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My Fantastic Chef Wife – Not fantastic at all! (Chinese web novel review)

Just like Japanese isekai series often have the hero winning the natives over with superior Japanese food, Chinese time travel/other world romance series often have the heroine cooking her way to riches and/or her man’s heart. My Fantastic Chef Wife by Di Qiu is just one of many in the cooking isekai genre and doesn’t do much to stand out. However the fact that it had over 180 chapters translated made me try it in hopes of getting a long and satisfying read out of it. Rapey start aside, it could have been really good if it had wrapped up early. As it is… well, I will explain in a bit, but first the usual blurb:

Summary (from Flying Lines):

The five-star chef unexpectedly caught up with the debris flow… When she woke up again, she found herself become a peasant’s wife… Aunts constantly came to bully her families, and there were crazy relatives seeking troubles. Did they really think her strong husband was just a decoration or something?

Her “decorative” husband: “when we get everything done, how will my fantastic chef wife thank me?” “Braised chicken, stewed eel, sesame butter roll, fried meat with fermented bean curd, roasted pheasant…just name it!”

He gave her a smirk and said, “Tonight, I want something different…”

Content warning: As I said, like 80% of Chinese “romance” manhua, it starts with a rape. Worse than that, it starts with the original body of the MC Ye Xiaoxian dying of a drug overdose after being drugged with a pig aphrodisiac by her mother-in-law. I think it’s the novelist’s way of weeding out intelligent and conscientious readers. “Can you make it past this hurdle? Then welcome to the show.” Check your brains out at the door and dive in.

The male lead Xiao Baoshan was also drugged by his mother and thus was a rape victim as well. And he feels much worse about it than Ye Xiaoxian does. That’s the reason I gave this series a pass and decided to keep reading. If he had turned out to be one of those creepy, abusive “You are now my woman” kind of guys, I would have high-tailed it out of there. For her part, Xiaoxian just gets up the next day, dusts herself off, says she understands why the mother-in-law drugged them (?!). Then presto, the story moves on.

In fact Xiaoxian doesn’t even understand why Xiao Baoshan feels guilty and uncomfortable about the whole incident. Even though it’s normal for him to feel bad, seeing as he was DRUGGED BY HIS OWN MOTHER and ended up sleeping with the woman who was originally supposed to be his sister-in-law before his brother died. It’s a really weird and unnatural situation, but if you’ve made it past chapter 2 then you already left common sense behind, so keep moving! Full speed ahead!

First the good parts of My Fantastic Chef Wife

-Once you get past the first two chapters, there’s not much objectionable content. Just FYI.

-The series is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s about a chef and she’s fantastic at what she does. You will see all kinds of people totally bowled over by her fantastic cooking skills, and there are a lot of different foods cooked in almost every chapter early on. Later on she trains others to cook her dishes and innovates less because she has a busy business, but she still cooks often.

-The MC and her family are very hardworking and entrepreneurial. They wake up early to sell food in town, try new ideas, take advantage of gaps in the market, etc. The story is a bit idealistic and there’s a lot of luck involved, but eventually they move from a small roadside stall to their own little restaurant in town.

-Ye Xiaoxian is pretty and talented, but not a complete Mary Sue. Not everyone loves her, not every idea she has is successful. It’s plain that she’s good at cooking and has a decent head for business, but is bad at personal relationships. She lets things slide when she shouldn’t, doesn’t pay enough attention to potential danger and isn’t diplomatic when she should be. Her willful ignorance about how business and bureaucracy works later leads to disaster.

-Unlike most “face-slapping” novels of this sort, her extended family is not that bad. They’re greedy, selfish and stupid, but not actually evil. That leaves room for future reconciliation. While they never become very close, they do eventually develop a mutually respectful and even helpful relationship. Special props go to the mother-in-law Li Hongmei, who is Xiaoxian’s biggest supporter despite being her straight up murderer. She’s also one of the smartest, kindest and most perceptive characters in the book. My Fantastic Chef Wife is weird like that.

-The male lead Xiao Baoshan is a very decent sort who is much more concerned for Ye Xiaoxian’s comfort than she is for his or even her own. He’s neither overly pushy nor overly distant, doesn’t interfere in her business but doesn’t ignore her when she needs help. While he’s no romantic, he still does his best to do what he thinks Xiaoxian will like. This makes it all the sadder to read when she pushes him away and gives all kinds of confusing signals early on. Just talk to the man, woman!

