I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated (WN) Chapter 150 Discussion

Points given for concept in a main character being an inanimate object, while not totally original it is certainly better than panties... moving on. What this does is remove a great number of tropes that I find overdone in anime, manga and even in light novels. Biggest and most easily notable being the Harem is not found here, and thankfully so. That isn't to say the author doesn't throw in a sizable number of tropes, has zero problems pointing it out through the MC (as if this excuses the use), and moves on to the next one in sometimes rapid-fire succession.

This isn't to say that I don't enjoy some of the tropes; having a 12 year old cat person that's basically super powered by comparison to her peers whilst everyone gawks in shock. I find this humorous on multiple levels and it never gets old for some reason. However, the pointed discussion of her being in the "strike zone" of some men (and women) is one trope I could do with out. Pervasive cultural differences aside it is nice that the MC is mostly protective of her and other women but it doesn't dissuade the creepy factor that often rears it's ugly head anyway.

Where it all starts to fall apart, and where a lot of people will start disagreeing with me on a fundamental level. This story has got one hell of an identity crisis being it can't seem to focus on being either action fantasy or chef battle. The swaps are sometimes jarring in their timing, and breaks the entire flow of whichever plot they're following at the time. I suspect this has more to do with how these stories are written than any designs by the author but it's there none the less. To go into more detail would mean heavy spoilers. Lets just say if you like both action/fantasy and chef battle (like Shokugeki no Souma), this is going to be much more of a plus than a minus. As for me, I'm not into chef battle stuff and it tends to bore me. I get it, food is delicious. :P

When this isn't the issue we run into a few cases of "dues ex machina", which frankly is par for the course on most high magic fantasy settings anyway, but no more extra points for misuse and overuse of them. Thankfully this isn't a huge issue and rarely seen by comparison to many other titles I've read 100+ chapters of.

Lastly, depth of characters, or lack there of. I expect a bit more at this point, but really the two main characters have little more direction than "meh, lets get stronger" Fran wants to evolve and Sensei vaguely wants to know what's happened to him yet both of these goals are so far shoved to the side it's almost as if they don't matter to them at all. As to what evolving is this is a mystery to me, do they lose their tail and beast ears, either I misunderstood something or the translation was off on this specifically. There is more depth found in the myriad of supporting characters which just kind of disappear to the background only to be recalled when needed. Even then they're not exactly deep support characters either, it just that the two in focus are that shallow.

Having read this far into my review I kinda need to thank you, or if you just skipped to the end I'll congratulate you for here's my conclusion. The story is actually quite enjoyable in it's unique fashion among the throngs of reincarnations I've read so far (and that deserves a win in my book). The two are generally likable, if a bit blood thirsty and ruthless, tend to get mad for the other instead of for themselves and such. The flow is fairly quick but this also leads to it's problems of lack of character development and direction even though progression is quite far. Is this worth reading? Absolutely, especially if you dislike harem, love action and cooking mixed together with a bit of politics/intrigue, dungeon delving and skill collecting/leveling.