Clephas

The grind obsession is a bit annoying at times. However, it becomes less tedious after he leaves the village.

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.

Irotoridori is the only surprise on that list... I'd more or less given up on seeing anymore Favorite games being translated. Hopefully, Sakura Moyu will come eventually (Favorite's best work).

*a member of the Untranslated Liberation Army aims his Nihongorifle at Zakamutt and fires off a round of depleted Japoranium into Zaka before jumping into the sea of information* On a more serious note, I'm glad to see this come out where people can read it other than us elitists.

(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.

Honestly, I think you'd be best off looking for it on amazon, since it came out when Jast USA was the only major localization company. https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Inferno-Artist-Not-Provided/dp/B00006JU7J/ref=sr_1_2?crid=290VN3B43AZ6K&keywords=phantom+of+inferno&qid=1652171878&sprefix=phantom+of+inferno%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-2

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.

Devils Devel Concept's protagonist is as far from a doormat as it is possible to get. It's not translated though. Ayakashibito is translated and the protagonist, while he tends to cry a lot more than most, is suitably strong-willed and is willing to do what is necessary based on the situation. Phantom of Inferno's protagonist is a brainwashed assassin. The only unfortunate aspect of the game is that the only English version is a weird DVD that plays like a video. On the upside, that version has all the lines - dialogue or not - voiced. Grisaia's Yuuji and the Phantom Trigger male protagonist. The downside to Yuuji is that he is mentally unstable, so he might irritate you depending on the path. Anything else I would suggest wouldn't be translated, unfortunately.

Japanese and Asian Mythology Waka-sama no Zasuru Sekai Kamisama no Shippo LoveKami (the original) Natsu no Owari no Nirvana Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary Madohi Shiroki no Kamikakushi Ayakashibito Western/Mixed Aoi Tori (Christian) Eushully's Dir Lifyna games (in a roundabout way, since most of Earth's gods are dead when the series begins) Tokyo Babel The Soleil series by Skyfish (primarily Norse, with some other pantheons mixed in and Cthulhu Mythos at times)

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.

On another note, I love wunderwaffels. I just also enjoy stories where there is no wunderwaffel. I'm an isekai junkie in general... though it is a huge letdown when a real action story that is serious has a protagonist who is too overpowered for there to even be a struggle or strife. It's one thing if he ends up that way towards the end (like with Hajime in Arifureta Shokugyou), but most attempts to do serious plots and action with an op protagonist tend to fall apart near the end. The exception is when the main antagonist is just as op as the protagonist.

He doesn't have a wunderwaffel... he is just ridiculously hard-working (training in his sleep, and twelve hours of training every day while awake).

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.

I tried reading monster tamer (the japanese version) but it was almost as depressing as Kuro no Maou, without the high-quality writing. My favorite western sci-fi is Honor Harrington. My top three series are 1. Honor Harrington by David Weber 2. Foreigner by CJ Cherryh 3. The Vorkosigan Saga by Stephen Brust

I won't spoil it, but Nanairo Reincarnation has revenge aspects on certain paths. Toshiro Kashima of Vermilion Bind of Blood was an avenger for a time and pursues it during some of the paths. Ryakudatsusha no In'en is a vengeance story. Ryuukishi Bloody Saga is his life afterward. Venus Blood Hollow is a vengeance story.

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.

Not really. It was originally a function for people who wrote their entries in bits and pieces over time as drafts to use. It wasn't meant for bumping like this. I only know about it because I used to post blogs so often, and I had to use it when I fell asleep before I could finish an entry. I don't think I would even see a reason to use this function, since it makes more sense just to write a whole knew post instead of bumping an old one.

I did, I just never did it.

No. I believe there used to be a project, but it has probably fallen apart, as there is no entry on vndb for it anymore.