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Your favorite isekai thought crime
slavery
war crimes
boobs
protags that correctly remember and know how to recreate complex technologies
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doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
Can't for the life of me remember where I read the post, but apparently GATE ended and it was exactly as trashy and nationalistic as expected or something to that effect.

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doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Artificer posted:

Does the fantasy world become an official part of Japan?

Apparently yeah it did and the other countries got jealous of the awesome cool superiority of the JSDF that they attempted to open up more portals, but caused some kind of apocalyptic event that may have destroyed the world outside of Japan and their annexed fantasy territory.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

PringleCreamEgg posted:

https://mangadex.org/title/41850/ihoujin-dungeon-ni-moguru
"It was in 1946 that Earth learned of the existence of other worlds. As expected, many countries immediately tried to send people into the other world, hoping to obtain vital resources or mystical treasures. None of them came back.

And to be fair, Souya never expected to be one of those explorers. But here he was, accepting an offer by a shady company to get enough money to save his little sister. Launched into another world, he soon finds that his journey will be a hard one - not only have his teammates gone missing, but a majority of his food and weapons supply was destroyed in the transfer"

It's only four chapters but it seems alright.
I really liked the first chapter but then everything starts getting way too easy for him. Very strong opening, though.

Picked it up. Looks pretty good so far.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Fellis posted:

Yeah that’s pretty boring/gross. There is some potential in the ideas but it just doesnt do anything interesting with them. I’m a Spider, So What?! says and does way more interesting things with the murder makes you strong, view everyone as experience psychopathy, wait isnt this world set up to be violent, why is that? (vague LN spoilers) plot point. It would be more interesting if the god of ethics was way more hands on and brutally resetting him again and again in a groundhog day-like fashion till he figures out the exact line of being a bastard but still “ethical”. That could have some interesting things to say about how moral actions can still be cruel, or something?

It would still suck but it would be more interesting than the straight up psychopathy libertarian power fantasy of buying slaves with extorted money and murdering them for power. Like how is there a God of Ethics and she doesn’t just immediately fail him for that. It reminds me of some other trash isekai where the healing hero was reincarnated and got revenge on all his former comrades, but at least in that one his former comrades were actually evil instead of just making him do chores.

E: just realised Harvester is an isekai/trapped in a virtual reality story and basically this story according to those spoilers

Isn't that poo poo getting an Anime soon or something last I recall? I find those stories incredibly dumb as gently caress since, why? It's never made clear or explained WHY they betray or sell the protagonist out other than just because or to basically give him a reason to edgelord rear end in a top hat who has no issue using slave magic on them. At least something like Ubel Blatt made sense in that it was to cover up their own cowardice and profit from the event.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Jackard posted:

Japanese Witcher is so good

Indeed. Lecan is good adventure bro.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
Newest Undead Adventuter LN volume is out. It's really good guys.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

darkgray posted:

Bit sad to learn that Ookami wa Nemuranai (Wolf Won't Sleep) seems to have been cancelled both as LN (vol 4) and manga (ch 16). The web novel is still continuing until the end, presumably, but I had the impression at least the manga was doing pretty well.

Wait, WTF?! Why? Link to the info? I was under the impression it was doing well since it was consistently in the Top 5 on the raws website. Man, gently caress that bullshit, This was one of the few good mature fantasy stories/isekai out there and it gets canned?!!

Edit: Found the manga stuff saying it was gonna continue in the novel.

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Sep 27, 2020

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Jackard posted:

I don't typically read those but will have to check it out. Thanks for the link.

What a shame. Did they ever say why it was canceled? :smith:

That's what I'm curious about as well. The authors other work, Bard Roen is doing quite well but that runs on a seinen mag I think. My theory is that it lacked a female "mascot" in the same vein as other LN's.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/POVBoyPosterGirl

The trope above kind of explains. There was another that mentioned that people rarely give a poo poo about the male MC and are simply there for the female cover one or the interest lags do to a lack of obvious Romantic interest or attractive female character of that kind. Compare + Contrast with Undead Adventurer.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Fellis posted:

it gets much less wholesome. i stopped reading the manga cause it got so goddamn bad (and worse of all, boring) and i have horrible tolerance for poo poo isekai manga

I can spoil if you want, but the comic was good and fine* until a certain part then it just backflipped into poo poo garbage and somehow got worse from there

e: *as far as I remember, I never re-read it.

