Tag: isekai

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.

Farming Life in Another World manga review (read up to chapter 190)

I’ve been reading a lot of series since I last posted. It’s just too much work to update this blog with every little series. Farming Life in Another World isn’t a “little” series, though, since there are over 190 chapters out and counting. I started out reading just a little bit, yeah yeah, usual isekai harem shenanigans… and before I knew it I had read all 190 currently available, so I figure it has earned a short review at least.

Summary: After Hiraku dies of a serious illness, God brings him back to life, gives his health and youth back, and sends him to a fantasy world of his choice. In order to enjoy his second shot, God bestows upon him the almighty farming tool! Watch as Hiraku digs, chops, and plows in another world in this laidback farming fantasy!
That’s the general summary of the first volume, but very quickly Hiraku picks up a MASSIVE harem of beautiful elves, vampires and other assorted otherworld ladies. I’m talking dozens of women all lusting after him either to repopulate their race or just for the heck of it. Very quickly his biggest problem becomes how to get more men into the village to take some of the burden off him, though that plotline has been quietly ignored lately now that he has finally put the kibbosh on additional harem members. IIRC his current number of children stands at six, but it definitely won’t end there. Talk about playing out the otaku fantasy.
Personality-wise, Hiraku follows the usual isekai manga protagonist pattern – very wimpy and unable to say no to requests and orders from his girlfriends/wives/love interests/subordinates, but actually secretly strong and overpowered. It’s the same formula in other series like In Another World with My Smartphone and Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu, but even wimpier because they control him so extensively that for a long time the women won’t even let him step out of the village. And they design a bedroom with secret passages and a door that only locks from the outside so they can sleep with him whenever they want. This must be another otaku fantasy – being so irresitable to women that they won’t let you leave.
Everybody wants Hiraku
It does make sense on some level because Hiraku’s almighty cheat farming tool, which can transform into a hoe, shovel, spear, etc. as needed is the only thing that keeps their farming settlement going, so if anything happens to him, a ton of people will be up the creek with no paddle. Again, a lot of thought goes into trying to find ways to keep the village going even in his absence, since he is a human in the midst of long-lived races like dragons, etc.
Indeed, I would say that those moments of thought, planning and consideration are what makes Farming Life in Another World actually interesting to read. The women quickly blur into one and apart from a few prominent ones (Ru, Flora, Hakuren, Rusty, Tia, Anna), they are largely interchangeable in both design and personality. But it’s fun to see the village changing and growing at rapid speed, from a small hole in a tree to one large settlement and three small ones. They also make alliances and trade agreements with other countries/villages nearby, so there’s always a cast of new characters to meet and interact with.
Every once in a while the series gives an update on the map of the village and its environs so you’re not completely lost, but it can still get confusing once there are so many different parties and factors in place. I’m still not entirely clear on the inhabitants of Villages 1, 2 and 3, and I regularly get confused about who is who between the Demon King and his faction and the Dragon King and his faction because they are just so many. This is one of those series where you eventually check your brain in at the door and enjoy the cosy farm building without thinking too much about what’s going on. It would make a great farming simulation game, come to think of it.
Speaking of factions, I miss the early days of the series when the focus was more on the non-humanoid monsters like the Inferno Wolves and Demon Spiders and less on Hiraku’s ever-growing harem. That must be why I enjoy similar cosy farming series with fewer human characters, like Solo Farming in the Tower, which I will talk about another time. Humans/humanoids just complicate stuff.
Anyway, that’s Farming Life in Another World in nutshell: Hiraku farms, enlarges his network/village/harem, makes babies, occasionally fights an enemy, and every once in a while a long stretch of the series is devoted to a fighting tournament or other festival. The “farming” aspect gets toned down very quickly, but the manga remains a very comfy slice of life with safety, great food, warm company and no real drama or danger. I can see why it was popular enough to get an anime recently, where apparently they toned down the harem shenanigans. I’d say it’s worth a read if low-stakes farming is your thing and you don’t mind lots and lots and lots of characters.

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.

I Will Divorce my Tyrant husband (Korean manhwa) – Spoiler: no she won’t

This is a universal spoiler for Chinese/Korean romance series. The longer the heroine spends proclaiming that she’s going to divorce or break up with her horrible boyfriend/fiance/husband, the more inevitable it is that they will end up together in the end. And if the declaration is in the title, then they’re bound to live together happily ever after (see also: Divorce Me, Husband).

That being the case, the point of reading such series is not to find out “what” happens, but rather “why” and “how.” Why a divorce? Is the husband really so irredeemable or is it a misunderstanding? How will they overcome their differences and get back together? Those are the thoughts I had when I started reading “I Will Divorce My Tyrant Husband.”

Summary: I possessed the Empress in the romance novel. Isn’t that supposed to be good? But the problem is that this Empress is always pushed around by the deceitful Empress, beaten up by the Emperor, and she eventually died from an illness. However, unlike the original Empress, I cannot die in vain. I have to become a villain in order to divorce the tyrant husband.

Heroine Robelia is a woman from Korea who possessed an ill-fated Empress in a novel. However her husband (Alexsandro) is trash who has a favored concubine and treats the empress like dirt until she finally dies. In a twist, the concubine, Aisha, is also from Korea. Typical white lotus who cries at everything and tries to act innocent while causing trouble. She is so ineffectual and dumb at it that it’s pitiful to watch, though. You can’t really get mad at her like you could at Trashta in Remarried Empress, for example.

