guy who dies after being trampled by an escaped horse as he is revived in another world and told to live freely. He is given two major growth cheats right up front (20 times experience gain, plus 1/20 experience to next level) and becomes immensely powerful in a relatively short time, while gathering a group of friends and lovers around him (he only has two lovers, which is pretty low compared to most isekai protagonists).
Throughout most of the story, he picks the jobs he wants to level up at random or based on his needs at the moment, so you can't really say he is an intelligent and far-sighted protagonist. In addition, he is highly reliant on the moral support of Haru and Kyaro (his lovers) to keep himself balanced. The theme of this story is very much a 'normal guy his given immense power but no purpose', and it is only toward the end that things become truly serious and he is forced to stand against fate.
Since the protagonist doesn't become morally defunct (something that happens to roughly half of the serious isekai protagonists I've seen so far), chapter for chapter, this isn't a bloody series. Nor is it graphic. The protagonist tends to try to save everyone he can while not endangering those close to him, but he doesn't have a hero complex. It is more a situation where the protagonist has the power to do something about it, so he does.
The story itself is fairly solid and internally consistent, even if it appears to go off on tangents regularly (the intermissions with the two idiots and their monster donkey are a perfect example of tangents turning out to be important). However, it is also a long story to read, and it gets off to a relatively slow start until the events that result in him buying Haru.
Overall, it is a complete series that never truly loses its shine from beginning to end, so it is worth reading for those who like isekai stories.
To be honest, Sairin Yuusha is one of the worst WNs I've ever read. I kept reading until it cut off because I thought it would eventually get good, but the protagonist is weak and there is never any real progress with the heroine. The story itself is a revenge story about a hero who is murdered by his own party right before he is about to fight the Demon King. Thirty years later, he is summoned again and starts on a journey of revenge, forming an alliance with a former demon queen and generally wreaking havoc on his enemies in a world that he feels betrayed him.
His revenge is pretty graphic - so those who like that kind of thing will probably get off on this - but, to be honest, he is so focused on the revenge part of his journey that he never really grows as a person until right before the author stopped posting it (literally in the last volume).
If the writer had included some softer moments to cushion the constant 'push forward and get revenge', I would have liked it more. I also would have liked it if the heroine's personality had fit her role in the story, but unfortunately, she often was the source of me being jerked out of my immersion in the story.
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.
(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.
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.
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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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
Now, Ruitomo is one of 'those legendary VNs', the first kamige written by the Akatsuki Works team. It is well-known and often discussed amongst vets of playing untranslated VNs, and you can see how this was the formative stage for a team that would go on to make numerous great games in the future, most of them chuunige.
First off, Ruitomo isn't a chuunige, at least in the classic sense. The protagonist is a trap who is bound by an inherited curse not to reveal his true gender, and the story begins with him encountering several others that also possess similar curses, as well as powers that he doesn't possess. Ruitomo is one of those games that doesn't easily fall into a genre or sub-genre, as it has elements of action, mystery, mindfuck, fantasy, and romance all wrapped into one big bundle. So, I just have to shrug and call it a 'story-focused VN', lol (as vague a term as moege or charage, haha).
One thing that you should know about all Hino Wataru-written Akatsuki Works VNs... in every one of them a version of Akaneko (the final heroine of this one) appears, with the same personality, similar habits, and the same voice actor (Akaneko, Eru from Hello, Lady, Yuki from Comyu). Similarly, there is always at least one 'straight-man' heroine who tends to prefer correctness over everything else (Iyo in Ruitomo, Saku in Hello, Lady, Benio in Comyu, etc)
I once read a crappy review that said this was a VN about friendship *spews laughter*. Sorry, but that was one reviewer who mistook one element of the story for the whole point of it. The real central theme of this VN is isolation, social ostracism, and moral relativity. Technically, all Akatsuki Works VNs indulge in moral relativity, so you can just ignore that one, since it is Hino Wataru's favorite dog to beat. The isolation and social ostracism elements are fairly obvious from the beginning. All the heroines and the protagonist are social outcasts by means of their curses. The protagonist is the most obvious example as it forces him to lie and distance others from himself, but others have their own issues. For instance, Rui's curse, the inability to make promises of any kind, is crippling in a modern world, where you have to be able to sign a contract just to find a place to live or 'promise' to be at work on time. To one extent or another, the others' curses hold them isolated and ostracized from society as well.
