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Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life manga review (complete at 24 chapters)

It’s always a pity when a quality manga, or at least one with a very promising premise, gets cancelled after a few chapters while utter dreck runs indefinitely. Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life wasn’t anything ground-breaking or unprecedented, but it was relaxing and inoffensive with a hero you wanted to root for, so I was sad that it got cancelled after only 24 chapters.

Summary: Kento Yamazaki, an ordinary boy who isn’t particularly special, realizes after a while that he is reincarnated into a different world holding a tablet?! He acquires housework skills as he makes delicious food and cleans up in a short time by using apps on his tablet. He finds himself in the adventurer’s party, called “Daybreak”, in which unique characters, such as a beautiful elf and a cute boy with glasses, who does not talk much, get together. Time to start his carefree life in a different world, tablet in hand!

So that’s the story in a nutshell. The adventurer’s party actually comes later in the story, after Kento has spent time working for another party which ends up kicking up out for costing it later. In typical “kicked out by the hero’s party” manga style, the reader expects them to regret it later. However he later meets members of that party and it turns out they split up over the issue and that many of the members had no problem with him and even liked him, so that was a bit of a surprise.

Apart from that slight twist, Cheating My Way follows the typical “wimpy Japanese isekai protagonist” trope almost exactly. Kento starts out at the lowest rank in the guild, takes on odd jobs to make ends meet, makes powerful friends who train him little by little and eventually gets strong enough to beat monsters with a little help from others.

The titular tablet is helpful but not as overpowered and almighty as in In Another World with My Smartphone. It contains functions like a camera, which helps him with identifying things, and a shop where he can buy items from Earth. Oddly enough, anything from Earth is much more efficient and powerful than what is already available in the world.

Kento uses this to provide cleaning and mending services, become a great cook by using ingredients and spices from Japan, and even become an apothecary by substituting Earth ingredients for local ones. This later allows him to save the life of Aggis’ wife, Aggis being the guy who helped him out when he suddenly arrived in another world with only the tablet and the clothes on his back. And so on, and so forth.

There isn’t much more to Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life than that. It’s the story of a guy slowly gaining confidence and finding his way in the world. Honestly I enjoyed reading it, and Kento and all his companions were really nice. He also somehow becames a tamer and gets some cute pets. His progress wasn’t too fast, but it wasn’t slow either, so he was on his way to being really strong eventually but not so soon that it’s not believeable. Best of all there was no harem, or even romance! Just pure(ish) cozy cooking, crafting, taming and leveling up.

Unfortunately I think that lack of speed was what sealed its fate. It just wasn’t exciting enough. It doesn’t do anything that other isekai manga haven’t done before (the tablet is just another cheat item or skill). There was also no deeper story behind his migration to the other world, his purpose there, no greater worldview, no crisis, no other. Additionally, like it or not, romantic options in an isekai manga draws readers in, so I’m sure lacking those made the series less compelling to many. And so one thing led to another and Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life got cancelled after a mere 24 chapters.

Still it was 24 chapters of cozy fun, it gives enough of a taste of the series so you can imagine what happens next or read the novel if it exists. If you try it and like it, also try The Great Cleric by Broccoli Lion. It has a lot of similarities in art style, with a similarly wimpy hero who is protected and trained by more powerful characters, but it is much better because it has a much stronger world view. Give it a try.

The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious manga review (ending spoilers included)

Japanese authors may not have invented the isekai “going to another world” genre, but they sure come up with the most interesting spins. The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious (Kono Yusha ga Ore Tueee Kuseni Shincho Sugiru) by Light Tuchihi takes the usual trope of a summoned hero saving the world, then cranks it up to eleven by giving him a hilariously pragmatic and cautious personality. It’s extremely refreshing, at least at the start. It’s also short and complete at six volumes, so even though the final twists were garbage (more on that later), it’s still worth a read for what came before.

