Seirei Gensouki Chapter v8 (finished) Discussion

This is the most exhausting light novel I've ever read. The author took what was a badly paced web novel that was already full of filler and stretched it out as much as possible. But because they had nothing to fill it with, they had to settle with absolute nothings that just make the story worse.

Of course, the pacing isn't the only thing that makes this exhausting to read. But before I get into that, let me save you some time.

Does the idea of a horde of little girls falling in love with someone who is mentally 20 years old (25-ish if you count the time spent in the novel) bother you? How about a detailed instance of an elementary school student falling for that 20 year old while he's in that adult body? Do you like characters with actual personalities? Or villains who's motive to do bad stuff actually exist? Do you want something that isn't going to waste your time?

If you answered yes to any of those questions then this novel isn't for you. Turn back now and burn this novel from your mind. But if you're considering reading this novel anyways then lets move on to the actual review.

The blurb for this story really only covers the beginning of the first arc, so let me tell you what this story is actually about. Rio / Haruto (who I would normally just refer to as the MC, but for reasons I'll get into later I'll call Mr. Perfect from now on) spends the beginning of the first book moping around pining after his missing childhood friend. Suddenly he dies and wakes up as some homeless kid in another world.

Some stuff happens which I'll put in spoilers later to talk about in more detail but then the school arc starts. Of course Mr. Perfect is the smartest student ever and gets picked on by the nobles (just the guys though, the girls are too busy falling for him) and then something else happens and the school arc (along with volume 1) abruptly ends.

After that Mr. Perfect wanders the land saving little girls and making them fall in love with him for the rest of the series.

I'm not kidding about the little girls by the way. The loli tag doesn't mean there's 1 or 2 lolis in the story to appease the lo*icons. Almost every girl in the story is a loli, including the 12 year old teacher. So if lolis make you uncomfortable, this story really isn't for you.

Speaking of girls, there are only 3 types of girls in this story. There's the girls who aware that they're in love with Mr. Perfect, the girls who have yet to realize that they are, and direct relatives who may or may not fall into the other 2 categories as well. Unfortunately it's clear that the author prioritized quantity over quality because there's a ton of them (I actually lost track) and none of them are any good.

This is mainly due to the fact that, outside of the first book, there are only 3 types of conversations as well.

The first is people complimenting each other over and over again. I'm fairly certain that every single girl has been described as "beautiful" at this point. I'm not saying that the author describes how beautiful they are; they simply have the characters use the word "beautiful" to describe each girl. That's probably because they have no defining character traits other than being a loli (which isn't a defining trait in this story because they're all lolis).

The second type is girls discussing how perfect Mr. Perfect is. This happens way more than necessary especially since they never say anything new. It's always about how strong, cool, handsome, mysterious, or polite Mr. Perfect is.

And the third is people apologizing repeatedly over trivial things using the most polite speech possible. For example: Spoiler

"I'm sorry. I know that this is impudent of me, and for that I am most ashamed, but could I ask that you refrain from asking my reason as part of my reward? Of course, I have absolutely no intention of harming the hero in any way, and will explain the situation properly when the right time comes, " Rio said, bowing his head deeply to Liselotte.

[collapse] He talks like this to every single character by the way. Half his words are wasted because they're just overly formal filler. That goes for the other nobles in the story as well. And there's a lot of them.

Honestly I'm starting to think that the author is have a personal competition with themselves trying to see whether they can call a character beautiful or have a character apologize more.

Oh yeah, and occasionally characters will introduce themselves over and over. As in they'll introduce themselves to a group, and everyone in the group introduces themselves as well. Then they move to another spot where there are more characters and everyone reintroduces themselves yet again. But it's hard to consider this a form of conversation no matter how often it happens.

As a result of this the girls can't ever have a real conversation, even when something that should be traumatic happens. One particular instance of this actually triggered me because it's a pretty serious issue. Spoiler

One of the girls actually almost gets r*ped but is saved, of course, by Mr. Perfect himself. Did that cause any emotional damage? She doesn't have time to talk about that. What's important is making sure the reader knows she has a greater appreciation for how perfect Mr. Perfect is now. Then they sell the rapists (who she's known for a while) to s*avers. Any thoughts on that? Of course not! More importantly there's another damsel in distress for Mr. Perfect to save over there!