Tomo is driven by a strong desire to escape his curse, intensified as time goes on by his growing fondness for his fellow curse-bearers and the guilt for deceiving them. I honestly can't help but like Tomo... he is selfish enough to be human but selfless enough when it comes to his friends to give his all for them. A lot of people who hate Akihito from Comyu will probably find Tomo to be far more pleasant, as that other's less pleasant qualities are diluted and his more pleasant ones enhanced in Tomo. He lacks Akihito's female-directed philanthropic spirit, but he does have a strong generosity of spirit to him... without the somewhat indiscriminate sexual mores of Akihito.
One thing I think a lot of people who try to read this VN have trouble with, besides the somewhat complex turns of phrase that are endemic to all Hino Wataru works, is the way so much of the dialogue between the characters, even in the slice-of-life scenes, is... oblique, requiring reading between the lines to grasp the full content. A lot of this comes from the curses, both referencing them, avoiding referencing them, and avoiding activating them. However, at least some of it is simply an extension of how relatively easy with one another the group is in normal situations, despite their often conflicting personalities. These conversations are easier to follow if you get the characters' personalities and roles in the group, but if you have trouble with that kind of thing, you'll probably be left behind at times.
Ruitomo has a definite playing order, with you being forced to play Rui's path before reading Atori's, Koyori's, and Iyo's (preferably in that order, or at least with Iyo as the last of the second three) and completing those four opening up Akaneko's path (the true path). I'll be blunt when I say that grasping the whole of the story without reading the first four paths is virtually impossible, so 'cheaters' who use 100% save files to get the true end first will just be screwing themselves over, lol.
This VN's story starts out in the middle... one of Hino Wataru's questionable habits. For better or worse, he likes to thrust you into the middle of the prologue before dragging you back to the beginning of it, and Ruitomo is the VN that suffers the most for it, in my experience. To be blunt, it is really hard to figure out what is going on during the first scene, so about one-third of the people I've talked to that tried to read this VN dropped it or stalled within the first quarter of the prologue. However, as the VN goes on, its characters, their personalities, their troubles, and their experiences grow on you rapidly, until you can't help but be entranced.
One thing that I was seriously impressed about, coming back to play this through a second time, was the meticulous way Hino Wataru designed the common route and the paths... he made sure everything was perfectly consistent as a whole, even if it didn't seem like it at first, and every single scene had at least some meaning in the greater context of the game as a whole, even if it might have seemed irrelevant or secondary in the path in which it existed. This shows off the rather impressive capacity for 'management of the details' that a very few writers in the VN world manage to display. There is a good reason why creating a large-scale story-focused VN (whether chuunige or not) tends to be rare. Most writers simply can't manage to maintain the internal consistency that you see in a VN like this one.
Overall, I was actually more impressed this time around than I was the first time I played this. It is called a kamige for a reason... brilliance of design, emotional stimulation, intellectual stimulation, etc. The fact is that VNs on this level are exceedingly rare and always worth the price I pay to buy them.
PS: I'll play the fandisc soon, though I might or might not manage to replay it before I begin playing this month's releases.
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.
I have to say I apologize to those who voted for Minikui Mojika no Ko... my original instinct not to play this game at all was correct. This game feels too much like a dark rape nukige to allow me to play it anymore, so I had to drop it. Not to mention that I hate all the characters and think they should all be tossed into the nearest garbage dump.
Umm... I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not terribly fond of Astronauts' irregular ventures off into the lands of dark fantasy gameplay hybrids, and as a result, I chose not to play this one when it came out. My experiences with the original Demonion, which, while the story was decent, was incredibly tedious when it came to the gameplay, made me not want to have anything to do with this game.
I won't say that this game surprised me... the story is straightforward Astronauts-style (lots of sex, immorality, and violence) combined with the classic dungeon-crawler setup. I'll be straight with you... I think the resurrection of dungeon-crawlers is what killed the classic jrpg, so I automatically subtract points from any game that looks like or acts like a dungeon-crawler. I even felt the same way about Persona 3 and Persona 4, which tells you just how much I dislike the genre.