Then the bad parts that made me stop reading (MAJOR SPOILERS)

🚩A hard reset of almost all progress is going to occur around the chapter 180 mark. Due to the combination of a corrupt official, an evil business rival, Baoshan’s own dark past and a looming war, Ye Xiaoxian is separated from her husband and loses her restaurant, her property and her reputation as a good, safe cook.

-This wouldn’t be annoying if it had happened very early, but to hit the reset button after so many chapters of watching Xiaoxian struggle from scratch and build her relationships, that’s just too much. I went and checked to see how many chapters the series has and it turns out there are over 450 out now! In other words, a story which could have been very nicely wrapped up in 200 chapters is being artificially restarted with more drama thrown in just to keep us reading. NO WAY.

Btw, thanks to My Fantastic Chef Wife, now I always check the chapter count of a series before starting. If it’s over 500 chapters and not fully translated, sorry, not reading.

-Since the title has “Wife” in it, you might expect a lot of romance, but you won’t get much. Early on Baoshan is too shy and uncomfortable, then once he warms up to the idea, Xiaoxian is too tsundere. She knows he’s shy and not smart about these things, but she still acts like a kid around him. If he pays attention to someone else, she gets jealous and snippy. If he tries to get affectionate, she finds him clingy and annoying. He runs, she pulls, he comes closer, she pushes him away. The poor man doesn’t know what to do. The reader doesn’t know what she wants. Even she doesn’t know what she wants.

Eventually, and it takes a while but eventually they work through their misunderstandings. They find their way into each others’ hearts (and beds) and things seem to be going well. Then the author forces the reset. Baoshan has to run away and leaves Xiaoxian a divorce note so his enemies won’t bother her. And instead of understanding his intentions, Xiaoxian gets mad and upset and says she doesn’t want anything to do with him any more. Which means we’re going to have to endure another 100-200 chapters before they meet again, and another 100-200 till they work things out, and so on. NO WAY.

-While it can’t be helped due to the way the story plays out, it is clear that as the series progresses there will be much less cooking and much more drama, war, political intrigue, etc. If that’s your kind of thing, sure. But if you just wanted to read a simple countryside romance with some cooking and business – like the series originally promised – then you’re outta luck.

And so for all these reasons, I decided to quit reading My Fantastic Chef Wife. The main character seems to have a screw loose with how quickly she jumps to conclusions, but that’s how she has been since the first chapter so that much would have been bearable.

The bigger problem was the bait-and-switch the author pulled. It’s like getting offered a steak, digging in, and having the plate snatched away and replaced with a salad. Nothing against salad, but that’s not what I ordered. If you give me 180 chapters of the cooking romance you promised and then expect me to read another 250+ chapters of political drama then no, I’m walking away.

TL;DR

Read My Fantastic Chef Wife if you’re looking for a rather frustrating experience (here’s a link to the series btw). Things take a while to go well, then when they do, reset! Back to square one. If you like slow buildups and many challenges in the way of a romance, go for it. Me, I’m out!

Isekai de “Kuro no Iyashi Te” tte Yobarete Imasu review (complete at 49 chapters)

Isekai de “Kuro no Iyashi Te” tte Yobarete Imasu reveals one of the biggest flaws of Japanese isekai manga: they take too long to complete! This is a simple story of a girl who goes to another world, finds out she has special powers and falls in love with the lovable but slightly crazy male lead. It’s the same as hundreds of other series in the genre, but it took almost five years to tell because of the monthly release schedule of isekai manga. By the end, I honestly didn’t care that much any more.

Summary: One day, 22-year-old Kanzaki Misuzu is suddenly transported to a strange world. Based on the pop-up screens she can access, it seems she’s entered some kind of RPG as a magic user! Luckily, she can use the gaming skills she acquired as an otaku to make her way in this new world. But before she knows it, people start calling her “the Black Healer”!! (from mangakakalot)

In short, the heroine is reincarnated as a healer in another world. The world is full of cute guys, but naturally she will end up dating Noche, the handsomest and most powerful and craziest. Nothing but the best for our baby girl.

Kuro no Iyashi blah blah (the long title just means “In another world I am called the Black Healer”) has some decent background explanation, i.e. an explanation of why things work the way they do, and how Reene/Misuzu (she goes by an alias for reasons I can’t remember) got there. And even why she and the male lead are drawn to each other, which is often lacking in a lot of series. The explanation is “it’s magic, and that’s just the way the world works” but at least it’s an explanation. Their chemistry isn’t the best either, but he’s decent and treats her well, and after reading one too many crazy Korean and Chinese “evil prince/duke/CEO” series, this is amazing.

