- #1
I rarely write reviews but I want to leave something helpful for someone thinking about reading this series instead of the extreme and unhelpful reviews this series seems to get. I think the extreme reviews come from the fact that this series follows two very different styles. It initially portrays itself as a dark revenge type story in the first volume, which generally appeals to one type of audience, and then quickly transitions into a more light-hearted harem story, appealing to a very different audience.The overall story is not bad. It is a fairly straightforward hero-transported-to-another-world story except the MC is not the "hero". The scale of the conflict predictably goes beyond just the human vs. Demon to the realm of the gods. Even though it is predictable, that does not mean it is not well done. This is a web novel series after all; you go in expecting predictability.The story focuses on Hajime, the bullied loner with a good heart, who gets forced into a constant life-or-death struggle and does a 180, becoming cold and a bit of a self-centered jerk. This is the part where the dark-hearted fanboys enjoy the series but it does not stop there. Many of those people complain about the subsequent story where he becomes a more stereotypical protagonist with a sense of justice while claiming he does whatever he wants. To me, this part of the story is more about Hajime gradually returning to the kind person he used to be while trying to cling to his cold persona because he does not want to be the weakling he used to be. The disconnect between his words and actions many reviewers criticize as unrealistic, I believe is his own disconnect of wanting to appear uncaring while being unable to resist his conscience to do the right thing.His harem does detract from the overall quality of the story. I almost gave it a 3 star rating because of Shia and Tio. This is not your typical harem because Hajime actually does choose a girl while the other members of the harem follow despite their one-sided love. It's a bit unrealistic how they all still love him so much despite how cold and sometimes even cruel he is to all but Yue. Shia and Tio are meant to be the comic relief of the group but their antics often come off as too ridiculous, awkward, or just plain disturbing (in Tio's case).His classmates tend to be one-dimensional characters. This does not detract too much from the overall quality however, because they are not the focus of the story. The parts about what his classmates are doing while he is on his journey, I find to be a refreshing change of pace. Enough time is spent on them to satiate my curiosity about how they are doing but it does not get so involved as to take the focus away from this being a story about Hajime and his return to humanity.The world itself is fairly well done. There is nothing groundbreaking or particularly exciting about the setting but it manages to incorporate both the cliches of a hero-transported-to-another-world we have come to enjoy and sufficient twists to keep it from getting too boring.Overall, if you are like me and can enjoy both dark and light-hearted stories, then you just might enjoy this series. It's hard to tell whether the author tried to do something new in changing from one type to another or started out wanting to write a dark series and decided he didn't like it. Either way, the series can be enjoyable if you can accept a bipolar hero-transported-to-another-world story that cannot really decide what it wants to be. The story's great, the setting is good, the writing is above-average, and the characters are OK.