Summary: Can a neurotically overprepared hero and an underachieving goddess save a parallel world together?! When the inexperienced goddess Ristarte is tasked with the daunting mission of saving the S-ranked world Gaeabrande, she thinks that summoning Seiya Ryuuguuin, a Japanese teenager who has utterly broken stats as a Hero, will finally turn her luck around. Seiya’s abilities (and good looks) are all she has ever dreamed of, but she soon wishes she had read the fine print about his “overly cautious” personality… (Yen Press)

It’s a fine comedy series – not ROFL hilarious but very amusing as we follow Seiya’s efforts to always be perfectly prepared in any scenario. I read the first three volumes, took a long break and read the final three, so I don’t remember every single antic, but there were things like buying tons of potions, suspecting every single person of being an enemy, insisting on being healed for the tiniest scratch, and escaping from battle to train more if he felt he couldn’t win.

Page from the manga The Hero is Overly Cautious — 999,999,997… 999,999,998… 999,999,999…

His antics are set off against the naive, noisy and largely useless goddess Ristarte (Rista for short) who exists mainly for fanservice, to be the butt-monkey of jokes (think Aqua from Konosuba), and to play the straight man to Seiya’s deadpan but crazy antics. Since she gets the most screentime, and it can be argued that she’s the actual main character, whether you enjoy The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious or not will depend largely on how much you can stomach Rista. Personally I found her a wee bit irritating, but the series didn’t last long enough for her to truly grate on me.

There are some other characters here and there as well, but most of them, especially the enemies, are fully forgettable. The vaunted Demon Lord only gets a few pages in the end, actually.

As the series goes on, it turns out that Seiya is right to be cautious, as the enemy is just that wily and dangerous (corrupting his allies, destroying the weapon and armor he needs, etc.). It’s a refreshing difference from those isekai series where the hero is just overpowered and there’s nothing the enemies can do. If Seiya is overpowered and overly cautious, so are they. It’s a constant game of oneupmanship, and it is interesting to see Seiya being proved right time and time again.

Unfortunately the series begins to fall apart towards the end in two ways. Firstly, the initial “normal” fanservice begins to slip into vulgar, softcore hentai of the kind I can’t even screenshot here. The scenes with Valkyria and Mitis in particular were completely gratuitious and added nothing to the series.

Secondly, and more importantly, the author tried to give a logical explanation for Seiya’s overly cautious traits. Major spoiler: he had actually been summoned before in the past but failed to save the world. At the time he was the usually genki hero who relied solely on his talent and the power of friendship. As a result of his lack of preparation, his whole party was wiped out and he died. When he was summoned again, his memories were gone, but vestiges of the traumatic experience had manifested in the form of his “Overly Cautious” trait.

To be honest, I really didn’t need a logical explation of his personality. It’s a comedy series, and I was okay with him just being that way naturally. And I liked Seiya being “a hero with actual common sense for once” instead of “a hero with common sense only because of trauma.” But if an explanation had to be given, then it’s as good a one as any, so I took that in stride.

What I had an issue with was Ristarte’s backstory. Turns out she was Seiya’s companion and lover in the past world. EWWWW. As the volumes wore on, she had engaged in increasingly explicit and inappropriate fantasies about Seiya while he treated her as a portable healing herb. Then suddenly the series claims, “Oh, they cared about each other all along because of the past”? Yeah no, I wouldn’t buy that for a dollar.

You sign up for a comedy isekai and then the author decides to change the genre tags to “romance, reincarnation, tragedy” at the last minute. It’s their right to do so, but I don’t have to like it. If the The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious hadn’t ended shortly afterwards (was it cancelled? It was popular enough to get an anime) I would have dropped it. But since it’s only 6 volumes/36 chapters, it makes a good short read and ends before it would have gotten really bad, so I finished it, and I recommend it with some caveats. Give it a try if you get the chance.