As a bonus, Reene doesn’t immediately fall head over heels in love with Noche, and she agonizes for a long time about whether to go back to Earth right away or not. Even though we know what she’s going to choose ultimately, it’s still nice to see some wavering, versus the usual trope where the character forgets all about her home world once she spots a bishie. On top of all that, there’s a super-happy development where she will eventually get to go back to her world once she’s done with living in the other world. Nice.

Other pluses: the art is nice and easy to follow, Noel the demon pup is adorable even though he doesn’t get to do much, the story has its dark moments so it’s not all saccharine sweet, and things don’t drag on forever – and not just because the series got axed.

On the minus side, I think the story went on for about 10 chapters longer than it needed to. Yeah yeah, we know Reene and Noche are going to end up together, why add unnecessary rivals and kidnappings and extra drama? It really would have been better to wrap it all up with a fluffy happy ending since the last-minute drama bombs involving Guzherban and Viola went nowhere. Obviously cancelled series was obviously cancelled.

It was only 49 chapters but between the monthly manga schedule and the infrequent scanlation releases, it feels like it took a lifetime to come out. Just as an aside, I really hate it when a translation group picks up a ton of series and then releases them in drips and drabs? I’ll leave it at that to avoid wading into scanlation drama, but let’s just say a lot of groups are lucky my Korean and Mandarin aren’t very good… for now.😏

Back to Kuro no Iyashi tte, by the end I couldn’t remember the most relevant things like why Guzerbahn’s king kidnapped her, or what was going on with the church and the white healer. The most important thing was that she was brought over to that world to be the soul mate of the demon king. And she waffled a bit, but eventually she became his soul mate. And maybe they all lived happily ever after, maybe they didn’t. The rest is left to the reader’s imagination.

Overall, it’s not a bad series to read if you’re looking for a complete romance shoujo isekai. There are so few of them out there anyway. Even though the ending is abrupt, the real ending came several chapters earlier and the rest was just sloppy tying of loose ends. So if you want something short, fluffy and complete, try Isekai de “Kuro no Iyashi Te” tte Yobarete Imasu. This is the best time to do it now that it’s finally over.

The Other World Doesn’t Stand A Chance Against The Power Of Instant Death – read about 60 chapters of the web novel

It’s the rare manga that prompts me to seek out the web novel. And not just that but to read all the chapters available in English and go beyond to the original author’s page and keep reading for several more chapters. The Other World Doesn’t Stand A Chance Against The Power Of Instant Death (Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou Sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranai n desu ga 即死チートが最強すぎて、異世界のやつらがまるで相手にならないんですが。) managed to hold my interest much longer than most of the other stuff I’ve read this year, and for that the author Tsuyoshi Fujitaka should be commended. Buuut, I still dropped it after roughly 60 chapters and I’ll tell you why in a bit.

Story: High school senior Yogiri Takatou was on a school field trip when he woke up to a dragon assaulting his sightseeing bus, with the only ones still on the bus being him and his female classmate, the panicking Tomochika Dannoura. Apparently the rest of his classmates had been given special powers by Sion, a woman who introduced herself as a Sage, and escaped from the dragon, leaving those that hadn’t received any special powers behind as dragon bait.

And so Yogiri was thrown into a parallel universe full of danger, with no idea of what just happened. Likewise, Sion had no way of knowing just what kind of being she had summoned to her world.

Turns out Yogiri has the power of Instant Death. And he didn’t learn it in the new world either, it’s heavily implied that he had it all along. Anyone he tells to die will die. Anyone he even thinks about killing will die. Heck, not just “anyone”, anyTHING in existence – if it moves, if it works, if he wants it to die, it will die. If you play video games, imagine a boss with an unblockable one-hit kill move that he uses at the start of the battle before you can get a hit in. That’s Yogiri Takatou.

On the plus side, he’s a lazy slacker who doesn’t want to kill willy-nilly. He usually makes an attempt to reason with people before ending them. It just happens that he’s been summoned to a world where magic makes people crazy, so the opponents he faces can never be reasoned with. Since his power is so devastating, there’s not much room for fighting or lengthy battle scenes once he uses it, so eventually the web novel devolves into “How much time can we waste with other characters and unnecessary scenes before Yogiri inevitably ends everything with one word?”