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Antarctica to sell you

Anyway, Robelia asks Alexsandro for a divorce, but he refuses and promises to give her anything she wants except a divorce. That doesn’t mean he’s sorry for neglecting and ignoring her or that he will necessarily treat her better going forward, though. He says so himself: he’s not sorry. Maybe one day he will be, but maybe not. And if she insists, he’ll apologize, but he won’t mean it. Again, he says it himself. He’s scum.

The rest of the series is consumed by Robelia trying to do mean and rebellious things to force Alexsandro to divorce her, while dodging the cutely pathetic schemes of Aisha and resisting Alexsandro’s attempts to get into her bed. Yes, he’s only interested in keeping her around, sleeping with her and having her manage the palace for him. Love…? He doesn’t love anyone except himself.

That makes it all the more painful when Robelia starts blushing and goes all heart-a-flutter whenever he kisses her hand or makes a suggestive comment. Girl, hold firm! He’s garbage! When garbage touches your hand, you don’t blush, you sanitize it! But no, it’s so obvious how this thing is going to go. Especially since Robelia is such a soft touch that she hasn’t done anything really bad to deserve a divorce. So basically she’s going to remain in this polygamous thing until Aisha messes up enough to be disposed of. Disgusting.

On the plus side, the character art in I Will Divorce my Tyrant Husband is gorgeous. I especially like Aisha’s flamboyant red hair and frequent outfit changes. This is how an empress should dress, not boring and dowdy like in 9/10 of other romance series. Everyone looks good, even– no, especially the scumbag jerk Alexsandro. And he knows it too, which is why every other shot of him features the biggest s**t-eating grin ever. So, so gross.

Alexandro the male lead from "I Wil Divorce My Tyrant Husband" Korean series
“I think I’m cute, I know I’m sexy”

TL;DR: I Will Divorce my Tyrant Husband is worth reading for the eye candy, and I quite like Robelia. But the male lead is just too filthy and hateful, so I’m not going to waste my mental powers on this series any more. (Psst: according to a spoiler I read, she does leave him briefly, but comes back right away because “he’s sad.”) Blergghh, yeah, I’m out.

Update on Divorce Me, Husband after a year (spoilers up to chapter 59)

I told you guys to remind me to check back in six weeks, but before I knew it a whole year had gone by. I recently started catching up on Divorce Me, Husband, or rather the much-better officially translated version, “Let’s Get a Divorce, Husband.” I like the fan title better, but everything else is superior in the official version.

So, how did things fare for Claude and Aila (Ayla in the fan translation)? Well, in terms of plot, the series is still rather mediocre and slow-moving even after 59 chapters. On the romance side, things are slightly better. First, and most importantly, Aila has decided to stay with Claude and to actively use her knowledge from the book to change his fate. Whoopee!

Secondly, Aila has realized that she is in love with Claude. I don’t know why, he’s only been very sweet and kind and protective and generous and respectful and caring, nothing more, right? But she doesn’t know if Claude loves her back. And actually, I don’t remember if he has said he does? He considers her precious, he wants to keep her by his side and protect her and all that, but does he actually love her or does he only fear losing her? And what was the real relationship between past Aila and past Claude?

Apart from the romance, there is some other stuff going on, quite slowly but still progressing. We have met the big bad of the series: surely the Emperor is going to be the one. Or possibly someone possessing or controlling him We’ve met Aila’s deadbeat father. We’ve discovered that the original hero, the second prince, is most likely just putting on an act and isn’t as lazy, rude and incompetent as he pretends to be. There are undercurrents in the royal family that require him to act out to survive.

Most importantly, Aila has become the owner of a sacred relic that insists it’s her duty to “restore order to the world.” She also met the “god” of their world, Lahas, who brought her to that world. In many isekai/transmigrated series, the heroine never finds out how she ended up in that world, so at least there’s a bit of closure on that score.

The story is that bad people are summoning demons into the world and creating rifts, so it’s Aila’s job to do something about it with the relic bracelet and its divine power. Simple enough in theory, though it’s not very convincing because Aila’s life has been so plush and shiny so far. Her life is pretty closeted, so she never goes around town or anywhere near the hoi polloi. It may very well be that the world at large is in turmoil and the people are suffering, but you wouldn’t know it so look at the glitzy lifestyles of the nobles. The biggest threat is directly from the Emperor himself, who doesn’t take kindly to people who will not follow his orders.

But anyway, stopping the bad guys is somehow linked to saving Claude’s life… and living happily ever after with him? Where did original Aila go? What happens once fake Aila/Baek Hayul completes her job? Why her? Lahas conveniently runs out of power before he can explain the most important bits, so we’ll just have to keep reading, haha.

That said, this is a pretty optimistic and positive kind of series, so it will all work out in the end. The only question is how? And when? Will I have to wait another year for closure? Hope not, but a year comes faster than you think, so I’ll just keep reading.

Before I end this update though, let me say one thing I absolutely LOVE about Let’s Get a Divorce Husband: Aila actually tells Claude whenever she notices or encounters anything shady. Not always immediately, but before very long she tells him what’s going on, they discuss it in a mature and reasoned way and come up with a plan together. None of this “Must be just my imagination” or “I don’t want to worry him” or “I can handle it by myself” nonsense that leads to so much unnecessary drama in romance series. Claude is also pretty open with her whenever she asks about things. That alone makes this series a breath of fresh air and makes me want to keep reading it.

Well, that was your yearly update on Let’s Get a Divorce, Husband. See you all in 2023, God willing!