Brah don't leave us hanging on details about trashiness. What happens later on in it?

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Meme Emulator posted:

Mushoku Tensei Spoilers

I read the manga and I was really into the stretch where everyone got teleported to random places in the world and had to adventure back home. It sounds like they never freakin leave magic school for all the later parts? I guess thats ok, that way the anime will cover the only good part.

This story does the rapid tone shifts thing but not really in a good way. It just feels like a mishmash of stuff. Just a small example but the author doesnt really have a dark sense of humor nor makes much mention of morbid things. In the latest english chapter the unnaturally strong noble was talking about how hes always been aware of his strength ever since he crushed his baby brother to death when he hugged him. Like, where the hell did that come from? Its not really the kind of story where that would be funny, like uh Dorohedoro or something, so it just comes off as bizarre. I think the guy just doesnt know how to tell a story.

Topic change to the original novel and its popularity in japan, is it true that this was the novel alongside SAO that really kicked off isekai? I heard that somewhere but no idea if its true


That's the weird thing.

Shay Guy, post: 23707609, member: 72524 posted:


I keep wondering about that, because I'm not sure how it was really different from previous stories on the same website in any substantial way. Look at just the isekai titles there that have already been made into anime -- Log Horizon, Knight's & Magic, Isekai Cheat Magician, Re:Zero, and The Rising of the Shield Hero are all from before Mushoku Tensei started. Hell, in MT's first month online, the other hot new thing there was Riot Grasper, which started 11 days before. And looking at a fan translation of Riot Grasper, not only does its beginning hit pretty much all the recognized cliches of Internet isekai -- right down to the truck -- but the narration covers it with a "yeah, you know the drill, it's one of these stories" air.


Shay Guy, post: 23707657, member: 72524 posted:


When Mushoku Tensei started online, Log Horizon had already been in print for a year and a half and the Sword Art Online anime was on episode 20. All the series I named were also released in print before MT (except for Re:Zero, which, fun fact, got its volume 1 light novel release the very same day as MT's). KonoSuba also got its LN release before MT, as did Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World.



The fact that Mushoku Tensei was perhaps the most popular story in the genre that had developed on Narou is completely unconvincing as an argument that it actually changed the course of the genre, or that it was doing anything novel or groundbreaking at all, which is what people are claiming when they talk about it as a pioneer or whatever. For that, you have to actually look at what it did differently from what came before, and identify signs of its influence in how the genre changed after.


Shay Guy, post: 23710011, member: 72524 posted:


KonoSuba yes, but while Overlord got mirrored on Narou, I think it actually started on Arcadia — same as GATE, DanMachi, and Youjo Senki. For purely Narou-based stories with anime adaptations, I’ve got a spreadsheet I can link when I’m not on my phone.



(KonoSuba started just about a month after Mushoku Tensei; I might’ve said this before, but from the Wayback Machine snapshots I can find, it seems that at the time, the two most popular Narou stories of the preceding month were MT and Riot Grasper, both of which feature isekai by truck. So I think Kazuma’s death might specifically be a joking reference to one or both of those two.)


He also posted a spreadsheet on this and yeah, MT wasn't really even the first at all per se. Maybe the kind of protagonist, but other than that, not much else so I legit don't know how to answer this one anymore.

This reminds me of a video I saw on the movie Christmas Story's false nostalgia that might explain this better.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

khy posted:

Couple more Mushoku Tensei spoilers. It gets weird. And isn't wholesome. Still, not the worst I've come across by far.

Some have already been mentioned.