Why? Because I've never seen the point in a story centering around diving into the same dungeon over and over. Adventuring doesn't seem like fun to me (I got over that phase in middle school), and the stories tend to be ridiculously easy to predict, even for Japanese games.
Regalias focuses on the city of Ishgalia, which was built over a labyrinth made from the ruins of a floating magic city that fell to the ground a few centuries back. The former mercenary, Orias, enters the city with the hope of finding the secrets to his past deep within the labyrinth.
Now, let's set aside the craziness of monsters infinitely welling up from the depths of a ruined magical city. If I were to complain about that particular tired trope, we'd be here all day. I'll even set aside my need to question how the city wouldn't have been completely explored after decades of people going into its depths.
What I won't do is gloss over the way I began to feel by the end... which was tired of finding my way through a bland set of dungeons. I honestly recommend that this game be played in stages, as the dungeon is exhausting and the story sections are not quite frequent enough to break the experience off into manageable bits. Essentially, you form a party of five characters (from an eventual roster of nine), and the battles are classic-style turn-based, which most enemies and your characters having one action per turn (the exception being certain 'special' enemies and bosses). On normal, the beginning of the game was the single hardest part of the entire thing. For some reason, the special enemies early on can frequently one-shot you even if you are overleveled for the part of the dungeon you are in, which is ridiculous. Since the only resurrection option early on is to return to town, this is frustrating and irritating, since it isn't always possible to avoid the enemy.
On the other hand, in the late game, you'll most likely be faced with a distinct lack of challenges... or at least, I was. I had to go back to town every once in a while when I ran out of mp, but I rarely died or even had a character killed after the fourth chapter (there are ten, including the final one). Part of that is that Orias and Shizuku are overpowered when using the double-sword passive skill (believe me, this is great for both normal enemies and bosses). The other part of it was that I had the range of skills I needed to wipe out enemy parties in a single turn.
One thing I seriously hated about this game was the way it essentially forces to stick with your original party... because the other four girls are significantly less capable than the first four to join the party. Dora is almost as capable as Edna as a mage, but Nemu is half-assed (they obviously couldn't decide whether to make her a true attack mage or a healer... and it shows). The less said about Meriel and Zenobia, the better (think, 'magician who couldn't kill a fly' and 'swordswoman with a ridiculous number of support magic that verges on being useless late-game).
The characters in this game are actually pretty good... though you spend an inordinate amount of time with them naked (five or more non-rape h-scenes for all the female characters except Fortuna and Zenobia). They all have realistic motivations for their actions and background to explain their personalities... which isn't surprising from the company that produced Erect! which is notable for being my favorite borderline nukige in existence.
Story-wise... it is fairly predictable. Honestly, the presentation isn't bad... in fact, it is good. However, I found the lateness of certain revelations to be irritating (since they weren't really revelations by the time they came out and said them outright), and I found the antagonists less than inspiring...
The end of the main story was actually pretty decent, and a good happy ending overall. There are also plenty of post-game events for the 'finish everything' freaks, including hints at what the characters might do afterward. However, I was disappointed there wasn't a final epilogue...
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.
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.
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.
First, Smee is one of the few companies I've never bothered with in the past. There were a number of reasons, but it all came down to one issue in the end... I don't like VNs where you name the protagonist. Naming the protagonist inevitably means the protagonist is a shallow cipher/non-person whose personality and characterization can be changed to fit which heroine he is with. As such, I tend to avoid games where it is possible to do so.
HaremKingdom was an exception for two reasons... one, I like harem games... and the second reason is that I love isekai (no matter how bad it is). In this case, the protagonist is summoned to a kingdom in another world, where he is informed that he is the last member of the royal family and has to form a harem or he'll die. Now, this 'sex under the necessity' (once a vndb tag, don't know if it still is) setting would normally have put me off... but instead of jumping on it, the protagonist is scared to death of the idea (he has trouble talking to women). This kept my interest past the point where I usually would have dropped the game... and I'm glad it did.