That’s the problem all stories with way overpowered characters end up with. Either they have to nerf the character to make it interesting or they have to take him/her off-screen and fill the time with other people and stories to delay the inevitable. You can see it in One Punch Man where Saitama only appears very rarely these days. When he does he rarely fights. When he does get into a fight, he stands around and gets hit for a while just to prolong the inevitable.

So it is in The Other World Doesn’t Stand A Chance Against The Power Of Instant Death, especially the further along the web novel goes. You have to read about boring side characters like Aoi and Hanakawa and Raineel for lengthy periods of time and you have to suffer through a loooong sequence of Yogiri and his team traveling through some boring tower. Once the tower was over I called it quits because these days I’m getting better at spotting dead-end series.

I’ll still read the manga because it’s amusing but there’s too little Yogiri doing actual stuff or making actual progress in the web novel to make it worth suffering through the author’s mediocre, unengaging writing style for it. He has a good idea and an interesting premise, he just has ZERO idea what to do with it. The way the story is, he really should have planned it as a short three to five volume series with the battles and opponents all prepared before starting. Then he wouldn’t need to stuff a web novel with filler right from the second volume.

BTW, you may have noticed a busty brunette featuring prominently in the art for this series. Her name is Tomochika Dannoura. She’s ostensibly the deuteragonist – the second protagonist, as it were, so a lot of chapters are given from her perspective. But that’s just her cover story. Her real role is to look good on the covers to make it more attractive to buyers and readers. That’s why she never does anything of note in the story. That’s why Yogiri only brings her along because her boobs were soft. Yes, really. But don’t expect any romantic scenes because of that. It’s not that kind of series, at least as far as I read.

Don’t expect any detailed world building either. What you should read it for is how funny it is in the beginning when Yogiri kills stuff. And the vague hope of Yogiri killing the crazy Sage (who is later shown to be not so crazy but we don’t care because Yogiri is probably going to kill her anyway. The series suffers from a lot of that). The early chapters are the best before the author starts rationing his powers. I’d say check out the manga and given the web novel a miss unless you’re really into web novels.

TL;DR – The Other World Doesn’t Stand A Chance Against The Power Of Instant Death is great at first but stops being good pretty quickly.

I read Ascendance of a Bookworm manga up to chapter 31

I’m still reading many different isekai manga. It sucks that so many of them are in very early stages, sometimes only 3 or 4 chapters are out. Usually there’s a light novel or web novel behind them, but I can’t be bothered to track those down for most series. Ascendance of a Bookworm / Honzuki no gekokujou is one of the few exceptions where I read the scanlation up to chapter 12 and then read the raws all the way up to chapter 31, the latest available right now.

Summary: Urano, a bookworm who had finally found a job as a librarian at a university, was sadly killed shortly after graduating from college. She was reborn as Main, the daughter of a soldier in a world where the literacy rate is low and books were scarce. No matter how much she wanted to read, there were no books around. What is a bookworm to do without any books? Make them, of course. Her goal is to become a librarian! So that she may once again live surrounded by books, she must start by making them herself. [from novelupdates]

What’s so good about Ascendance of a Bookworm

Although it’s an isekai fantasy series like a hundred others currently running, it’s low fantasy with a bigger focus on slice of life and everyday survival. Main lives a life far removed from castles, demons, goddesses, stat level ups, just a little kid trying to get by in the world.
It has one of the few protagonists who is not hopelessly overpowered right from the start. In fact Main is totally weak and prone to illness.
Main is not super-intelligent either, just blessed with a lot of book knowledge. In particular she doesn’t know much about business and would be swindled regularly if it wasn’t for adults looking out for her.
No harem, no huge crowd of adoring fans lapping up his every move. A few people know just how amazing she is, but the majority of people including her own family see her as an ordinary, rather weird girl. She does have the obligatory good-but-not-too-competent isekai companion though.
You read a lot of manga where the heroine/hero can make a lot of stuff just because they saw it on TV once, but Main doesn’t have it that easy.
The art is excellent and the little children are drawn suitably adorable. The food looks great too. I know there’s a web novel, but the manga is so cute and clear and easy to follow that I have zero desire to try the WN.
The pace is relatively slow and there’s no real story so there’s plenty of time for world-building. You get to know a lot about how the city is run, how society is organized, how people relate to each other, etc. It’s very down to earth and interesting if you like to get immersed in fantasy worlds.
I learned a lot about making paper from scratch by reading it. That should come in handy if I ever go to another world, right?