Author of My Own Destiny manhwa review – Not my taste (spoilers up to chapter 54)

I don’t really get why, but I find it a bit icky when an author is reincarnated inside his/her own novel and starts getting romantic with the characters. Kind of like dating your own kid, you know? There are possible workarounds, like having the novel be a subconscious memory, but for the most part I’m iffy on it.

Which is why I wasn’t expecting much when I started the Korean romance/fantasy manhwa Author of My Own Destiny (also spoilerfully fan-titled “I Became the Wife of the Male Lead”). I mainly picked it up for the nice cover art, and boy did it deliver. Everything else aside, the face and character of daddy Abel alone is worth the price of admission. 10/10, would daddy again.

Summary (official):

Evil mage Fiona Green was destined to die at the hands of the protagonist couple in “The Emperor and the Saint.” That is, until the story’s author became Fiona herself! Though mistreated, cast out by her pompous family and thrown into the battle at Heylon, Fiona is determined to use her magic for good. But things take a rather unexpected turn when she rescues the male lead, Siegren, turning him from foe to friend… Will she successfully rewrite her fate without changing the story’s happy ending?

Apart from Abel, the male lead is also good-looking in a generic black-haired kind of way. Come to think of it, has there ever been a manhwa with varicolored hair where the black-haired male did NOT get the girl? Seems like black (or darkest color available) always wins and the other colors are just there to make him more “dramatic” or whatever. Random thought that just occurred to me…

Back on topic, the art is nice, and even the side characters are gorgeous, though heroine Fiona’s kiddy design is a bit… eh. However the plot and its development is unfocused and generic. Fiona and Siegren quickly bond, then just as quickly they grow up and the action moves to the capital. And then the series starts going round in circles with no clear trajectory.

Since Siegren is the bastard child of the emperor and the crown prince is an unpopular, perverted idiot, you would expect some effort to go into depicting court intrigue, key political figures and other events, but no. Siegren seems to have no interest in the throne, politics, business, nothing. He’s just a pretty face who doesn’t have a thought in his brain besides Fiona. Who also doesn’t have much in her brain besides living day to day. Not that I blame them, because the opponents are weak and pathetic and don’t make any serious efforts to dispose of them. Why wouldn’t you chill out and go to balls every day with “oppposition” like that?

However while there is almost no progress on the political side in the 54 chapters I read, there IS progress on the romantic front. This isn’t one of those series where it takes 100 chapters for the female character to realize the male lead likes her, and another 50 for her to reciprocate. Siegren asks Fiona out shortly after they arrive in the capital, she fully understands his intentions, and she accepts his confession!

But! Yeah, there’s a but. You know it couldn’t be that easy. Fiona may have accepted the confession, but she doesn’t love him in the romantic sense. She’s attracted to him on a physical level, but she’s doing that “protecting my heart so it won’t hurt when I’m dumped” and “acting as a placeholder until he falls in love with the real female lead” thing that Korean isekai manhwa overwhelmingly favor. Sooo annoying. Speaking of the real female lead, Eunice, she appeared once and never again. This is gonna be a long, looong manhwa.

So the story isn’t really going anywhere or making much sense beyond Fiona trying to navigate her feelings for Siegren while making sure she doesn’t have to die for the story to end happily. Which is pretty much what the summary says, so it’s almost like the past 54 chapters were unnecessary.

That said, there is one nice thing about Author of My Own Destiny: the female character is actually strong. I mean in terms of holding her own in a fight. You know how it is with romance series. No matter how much of a badass special-ops grizzled veteran the heroine is, she will almost always be much weaker than the male lead and will need saving in every action scene, because how dare she try to do anything ‘manly’ without being a man, right? *rolls eyes*

Well none of that in Author of My Own Destiny, at least not yet. The other main characters are no slouches either, but Fiona gets plenty of action scenes, takes charge and directs people in fighting off attackers and takes the fight to the source where necessary. She’s not afraid to use dirty tactics like torture or intimdation either. Props to her.