The major draws of this game are the unrelenting humor (it is a constant rain of jokes of various sorts, though usually dirty), mild romance, and the H, which is frequently hot. The heroines are varied (the cool and collected Premier of the kingdom, Marue; the shy and defensive slave girl, Kiki; the manipulative merchant noble's daughter, Charlotte; the innocent but mischievous princess Sophia; and the osananajimi who knows everything about the protagonist, Hikari) and interesting enough to wet the appetite of your average harem-loving otaku, and they actually manage to grow to a degree after getting close to the protagonist.
The game's main peculiarity is how it handles routes... instead of having pure heroine routes, you instead choose what type of harem you want to create (each has a heroine who suggested it and serves as the primary for the path) and things proceed from there.
This is where the typical 'personality alteration' of a nameable protagonist comes in... but it is oddly not harmful in this case, since pretense at storytelling is fairly limited here. Yes, there is a bit of story to tell, but it isn't that important. What stands out more is the sheer hilarity of what I experienced in the two paths I went through. For the first time in a while, I couldn't restrain my need to laugh hysterically until tears and snot were running down my face... and that alone is a good enough reason to play this game... or at least, that is how I feel.
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.
I will say it, yes, games with trap protagonists are one of my secret pleasures. While there are numerous types of this particular niche in VNs, and there are a disproportionate number of this type of game compared to ten years ago, there are some rules shared by all the greats that I thought I'd put out there.
1. A good trap protagonist is a voiced protagonist. Most trap protagonists are voiced. There are a number of reasons for this, but, regardless of the reason, almost all the 'good' trap protagonist are voiced. There are exceptions (early on) or ones where the voice was added on later (Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou), but they are just that, exceptions.
2. The protagonist has some kind of spectacularly high level skill or attractive point. This really is universal. In some cases it is housework (protagonist in Otome no Sahou) and in others it is physical prowess, force of personality, or artistic talent. However, regardless of what it is, no good trap protagonist is devoid of such skills.
3. There is at least one 'ojousama' heroine. While this is not universal, given the nature of this type of game and the fact that most of the schools they 'sneak into' are girls' schools, this is inevitable. Girls schools, even in Japan, are private institutions, meaning there is inevitably (or so says the kami of eroge) going to be at least one sheltered girl that comes from wealth.
4. There will be at least some drama when the protagonist is 'revealed' to the heroines. Easy transitions make for bad games. All the heroines merely accepting it as if it doesn't matter at all means that there was no weight at all to the protagonist's earlier whini- *coughs* ahem, worrying about being revealed. While this drama might be comedic, tense, or sexual in nature, it should not go without note.
5. At some point, most such protagonists will begin to react naturally as their female persona without realizing it (leading to many fans simply forgetting their original names, such as in the case with Mizuki in Koi no Canvas).
There are two major types of this type of protagonist. One is the 'forceful personality' type, and the other is the 'submissive personality' type. An example of the former would be Ojousama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu, and an example of the latter would be Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas. In the former case, the protagonist has a clear objective in infiltrating the girls' school, and he uses his personal abilities ruthlessly and aggressively for that purpose. In the latter case, the protagonist loses himself (herself as I sometimes think of Mizuki) in his role so completely that he often catches himself reacting entirely as a female.
I like both types, and I find this particular niche tends to produce a disproportionate amount of good games compared to the rest of the VN world... but then, I'm biased.
Edit: As a side note, for those who are interested in recs involving this kind of thing, there are no truly transgender protagonists in any of these games, as far as I know. There are a few who get addicted to dressing in drag or who live as a woman of their own free will even after the story is over depending on the route (Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou), but as far as I know none of these have been confirmed as actually being transgender. That's not to say that none of the writers/makers have intended any of these protagonists to be such (it is a distinct possibility), but so far, in the games I've played/read, none of them have actually confirmed themselves as being such, even in their own thoughts (though again, some have edged around it or verged upon it).
Edit2: Examples of this type of game that have either a submissive or a dominant protagonist that also are top tier.
Submissive (outside of H, since most H scenes in male-oriented VNs are inevitably bed-yakuza affairs)
Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou
Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas
Otome Domain
Dominant
Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide
Ojousama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu
Otoboku (despite appearances, all three games)
Koi Suru Otome to Shugo no Tate (though this one can be borderline at times)
Hmm... there were fewer great ones than I thought... the barrage of endless Ensemble games makes me forget sometimes, lol.