1) Steals and literally worships his magic teacher's panties.
2) Sleeps with redhead waifu, she leaves because bad at communication, he gets ED.
3) ED is cured by sleeping with his childhood elf friend (She's a virgin), afterwards he cuts out the bloodstained spot on the sheets and worships them (yes, literally) too.
4) Marries his elf friend and the magic teacher who still looks like a teenager because she's a magical always-looks-young lives-to-200 race.
5) Builds a literal shrine in the basement with the virgin-blood sheet and used panties in it.
6) Rejects his redhead waifu for leaving him, ends up being part of a whole ordeal of a dark future where all his waifus die. He comes back in time later on and tells his past self to marry the redhead instead of being mad at her for leaving.
7) Redhead waifu says on multiple occasions that the only things she's good for are fighting and making the MC's babies.

I remember reading some of these and I can't help but find all of this loving hilarious in a Bile Fascination kind of way. Like it's absolute garbage, but hilarious in how it looks and feels like the author is taking it seriously. This in turn leads me to becoming furiously angry that such amazing animation, modeling, character and scenery design is being wasted on the anime for this.

Edit: Wasn't there some stuff with his dad dying too?

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jan 28, 2021

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

khy posted:

There was a magical anomaly of some kind that went off above his hometown. Everyone in town got teleported randomly around the world. This happened when the MC was very young, and a large plot point from then on (Spanning years and years) is the MC trying to reconnect with all the people in his life after that. His mother got trapped in a dungeon, and eventually MC and his dad went there to rescue her. They fight a boss, the MC is about to get wrecked by the hydra and the dad pushed his son out of the way to save him. Dad died, but MC survived on.

And to be totally fair to the Author, if he had cut out the 'I'm going to turn my wives into a creepy religion' then 80% of the awful poo poo would be gone and it'd be just generic isekai wish fulfillment. Not terrible but not great, nothing special. The MC never has slaves or never commits war crimes that I can think of off the top of my head; he's actually fairly nice when he's not being creepy as gently caress about his made-up religion. Maybe there's something cultural I don't get about why he turned his wives' underwear and virgin blood into literal objects of worship, IDK. But some parts are really interesting to read about. There's a fair amount of halfway decent worldbuilding. The society isn't stupid as gently caress and the MC doesn't abuse his knowledge of science to figure out things. Some of the chapters were pretty good reads which could have turned into a decent anime.

I'm finding the sort of worship that this is getting somewhat bizarre if not unsurprising since the amazing animation and character design with skeevy poo poo that's gonna "trigger" the "normies" and "sjw's" would guarantee popularity, I'm more curious about people seeing it as the kahuna, father, grandfather, or what have you of modern isekai since as darkgray showed, cursory overview shows that to not be the case AT ALL.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

darkgray posted:

This is at least partially true -- Kenkyo Kenjitsu is arguably the grandmother of all isekai villainess novels. It's also one of the strangest anomalies on Narou. When it came out in the middle of 2013, there was one other semi-popular "villainess" web novel, Akuyaku Reijou Koukyuu Monogatari, which had started back in 2012 and was hovering around #45 on the overall ranking, but Kenkyo Kenjitsu's author managed to consistently post 1-2 chapters every day for six months straight, and as a result it rocketed up the rankings like nothing ever had before, reaching #2 overall within a year, and staying there just under Mushoku Tensei all the way until late 2017, when the author vanished without a trace and left the work unfinished.

Where every other author on the site with any modicum of success would take book and manga deals, promoting their precious creations on the built-in blog system, and begging for more upvotes in the afterwords of posted chapters, Kenkyo Kenjitsu stands out because the author worked in complete silence. No blog posts, no twitter account, and most crucially, no book deals. Today it's probably impossible to find a single title in the top 500 ranking on Narou that hasn't been published on paper as a commercial light novel, but Kenkyo Kenjitsu alone (?) remains an anonymous work only readable online for free. Consequently there's been a ton of myths surrounding who the author could be in real life to warrant such secrecy, but who knows.

The only thing we can say for sure is that Kenkyo Kenjitsu is still the best villainess novel!