That said, this isn’t enough to make up for the meh-ness of rest of the series. The author put Abel on a bus because his awesomness was overshadowing Siegren and Fiona’s, so I can’t even see my favorite character any more. Instead I have to read chapters full of Fiona/Siegren making out and leaving hickeys on each other (just get married already!) while the most boring subplot ever takes place.

Normally I’d say I’ll check back in a year, but in this case, eh, I think I’m done. I have way too much stuff to read and I’m trying to simplify in 2023. For fans of nice art who want to stan Abel only!

Kill the Hero manhwa review (up to chapter 66)

Kill the Hero by D-Dart is a very generic “came back for revenge” Korean series. I read up to chapter 50 or so, forgot all about it and then came back and read up to the latest chapter. And now I’m going to forget all about it again until whenever. It’s that kind of series: fun, but forgettable.

Summary:

One day, the world transformed into a game. ‘Dungeons’ and ‘monsters’ emerged in the middle of cities, and ‘players’ who had received the gods’ authority appeared. Se-jun Lee, the guildmaster of the Messiah Guild that would bring salvation to the world became my comrade. Then he killed me. …or so I thought.

The announcement I heard next to my ear the moment I died. [Starting the game.] I returned to the past, back when I still hadn’t awakened as a player. And this time, It’s my turn…… To ‘hunt’ him.

It’s one of the oldest tropes in the book to have the main character and his best friend fall out. Best friend betrays him, maybe joins the bad guys, maybe kills some other good guys. Now the main character has to track him down and take him out. Cue bad-ass 80s action movie music.

The sole twist in Kill the Hero (though it’s been done before especially in Chinese web novels) is that the main character (Kim Woo-Jin) went back into the past before he met the “hero” and now he’s going around gathering all the cool stuff that will help him and beating all the troublesome guys that could help the hero, all gearing up to a grand and final confrontation that hasn’t happened in 66 chapters yet. Right now the hero has no clue that Kim Woo-Jin exists or that he’s being revenged on, but he’ll totally understand one day. Then he’ll be like… “Who?”

What’s not so special about Kill the Hero is… it’s so bland! Enter dungeon, assassinate guys, enter dungeon, assassinate guys, get cool artifact. We don’t have sight of Kim Woo-Jin’s overall goal or trajectory, so it’s hard to follow along in his ambitions. A chapter suddenly starts, he suddenly remembers some dungeon, we suddenly go in, 10 chapters pass, new artifact, on to the next arc. He doesn’t even have any friends or family to help us get under his skin or understand his motivation besides “Revenge! Rawwrrr!”

It’s doubly frustrating because the battles are actually interesting. Kim Woo-Jin usually has some intricate plan to take down his enemy together with his allies. It’s just that outside the battles, we’re never sure what he’s trying to do or why. He still has an intricate plan but we’re not privy to it so we’re just going along for the ride and the cool, frequent battles.

And actually I only think he has a plan, because in the most recent chapters he’s just been going with the flow and getting lucky breaks and items he didn’t know about in this past life. TBH I have no idea what he’s up to in the long run. It’s probably once of those series where the hero gets unnaturally lucky for hundreds of chapters in a row, the end.

This has the plus side, as I said, of making it a fun but forgettable series. Because there’s no grand overarching plot, you won’t miss anything by popping out for a few months then binging, then popping in again. And that’s why I plan to do now, so enough from me for one day.

A Returner’s Magic Should be Special… but it’s not (Korean webtoon review)

I had a conversation with someone a while ago where I likened “A Returner’s Magic Should be Special” to an airplane endlessly taxiing on the airport runway but never taking off. I said this when about 100 chapters were out. 58 chapters later and I still feel the same way. A Returner’s Magic Should be Special has a lot of potential to be an interesting series, but endless, draggy arcs and very slow progression towards the main point mean that it’s probably never going to fulfill that potential. The pacing is just too bad.

