I Was Stuck on the Same Day For a Thousand Years Chapter 514 Discussion

Probably one of the best urban novels, maybe even the best of those I've read. I highly enjoyed it.

The setting is rather normal, without supernatural powers (except for the eponymous 1000 years and a single ability related to it, which MC has used maybe twice - I remember just one instance - in over 500 chapters, though we also have to admit that he has a big number of available uses, and because that ability can save his ass completely, it still affects the plot as MC knows he has a bunch of free out of jail cards, and so he dares to take many risks). Of course, that's unless we include what the synopsis says, which is basically that the guy got into a time loop that covered only a single day (like Groundhog Day, except it lasted much longer) for a whole millennium. Then, he basically played GTA in that time loop, doing all kinds of things recklessly because he would just "respawn" (return to the start of the loop) even if he died. Due to that, he got amazing abilities - not superhuman abilities, but simply all kinds abilities polished to super master degree because he had so much time to kill.

I like this particular deus ex machina because it's different than reincarnation and transmigration (so we have a bit of originality here; while there's a xianxia equivalent of this story - actually two, I think - this one is much better), and because it fits the story so much more.

The plot is very fun. It's very entertaining to see MC use his knowledge and abilities he had accumulated in the time loop to screw with people and make them more and more scared of him or outright destroy them. In particular, one of the most fun thing was how MC wrapped various characters around his finger, and then other characters found out about it and their reactions. Also, the author has an amazing feel for cliffhangers: I can count tens of chapters where I wanted to stop reading but couldn't, because the cliffhanger was so masterfully done that I couldn't stop (sometimes twice or more times in a row!).

The thing I appreciate the most in this novel is the protagonist. Finally, an author who could actually pull off an old monster type protagonist! The MC really feels like someone who has centuries of experience under his belt and is more than just a self-insert in a brainless wish fulfillment novel. In particular, he's a total chad in handling his harem. He has seduced and slept with women countless time in the time loop, and it really shows in his handling of love interests that he's a chad who knows how to handle women (he's basically the direct opposite of a simp). He's probably the best harem protagonist I've ever seen in a novel (or, in other words, the author is perhaps the least clueless about the ways of a chad among any webnovel authors ever). I often cringe when I see some beta or simp paired with a harem, but this time I was just applauding in my mind most of the time. The protagonist really deserves his harem, and if it wasn't a novel, but reality, then he would still be able to have a harem even if he was inserted in a completely different setting, taking away his advantage of knowing the love interests.

As for love interests, they were written well. As I said, the author really understands female psychology, and understands what it takes for a man to have a harem in the modern age. He also understands how a man can wear the pants in his relationship and that there's no way a guy can have a harem without hiding it without being highly dominant with his women. There are no asspulls here. Each love interest is somewhat unique as well, though some of them are also fairly similar. The only pity here is that they were not fleshed out too much

Spoiler

there's pretty much one main girl, and you can see it reflected in both character depth and frequency of being present in the novel.

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Gillmour (another reviewer) has a point about the strong female character being subdued too quickly by the MC, but that's also because he seems to understand women a bit less than the author. What I say won't be PC, but strong women also can be easily subdued by men. The difference is that their bar is extremely high (i.e. the man must be not just strong, but much stronger than her - and I don't mean physical strength, but overall power), so 99.9% of men simply aren't equipped with the ability to do it. This is also why many Western women nowadays want you to earn six figures or more - because if you can't earn as much money as she can, then she feels like you're inferior to her, and there's no way a woman will date a man inferior to her unless he can compensate for it somehow. It doesn't matter that many of those women are clueless about earning money because simps will present it with both hands while kneeling on the ground. Women are about feelings rather than logic. And MC made the harem feel like he can crush them anytime if he wants to, plus he is full of mysteries and doesn't let them give him any shit. That's why they get wet for him.

I like very much that there are many prominent male characters, ranging from friends and allies, through neutral secondary characters, to enemies. This is something many harem novels fail at because who cares about guys, amirite? They also pull the bullsh*t where mc's friends are fat or ugly to make the protagonist look better... Well, not in this novel. Here we have a few guys who are capable in their own right. Speaking of it, we don't even have any hedonistic young masters here for the most part. In over 500 chapters I read, we only had one that was in conflict with the protagonist and another that was mentioned, but never appeared (and probably won't, because he's a minor character).

Another thing the novel portrayed well was the complicated array of relationship between big families. Generally speaking, big shots and their methods and ways of doing things were written well here. In particular, the author put a lot of effort into making complicated relationships between families and making up a lot of background for the current events. Those get boring sometimes, but they're necessary to understand the current schemes and events, and they aren't really long or frequent.

One sad thing is slow release speed. I got fed up and read raws over Google Translate, which turned out to be actually not bad (not much worse than AI translation), but the raws got worse (I couldn't read them from Faloo due to paywall or some other restriction) after some, I dunno, 300 chapters maybe. It got a bit painful to read them, and there were plenty of mistakes (hard to tell if those mistakes are present in raws on Faloo, maybe yes, maybe no). Also, the author might've got a bit confused in some places because he ended up calling time loop reincarnation a number of times later on.

Anyway, a great novel. While MC got deus ex machina (time loop), he achieved all he did with his own efforts, so there was a feeling of an actually capable protagonist instead of an average dumbass getting things coz plot armor, wish fulfillment, and coz he's the protag (I think this long phrase describes most urban novel protagonists and "villains"...). I definitely recommend reading it, though you may want to wait for more chapters to be released (actually, there are more chapters translated than 70-80, but they are also paywalled).

If I were to pick at any problems, it'd be that things seem to get a bit less interesting after 200-300 chapters. The feeling of "how is MC gonna surprise people this time" got weaker (the author gradually came to use this formula less), and there were no more interesting new love interests (I don't necessarily like large harems, but it was a problem here because the addition of each love interest generated some highly entertaining drama, which obviously ran out as the expansion of harem slowed down) and shocking events or high-energy drama to keep up the audience's interest.