On my read list now.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
Well I guess Jobless DID have an impact in the isekai series that followed, just not a good one and not in the meaningful series that people always talk about. As an aside, someone elsewhere made a nice list of the stuff that scamp Rudy does throughout the series,

quote:

MC at the start is an actual pedophile. Anyone telling you otherwise is just in denial about it. Before he died, he was caught jacking it to hidden camera footage he took of his niece in the bath (this is revealed in an extra released towards the end of the series). Once reincarnated, he steals the panties of his teacher, the blue haired one who is a 40 year old member of a race who stops aging once they're around 13-14 years old, make of that what you will. He then proceeds to make a personal religion around worshiping said stolen panties, which is used a joke throughout the rest of the series.

He meets a half-elf girl, who is around his physical age, who he befriends, then happily strips naked against her will so they can take a bath together. It's totally okay though because he thought she was a boy, make of that what you will, haha. He then gets ecstatic at the idea of finally having a girlfriend. Yes, this 8 year old girl.

Due to reasons, he ends up going to live with his cousin, who is 10 years old, so 2 years older than him. Typical redhead tsundere character. To make her not so violent and brattish, he decides that the best idea is to have her be faked kidnapped. Turns into a real kidnapping, shocker. Anyway, she mellows out and his extended family take an interest in him and decided to wed them off. To do this, on his 10th birthday, the girl's parents send her to his room in lingerie to seduce him. Yes. She's 12 and he's 10 btw. MC is ecstatic, describes her has "right in his strike zone", and head dives in, but she asks to put the thing on hold until they're both adults.

After that, poo poo happens and they end up on a multi year long journey around the world to get back to their home, alongside a chaperone. At one point, they run across enslaved cat/dog children (aka humans with cat/dog ears and tails). They're chained up and naked, and this makes MC excited for... reasons. Once the arc is over, the redhead makes good on their promise and they have sex (he's 13 and she's 15 btw). She then leaves to go train for years afterwards, and doesn't tell him, so he thinks she dumped him. He then gets erectile disfunction because of it and decides to go to magic school to find a cure. I'm not making GBS threads you, that's the main motivation for half of the teenage arc of the story.

Magic school has him doing a variety of things, including helping his friend buy a slave, and tying two female bullies up to a chair and leaving them like that all day, to the point that they soil themselves, all because they broke a figurine of his. Afterward, the two bullies gain respect for him and call him "boss". He also meets up with his half-elf childhood friend, and eventually marries her due to her "solving" his ED through the power of love or some poo poo. He then later meets his blue haired teacher from before, and cheats on his wife with her, then gets guilted into marrying her as well. Redhead also shows back up and he marries her as well, so he now has 3 wives.

The rest of the story, with him as an adult, actually has him doing good on his "being a better person". He almost gives his life to save his family (has kids with all 3 wives), tries to stop a war from happening, makes peace with various factions, invents various things from our world to make everyone's lives more convenient, and ends slavery. But a lot of this happens in the epilogue of a 20+ volume story, so it takes a long time for him to become this "better person" that people state. And he still has 3 wives while being a better person, so make of that as you will.

Jesus reading it over again, this is like a loving compilation of the worst and loving trashes aspects of isekai and animein general all rolled into one. I will say he missed the virgin blood addition and they do mention the GOOD the series had in that it was one of the more better built isekai worlds.

Edit: I recall there was one other male character who was like his arch-rival who was a villain who sometimes threw him a bone that would often best him in battle and whatnot on top of the whole his kids being the ones destined to be the ones to defeat the Demon Lord a la Dragon Quest 5(this was a point of comparison I recall being made).


Mod Edit: Spoilered accordingly.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Somebody fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jan 29, 2021

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Nitrousoxide posted:

Pretty cool how pretty much the entire plot of Jobless, a series running currently this season, has been spoiled in this thread in big long screeds complaining about it.

darkgray posted:

Is there some kind of rule about how if you don't like something then it's okay not to use spoiler tags anymore?

That was on me and honestly I thought most people were in the know about this already.

khy posted:

When people were talking 'jobless' I totally thought they were talking about the OTHER Jobless isekai and so I didn't realize I was spoiling the currently-airing show. I was a bit confused but assumed we were talking 2 different series with Mushoku Tensei.

https://mangadex.org/title/22785/seichou-cheat-de-nandemo-dekiru-you-ni-natta-ga-mushoku-dake-wa-yamerarenai-you-desu

I knew it was airing, but yeah given how everyone was talking about it I figured, "well everyone knows so no point in tagging". Also, that one looks nice so bookmarked.

