- #1
I usually avoid gender bender stories like the plague. The only GB story I've read and enjoyed before this was the 'Saga of Tanya the Evil'. However due to the translator of 'The childhood friend of the Zenith' being the one who translates and recommended this I decided to give it a go and I'm glad I did.This is a transmigration story with a protagonist transported into a cultivation game world. He is the only one with game mechanics in the world so far while everything else adheres to the standard ancient China cultivation world. After the introduction chapter the story kicks off with a time skip straight into a year after his transportation so we skip his literal rolling in the mud getting beaten up by farmers phase.The story is funny. The protagonist is a sharp, irreverent and confrontational Korean thrusts into the Murim world with no foreknowledge or genre savvy on the cultivation world and its norms. This results in some funny interactions while he mouths off and gets into conflicts.There are hints of serious issues as the protagonist has flashes of existential struggles with the fact that he was transported and the fact he has a game system like: "Am I real, is this real am I just insane" as he stares at his system screen update before he bottles it up with his favourite coping method, irreverent humour.In terms of power the protagonist is strong for his age, realm and status. He already has some OP cultivation methods with lot of potential for growth and he started off with a violence prone but OP physique. This means we have already gotten some very enjoyable faces slapping. He hasn't interacted with the old monster yet so I'm looking forward to how he handles that.So far my main gripe is that some of the humour is based heavily on Korean/Chinese language humour with puns and such that rely on the original language to be truly funny. The translator does their best to explain those in the footnotes which is quiet funny in itself because they end up looking like footnote of a dissertations lmao.It's early days yet but I'm looking forward to more of this to come. Thanks for picking it up TL.