- #1
To appreciate this story I feel a reader needs a bit of cultural context: In korea, mandatory public school ends at middle school, which is 14 to 15 years old. After that, a 15 year old gradulate/child is expected to either start working or pay to go to 'high school'. While young people are forbidden from doing high risk jobs, but they do/can work. I highly suspect the MC wasn't an 'adult' as westerners would view it, but more like 'orphan child living in poverty as a teenager'. And in such a case, not having an Id would seem like a really big deal. Especially in Korea.I think it's hard for western readers to get this point. In the western world, it's possible to get work without an id, and many western countries have means for people to get ids without being legal citizens. In this manner, illegal immigration is a 'problem' in our societies specifically because its not actually illegal to hire undocumented workers, and therefore only the worker themselves is at risk 'legally'. And that risk is typically simply being detained and deported if caught. Heart breaking if you have a family, but not a big deal for someone flying solo. But things are different in Korea. Illegal immigrants, when caught, can be fined massive amounts of money depending on the duration of their illegal visit and even imprisoned. The 8 year old cat girl would be risking an approximately 15, 000$ fine or up to 3 years in prison if caught trying to do a 'normal' job. Luckily, she ended up in a world with magic and dungeons and can do non-standard work trading monster parts where apparently ids arent checked.In this context, things start to make more sense. The MC is perhaps, a middle school educated person at best. This would explain their zombie-survival teir knoweldge, as well as their naivete about certain things, and their basic knowledge about living a normal life but also being alien to it. It also explains why they are so absolutely terrified of everything and everyone. A 14 or 15 year old transmigrates to a 14 or 15 year old body, then struggles to survive as a homeless person for 8 years in a country that isnt exactly friendly to forigners, putting them at around 22 years old at the start of the story. As a female pretending to be a male, along side chronic malnutrition while doing physically demanding work, they would still be pretty young looking. I dare say, growth stunted and short. Being four foot (120 cm) is still quite common among the poor in asian countries even after reaching their 20s. One of the main side characters assumes precocious puberty as the explaination for her size, which is a reasonable misunderstanding. But this is my head cannon, the author doesnt specifically clarify these details and leaves it up to our imagination. People get stuck up on this but maybe its not important, since the author chose to directly skip it and head straight into rehabilitating the cute child. Perhaps the narrator is being unreliable, maybe the author is just skipping it. I hope this is clarified in future chapters.If I were an editor trying to publish this, assuming the author doesnt have a big reveal planned later, I feel like there needed to be a good 1 or 2 chapters dedicated to her struggle pre-transformation to really hammer the point how much having no mana is a handicap and maybe a few more physical descriptions to clarify things such as age, physical size, ect to make the misunderstanding easier to rationalize. To be fair, the author does explore these themes later on through various exmples and events, but it really doesnt hit you until a good 40-50 chapters in just how bad her life probably was as other characters explore the consequences of being manaless and her original age is still ambiguous. As time goes on, it's easy to start believing the supposed misunderstandings and question whether the MC really was an adult even though she mentally insists she was. It's just not really clear how old the mc's transmigrated body was. Either way, her mentality is the result of extreme isolation and chronic stress, which is further influenced by the transformation. In a way, she really does turn into an actual child. She isn't scheming, she doesn't plot, she doesnt try to take advantage of people. She just seems like a fundementally good person and it makes me want to know more. The whole dungeon and magic situation is also in the back ground, hinting at a larger plot.tldr;If you are looking to feel some feels, this is a good childcare story to read. Narrator might be unreliable, but theres magic and cuteness. If you don't care about the details, just turn that part of your brain off :D