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Jan 29, 2021

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Fellis posted:

I’ve always told my friends you need to drink a lot of bad wine to appreciate the good ones



This thread in the analogy:


(Yes you are correct)

E:this snipe lol

Given that according to reddit, everyone's favorite rape show about goblins is getting another season I may need those to wash away the pain. It would at least put your theory of savoring garbage to the test.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Guyver posted:

Sorry but Fluff Saint has rape goblins as of chapter five. It belongs in this thread. The superior isekai thread.

loving WHHHHHHHYYYYY?!!

Onean posted:

Edit:


There's a going theory that's just an embellishment to scare unprepared adventures, and until we see otherwise that's what I'm choosing to believe because it doesn't fit any other part of the story.



Here's a weird and very unique one that I just couldn't ignore.

The Otherworldly Infection Story that Started with a Virus Reincarnation


Take the traits from the game Plague Inc., add some beneficial ones and turn them into skills, and that's basically this.






Please let this be the case FFS. Also, will definently check that out.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Guyver posted:

That's what I took it as but I kind of dislike the wholesome thread.

Just finished the first chapter and yeah that rape thing feels super sus now because I'm getting some major "Make My Abilities Average" vibes in terms of doofiness.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Onean posted:

Oh, that wasn't in the Wholesome thread. I braved the MangaDex comments and saw it there. (Don't subject yourself to them, though. That's alongside about twice as many comments being all for rape goblins, of course.)

I really hate the anime and manga fandom sometimes.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
Finished all three chapters out and hope that if goblins show up, they're like the ones from Slime or that other new isekai with cute gobbos. Alternatively, Dungeon Nursery or Wasabi styled ones are also welcome.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

dipwood posted:

Slime is pretty wholesome but it's incredibly boring.

Where you at if I may ask? Series is mostly fantasy Civ with fantasy Sims City mixed in with the occasional RTS JRPG fight or Tales styled fight from time to time.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

https://mangadex.org/title/45729/time-stop-brave

Sexual Assault: The Isekai!

Dude gets the power to stop time, uses it to grope women


obviously, its bad

I love how it differentiates between the regular one and the nips one. Bro, we all know why this was written in the first place man.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
You know what, instead of wasting space on that garbage, look forward to something nice like the other slime isekai.

https://twitter.com/GA_bunko/status/1355812020939943938?s=19

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 2, 2021

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

dipwood posted:

I'm just following the anime. I quite liked it a lot until it got to the child hero school arc. Demon Lord Lilim is also really annoying.

The current season, most of the worldbuilding is tossed into the backseat in favor of Rimuru's harem making fools of themselves at every opportunity. I liked the scale and the progressive 'leveling up' that happened, but none of that has happened so far this season. I guess when your empire is that big, it's hard to have any meaningful progression anymore, but who knows I'm still gonna watch it.

If world building and progression like that are more your thing, I'd actually recommend the LN or the manga and it's spin-offs since they're more on that level. The anime committee screwed the pooch BADLY last season by skipping a lot of stuff that's on biting them on the rear end so they have to hassle back in line to damage control. And yeah I'm not fond of how they handled Milim at all here.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Onean posted:

I posted about these in the Wholesome thread, but now that MangaDex is back up I figured I'd crosspost here too:

It's another Otome Villainess reincarnation, but there's a few differences here. First and foremost, the author has outright said they're not comfortable in their skill when it comes to writing romance, so it won't be a focus. Next, it feels like there was a lot of love put into this world, and while that lead to some dense reading (the good kind, at least for me) in the WN, I'm excited to see the world in a manga. Finally, the MC only completed two (and part of another) of the seven routes before she dies. She knows some information of the other routes and who they are due to seeing spoilers on the internet, but not details. Thanks to that, she's not able to prepare too much ahead of time.





The set-up and past life imply things are going to be grim going forward, but the series is more light than dark.