What’s not so good about Ascendance of a Bookworm

It’s ridiculous how few people are suspicions of Main’s true identity once she starts making paper. It’s an extremely convoluted process requiring very specialized tools and materials and yet she knows all of them and all the right proportions? At only 6-7 years old? No one gets suspicious and starts fishing around when a kid that young starts going in and out of various workshops under Benno’s guidance, ordering this strange item and that? The world is a little too idealistic. The adults are a little too conveniently dense.
The world-building gets a bit too much sometimes. Half of the chapters are devoted to long treatises on how the city works, politics work, business work, etc. It’s interesting at first but later on it gets in the way of plot progression.
There’s a long slowdown between Main being diagnosed with consumption and any further advancement being made in her treatment. Then another long break before a more permanent solution (joining the church) comes along. Some of that time is taken up by the paper-making process, but there’s still a lot of dead time spent on stuff. I know it’s a slice of life kind of show but it gets a bit tiring anyway.

TL;DR

Ascendance of the Bookworm is good and I want more!

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody anime review

Just when I was starting to get back in the saddle of anime-watching, I had the misfortune to come across trash like Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody. I watched the whole thing expecting it to get interesting at some point, or at least to take full advantage of its schlockiness like In Another World with my Smartphone did. But no, it was just a mediocre waste of time that has severely dented my desire to read or watch any more isekai series.

Summary, for what its worth

Ichiro Suzuki is a programmer who was tasked with fixing several bugs in two MMORPGs his company is preparing . While taking a nap, he somehow wakes up in another world as Satoo Pendragon. Suddenly, a group of high-level lizardmen attack him, and in order to survive, Satoo desperately uses a special mass attack. As a result, his level jumps to 310 and he becomes extremely wealthy.

Satoo decides to hide his level, and plans to live peacefully and meet new people. However, developments in the game’s story may cause a nuisance to Satoo’s plans. [adapted from Wikipedia]

Why I call it trash

On the face of it, Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody doesn’t do anything too different from the masses of isekai manga I’ve been reading recently. Satoo suddenly becomes overpowered, he goes around saving girls left and right, all the girls fall madly in love with him and he solves every problem the show can throw at him without suffering too much.

Problem 1 – Unnecessary sexual content. I’m not interested in a show where the hero has sex with prostitutes just to convince viewers that he’s a man. Or just to set itself apart from other shows. Death March is really just a slice of life show so maybe they included such scenes to show that they’re not so wholesome after all. Like how teenybopper stars go after risque roles to distance themselves from their former images. Whatever I don’t care.

Problem 2 – The bigger problem. Satoo is level 310. He should act like he’s level 310! But he doesn’t. He always looks like he’s struggling against even the weakest of enemies when he should be clearing them out with a single yawn. Part of that is understandable, like when he’s trying to level up his party members so they can defend themselves. Or when he’s trying to stay under the radar in the city. But even in far off places with no other witnesses he’s still struggling against weakling homunculi or a level 75 wizard. I hate to bring this up again but… HE’S LEVEL 310. So the show should give us the catharsis that comes from the hero being hundreds of levels above everyone else.

He’s so terrible at playing the game it’s hard to believe he’s really a programmer. He doesn’t learn skills when he should, he doesn’t explore the limits of his abilities, he doesn’t try to learn useful resistances in advance, nothing. Like there’s a part where he’s hit by Dark Magic. He gets a Dark Magic resistance skill. Instead of maxing it out, he just kind of leaves it there. In fact he just kind of leaves a lot of stuff in his menu to look at “Later” when the viewer is screaming “No! Look at it now!” It’s just a very annoying show all around.

Problem 3 – Boring characters and world. Death March is so short we didn’t get to see much of the world. The little we see is just one generic fantasy city, nothing interesting or exciting about it at all. The food doesn’t even look good despite their best efforts. The harem characters are so many that they all blur into one. Couple of lolis, couple of older girls, either way Satoo ignores them in favor of prostititues – plus he’s level 310 and doesn’t really need hangers on. I don’t even know what they’re doing in this how. What were their names again?

TL;DR

Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody is an isekai show with very little isekai-ness, just one tiny city. It’s a harem show with no appealing girls. It’s a game-world show with a hero who evidently doesn’t care much for video games. Long story short, it has very little to offer fans of any of these genres. There are so many other isekai shows out there that you don’t need to waste time with this one. Avoid.