Summary

“Now that I’m back, I won’t allow my loved ones to die again!”

The Shadow Labyrinth – the most catastrophic existence humanity has faced in history. Desir Arman and six survivors attempt to clear the final level of the labyrinth but ultimately fail, and the world comes to an end.

However Desir is returned to the past, back to the time when he enrolled at the nation’s finest magic academy He is reunited with his precious friends, and is prepared to change the past to save the world and his loved ones…!

The good part of A Returner’s Magic Should be Special is that it has a nice team of main characters and a few memorable supports. The core team of Desir, Romantica, Pram and Adjest comes together quickly and has stayed together solidly through 160 chapters (as at time of writing). Pram is a shota who is not annoying. Adjest is an ice princess who is also not annoying. The story is not bogged by romantic subplots (!!). It’s bogged down by a lot of other things, but romance isn’t one of them… yet.

I also like the colorful, slightly goofy art style. The action is also easy to follow, though the battles can be interminable. So the art is nice, the characters are nice, the story is promising. Despite all that, the problems are so many with no solution in sight that it will probably take A Returner’s Magic should be Special another 160 chapters to unravel everything and finally start getting somewhere.

There are too many parties and characters that don’t get enough attention for us to care about, but they still show up here and there. Too many factions even in the real world, so I can’t keep track of all the kingdoms and different parties working together.
It’s natural that as a poor commoner Desir will have to spend some time building up enough influence to change the world, but it’s still a tedious process to read through. All that whining about discrimination between commoners and nobles, the tragic backstories, the comically evil noble villains who never amount to much, etc.
Desir’s time travel advantage is very quickly negated when a third-party called the Outsiders show up who didn’t’ appear in his last lifetime. So now instead of preparing for the Shadow Worlds like the premise suggests, almost all of the time in the real world in the series is spent on fighting the Outsiders, then, maaaaaybe one day, we’ll eventually possibly get closer to the secrets of the Shadow World invasion.
Even after 160+ chapters there is a lot left unexplained, with no sign that they will be explained any time soon. Things like the Shadow World which are a mystery in the series as well, but all things like Circle Magic and how exactly magic works. For a series called “A Returner’s Magic should be Special,” the author does precious little to explain the ins and outs of the magic system. What’s a first circle magician, second circle, what’s the difference, what is vision magic, what makes Desir so special that others can’t imitate him, what what what. So many questions.
Since we’re the good guys, we are automatically right, so there’s no need to try to understand the other party.
Because there are so many questions, it’s painful to have so many chapters wasted early on on petty academic squabbles, cheap discrimination plots, etc.
The arcs drag on way too long. Any arc where Desir and friends enter a Shadow World should be a cue for the reader to sign out for 30 chapters and come back when things pick up. Because there’s still no clear answer to the relevance of the shadow world or why they later posed a threat to the real world, everything that goes on right now in there is 90% filler which could be entirely removed for faster pacing. Maybe eventually, way down the line it will all make sense, but again it’s like I said. The series takes forever to get anywhere.
Speaking of forever, I hope you like long drawn-out battles against irrelevant enemies. Like most of chapter 160 was Adjest versus some random guy who was introduced two chapters ago, hyped and quickly disposed of. And then after battling another enemy for several chapters, only now is Desir Arman getting round to “part two” of the battle. Ridiculous.

TL;DR maybe one day it will be good, but for now A Returner’s Magic Should be Special is not special at all. It’s a long series of chapters, a lot of fillers, some charming characters and some intriguing ideas that are not explained. I kept reading because I liked the main party and their interactions, but that can only take you so far. It’s something I’ll have to come back to in about five years to see if/when it ended. Either that, or I’ll have to read the faster-paced novel so I can see things happen before I forget who did what or why. But really, it’s not worth my time when there are so many other faster, more tightly-plotted series out there.