I Became the Beloved Child of Winter Fenrir: A Story of Being Healed From Despair (Manganelo)




For this one I kind of wish she wasn't so against returning to live with her parents before dying, but that's a pretty minor quibble at most.

Even if the Sword Saint is Boring, He's Still the Strongest (Manganelo)
(I heavily recommend waiting for MangaDex to come back up for this one. The early chapters were retranslated with a better translation, but Manganelo has the earlier, not as good translation. The images below I had to grab from the better translator's website.)




This one is just really chill and fun.
[/quote]

I shall do the same then.

Deathbound Duke's Daughter is an awesome one I rec from time to time. I have the first two LN's from Jnovel and they're very good. Her past life was very sad in a pestered by lovely assholes and rumor smeared kind of way which left her rather jaded on relationships so she's pretty dense thought it makes more sense than Bakarina if some ways given the context. The way I always describe is, Bakarina combined with GrimGrimoire for those familiar with the game with maybe a bit of Nancy Drew in the mix.

The artwork is also super pretty for the LN.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Onean posted:

I came across a WN that piqued my interest and sitting right there in the first chapter was this:


Ahahahaha, gently caress off. Thanks for putting that right out front though, since it means I won't waste any time. (The WN is Maid Will Go on Through Thick and Thin! just to save anyone else time if they see it.)

That feels so absurdly sexist in such an upfront way that I can't help but wonder if there's a sort of catch. Like she develops "Supreme Goddess" powers because yeah, holy poo poo that was hosed up.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018
Bought and read Vol 5 of Undead Adventurer manga.

THEY GAVE EDEL A COCKNEY ACCENT IN THE 4KOMA AND HE SAID THE "YOU WOT M8?"

Rentt is also still cool bro and LN8 is getting translated as well and should be out in June.

Edit: The cover for LN8 is...rather eyebrow raising. Very much makes it clear that some poo poo is about change.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Eeepies posted:

I immediately dumped it from my reading list.
Wtf is that solution!?

I dunno, but even his majesty is like,

"WTF?! PHRASING!!"

So I think it's a MASSIVE misunderstanding.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

doomrider7 posted:

Finished all three chapters out and hope that if goblins show up, they're like the ones from Slime or that other new isekai with cute gobbos. Alternatively, Dungeon Nursery or Wasabi styled ones are also welcome.

Super weird quoting my own posts, but now I'm trying to recall which anime or manga this was. I think it might be the one with the Gandalf guy reincarnation himself as a child and being raised by a goblin tribe similar to Slimes, but can't recall the name.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

No not that one(but I will be reading it and you have my thanks). The MC was a local and reincarnated as a human raised by goblins. It got brought up either here or the other thread.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

TheFlyingLlama posted:

pretty sure you mean this one


god forbid it have an easily searched for name that actually includes goblin instead of whatever dumb LN name it actually has

Yeah that's the one. Name means Reincarnated Mage Raised by Monsters or something to that effect.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Brought To You By posted:

Ah yes, the cheat skill called not having the lifespan of a mayfly and yet again falling into a surplus of [skills]. MC is chill though and I like his rapport with the count but I'm also curious what caused Japan to really settle on Goblins being commonly depicted as hyper-evolving and adaptive creatures.

Besides Slimes, they are the definitive Mook you demolish early in-game leveling up. That and since they're actually sentient, can also take the place of low ranked minions in the Demon Lords armies. Why such a specific thing I dunno, but I think it's the above of them being the other famous mook who gets the crap beat out of them becoming super strong.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Literally Kermit posted:

Now I want to see “I Reincarnated as that Orc Holding a Pie in a 10 x 10 room but I’m Stronger than the Heroes!?”

Someone on Narou likely has that story already written

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Nemo2342 posted:

Personally, I think it feels off because it's a villain manga that's pretending it's not one. The other races are all cartoonishly evil, but it's kind of hard to ignore that the protagonist is every bit as bad. Yet the story really wants you to root for the MC as some kind of righteous avenger.

