- #1
I am looking at the other reviews and wondering if we read the same things ? Maybe they are all literate in Japanese and read the source ? I don't know.The concept of the story is pretty good. The villainess/Mary is taking on the role of the villainess as a martyr for reasons that are well explained in story. I can't say I agreed with them, but they are not insulting or completely unbelievable. The reviews that say otherwise are just wrong.The characters are above average but I can't give them a great rating. Mary is denser than Osmium. If you could shoot her out of a cannon she could defeat the best tank armor in the world she is that dense. Her sidekick is equally dense. Even so they are both fun and seeing as it is comedy they do work together. Alicia/Alice well she's a little harder to deal with and I think she must have a masochistic streak a mile wide.For the most part, the plot is fun as well. Things move along, there isn't much in the way of padding (Just why do Japanese authors seem to think their works are evaluated by the weight ? (Pagecount)). The story has places it's going, it gives you the information you need to play along at appropriate points and in a believable way. Good marks for that.What brings down the story ?Oh man the writing style and the translations. Journey to the unknown managed a pretty good job of producing readable text. Mushroom Princess and Asian Hobbyist however were really really rough. It was bad enough that I stopped after Asian Hobbyist took the project back from Journey.Combine a poor translation with a writing style that made it very hard to follow who was doing what, and it was just a very difficult read. If this had a less cryptic writing style I would give it a full 5 stars but it is what it is.
