- #1
I was reading the Seven Seas translation, which doesn't split things up into the original chapters but rather groups them into one large chapter. So I'm not sure exactly which chapter I was on before I quit, though it was just after returning to civilization with Fran.Although the "I'm a sword" gimmick is moderately interesting, the way it's treated feels like it isn't exploring its potential. The protagonist can kill things perfectly fine on his own, and the only reason why Fran wields is... I dunno, he was bored? The way everything is handled feels perfectly generic.And these generic beats are executed very boringly. The prose reads like someone telling you about grinding in a video game they play and you don't. Even once Fran is introduced, the plot still skips over non-fighting things so quickly that there's no opportunity to care about her character as anything other than Party Member 2.Also... after the protagonist returns to civilization, there's a conversation where a merchant tells him the equivalent of "goblins are always chaotic evil" and the protagonist wonders if that's really true... after he spent the last hundred pages and several weeks (my estimation, at least) slaughtering them with the sole justification of being annoyed by the way they look and act.Like. It would be one thing if he and the story just neatly assume that standard JRPG world tropes apply and humanoid monsters are just monsters. It's a bit weird of a thing to quickly gloss over for a modern man, but I can live with genre assumptions. It's another thing entirely to have the protagonist only consider "maybe goblins aren't always chaotic evil" after a hundred pages of slaughtering them for the most sociopathic reason! This makes the protagonist immensely unlikable in a way I sincerely doubt the author was smart or creative enough to intend.This is an idiot plot, in the sense that it makes me wonder if the author is an idiot.