To add, unless I read it wrong he also explicitly says he wants to create a world only for humanity implying he wants to either subjugate or wipe out the other races which is pretty loving evil no matter how you slice.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Nemo2342 posted:

The current plan specifically calls for cutting off the Elf Kingdom's strength, vanquishing them, and then subordinating them to get a feel for how the other nations are going to respond. It very much sounds like he intends to replace their old rear end in a top hat government with his own "enlightened" authoritarian regime.

Haven't gotten that far. I'm just going by what I read when he fought the wolf guy in them first few chapters.

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Captain Invictus posted:

I feel like I remember people recommending a series about a skeleton warrior, possibly adventuring, possibly more laid back, but I do recall there being one people were consistently excited about with a skeleton as the mc or one of the mcs. Any ideas?

It's not Skeleton knight in another world, is it? Because I've been reading some of that and...there's no substance to it. It's pure isekai oatmeal with an extra helping of gratuitous violence(sexual or otherwise) every time they want to depict someone as The Bad Guy. Every conflict is handled immediately without effort by the mc or his overpowered companions, no struggle at all. And the exposition dumps are particularly dumb, there was one real weird one where two characters in an aside away from the main characters first acknowledged they both knew of [thing] and then proceeded to explain to each other, who both already knew about [thing], the history of said thing for the benefit of nobody but the reader. It's just a below average isekai. So hopefully that's not the one that I heard good things about.


Sindai posted:

Yeah Skeleton Soldier is always better when Isaac is around because he functions as the protagonist's brain. Unfortunately he's not always around. I really enjoyed the recent chapters where he taught Skeleton to use his status windows as deadly weapons. For all its flaws I'm probably sticking with it to the end because the mysteries it's presented are interesting enough.

That said the only undead-themed story people are seemingly always positive about is Unwanted Undead Adventurer so that's probably the one you're thinking of.

Yeah it was either Undead Adventurer which was always consistently good or it MIGHT HAVE BEEN Skeleton Knight in Another World since people REALLY liked that he very brutally killed slavers and rapists with gusto which was always a welcome change of things given how slavery gets used in isekai so that might have been the reason for the positive recommendations. Skeleton Soldier also got brought up, but yeah it had a "Girl in Fridge" issue pretty much every time a female character got introduced as well as the gay stereotype thing.

Edit: I dropped Skeleton Soldier fairly early due to the fridging thing so I dunno how it goes in later chaps.

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Jun 22, 2022

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Captain Invictus posted:

I think this was it, it's pretty highly rated so it's possible. Thanks!

Good News! It's getting an anime!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxUhwthVdKU

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Ice Phisherman posted:

Even though it's at the top of a number of lists already, I can't recommend The Faraway Paladin enough. The characters are compelling and deep, the setting is interesting, the stakes feel real and if there's anything that I love about the main character, it's that he's powerful without being so powerful that he just blazes through everything. At the same time, he's a kind, gentle, thoughtful person who has been taught that sometimes, you really can solve problems with overwhelming violence. He's often resolving problems with talking and negotiation and even with economics, but sometimes you just have to thump someone so they'll listen to you or just break something or someone. So if you're going to need violence as a tool, you should probably be really good at it, and the MC is really good at it.

Though I think my favorite piece of the setting and characters is that it is an exploration of faith done well. The deity that the main character worships and the antagonist deity who the main character talks to now and again and in the case of the antogonist deity, literally fights a small piece of them, are deeply interesting. They're both gods of death in a way and their fight is over their personal philosophy over what death should mean. And also, they both love people and their philosophy on death has interesting consequences as a result to the people that they love.

Also I'm not sure if this is 100% correct as it's been a while since I've read the beginning, but I believe I'm mostly correct after double checking the wiki on both of them.

The patron goddess named Gracefeel is a believer that when you die, you die and you move on to be reborn again. She's basically the status quo and she's fallen out of favor as a deity of worship. The MC is a paladin of a second string goddess.

The antagonist Stagnate believes that literally no one should die ever. That death is objectively bad and that it should be prevented and avoided no matter what. That whenever someone dies, something is permanently lost from the world. As a result, Stagnate wants to preserve everything just is it was. What this means in practice is that Stagnate is the god of undeath and that they're keeping around ghosts and skeletons and zombies and poo poo because someone permanently dying in the word sucks. But the result of their rejection of death is decay. And also they have all of these undead around and they use it to keep other people from dying permanently. So you can guess how that shakes out sometimes. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So their fight is over whether people should be allowed to die, which means that the philosophical fight is over whether things should change or not. Gracefeel wants people to die and be reborn so things can change. Stagnate doesn't want anyone to die ever, which means she's against change.

What makes this the most interesting to me isn't Gracefeel, though the MC worshiping a second tier god is still pretty cool to me. It's that the intentions of Stagnate aren't evil. Stagnate isn't some classic figure like Satan or say like some evil deity from D&D. The results are destructive and suck, but you can understand the philosophy behind them. Stagnate believes that people are the best thing ever and it's a tragedy when they die.

As a writer, I deeply appreciate when a villain or antagonist isn't evil for the sake of being evil, though there is plenty of room for that in fiction. What interests me most is when the villain or antagonist has a philosophy that differs from the hero or protagonist. One that's so completely different that conflict is the only logical result. You have a good point but so do they. And in The Faraway Paladin, the default is when people die, they die forever. And what's seen as unnatural is when those people are preserved and turn into the undead. Neither are entirely right or wrong in their philosophy, but the end result sucks either way.

It reminds me of a dialectic or the art of investigating the truth of opinions. And what I really want for this story is something like a Hegelian Dialectic. You have your thesis in Gracefeel. You have your antithesis in Stagnate. And through clashes where the thesis is pitted against the antithesis, you might get something from both of them, the synthesis, or a resolution into some higher truth. And I'm really hoping we get towards some ending like that someday, because neither of them are wrong, but neither are right either. I think it would be a lot more satisfying that slaying the god of undeath and returning to the status quo where people die, because that still sucks and should be changed too.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Some of my favorite parts are they scene where he's speaking with the dwarven elders about all that they endured felt very poignant just how crushed and heartbroken that a group of people who has father had talked about a being a race of proud warriors and artisans being so beaten and broken.

The other was the scene in this cave where they speak with a crow avatar of Stagnate and the dwarf prince asks about his ancestor to which Stagnate laughsbat how fates wheel turns and reveals that this ancestor the last Dwarf King was a glorious hero who died a spectacular death taking the eye and severely wounding a dragon who was the equal of the Gods.


All of the other moments shouldn't need an explanation since it's the moments with his family and growing up, learning to cope with death and dying, his vow to Gracefeel, the Goddess Mater protecting Mary showing she had always loved her, and him praying during his parents passing.

The series is just a cavalcade of awesome and poignant moments.

Marked just in case.

Edit: You'd likely enjoy Undead Adventurer for similar reasons as Faraway Paladin.

doomrider7 fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jul 30, 2022

doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Captain Invictus posted:

definitely try the manga, it's worth it, especially compared to everything I've read about the anime.

edit: god drat it I misconstrued Undead Adventurer with Skeleton Knight, which is decidedly not good, while Unwanted Undead Adventurer is pretty solid as far as "general isekai" go.

Skeleton Knight is a VERY mixed bag. It has the whole violent sexual assault thing going on, but it very much shows that and slavery to be VERY bad and evil things and that's the best way to handle those kinds of people as sword and knife them a lot. It's definetly not one that goes on the wholesome Isekai thread.

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doomrider7
Nov 29, 2018

Jomo posted:

I think I dropped it around episode 3 or 4, when the animation quality felt like someone's attempt at making a show in PowerPoint.

I know nothing of the anime and am only commenting on the manga.

@Faraway Paladin

I'm still loving pissed about the quality. This deserved SIGNIFICANTLY better. The music was great though. The comments about Will being "whiny" because he cried when a Dark God smugly told him that this parents were going to die and have their souls harvested he him, his parents peacefully dying and moving back into the cycle, and him crying when his best friend is horrifically mutilated in a monster hunt gone awry also soured me, but more towards the entire anime and manga community in general.

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