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I take that back. That thing in the spoilers reminded me that one of the girls does in fact have something that sets her apart from the rest. After all that's happened to her she should really have her name changed. Her middle name should be "In". And her first and last names "Damsel" and "Distress". Quite literally the only times Mr. Perfect interacts with her is when he's saving her. I don't mean from something like bullying. I mean life threatening stuff. Spoiler

In the first book she's kidnapped and saved by Mr. Perfect. Then she's shoved off a cliff and saved again by Mr. Perfect. 2 minutes later she is attacked by a Minotaur and saved yet again by Mr. Perfect. That's 3x in 1 book. And then 2 more times in a later book.

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Speaking of fights, they're pretty bland. It's mostly just reading about how Mr. Perfect elegantly slices up monsters that give everyone else trouble. But worse than being bland, most of them are filler. Spoiler

The Minotaur fight I mentioned early for example had 0 effect on the story. If the monster wasn't there then the story would have been exactly same, except the MC would've saved DID (Damsel In Distress) one less time. The fight at the end of book 2 is also filler. And a bunch of other fights as well.

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They don't even help the pacing, which is significantly worse than the web novel thanks to all the filler and pointless inner monologues. It takes about 4 books for the story to even start, and when it finally gets going the story is constantly interrupted by completely irrelevant filler that wasn't there in the web novel. For example: Spoiler

At one point Mr. Perfect saves the DID again along with some other important people. Some of the people are important to his goals, and others are dangerous because they might blow his cover, which he doesn't want. From their perspective they've just been saved by a mysterious and extremely powerful pretty boy. And then it cuts to a scene miles away of girls doing nothing and preparing to go to the pool. Which they have for some reason. And swimsuits.

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By the way, if you're sick of me calling the main character "Mr. Perfect" at this point, you'd better get used to it if you're going to read this story. Because the girls do it way more than I do, except instead of just using a name, they take several lines of dialogue to praise him.

The pointless thoughts are even worse. They reveal how oblivious Mr. Perfect is and insult the reader's intelligence at the same. For example: Spoiler

Meanwhile, Hiroaki had remained silent the entire time up until this point. "... It seems you were sure busy this time."

"Are you in better health now too, hero? I had heard that you fell unconscious after releasing your power..." Rio asked while examining Hiroaki's face.

"Who knows. You say that, but all I did was exterminate a couple of those c*ckroach-like monsters before spending the rest of the time sleeping. The one who had the biggest spotlight defeating minotaurs and rescuing Flora was you, wasn't it?" Hiroaki said in a blunt, sulking tone. His words almost sounded like he was jealous of Rio's achievements.

... What's that about? Rio couldn't understand why Hiroaki was in a bad mood, so he tread carefully.

"I highly doubt that to be the case..."

"No no, your stocks are only soaring higher. There are rumors about you circulating everywhere in the mansion. It's almost like the birth of a new hero. Right, Flora?" Hiroaki said, suddenly addressing the princess.

"Eh? Ah, y-yes." Surprised, Flora nodded along on the spur of the moment.

"See? Told you." Hiroaki shrugged his shoulders, unimpressed.

"Sir Haruto, your tea." Aria approached Rio and quietly placed tea on the table. Beneath the teacup was a piece of paper with writing on it.

Rio narrowed his eyes when he spotted the letter under the cup. He wondered if it was Aria's writing; it was written in excellent penmanship. After witnessing the attendants praising your contributions, combined with the fact his own efforts fell short, he has been left in a bit of a sulky mood. The fact that Princess Flora has taken an interest in you has also been another source of his bad mood. We apologize for the trouble.

There was no need for Aria to be the one apologizing at all. It was more likely that Hiroaki had been the one to demand his presence at their meeting, and there was no way for anyone to deny him.

I see. Rio understood what Hiroaki must be feeling and thanked Aria courteously. Meanwhile �

Bah, what is this? This dull, dull feeling... Like having a newbie join and receive clear favoritism from their superiors right away. Nothing kills the mood more than this... Hiroaki's eyes must have been clouded with envy, as his thoughts were completely unreasonable.

It was true that giving preferential treatment to a newbie with no achievements whatsoever could only be interpreted as favoritism. It was an action that would antagonize the senior figures that had supported the organization until now, in some way or another.

However, it was a different story when that newbie had already shown more outstanding results than the senior figures, objectively proving their worth and capability. Any good organization would give such talented figures a befitting amount of appreciation.

If anything, it would be a problem if an incompetent person was valued more highly than a talented person. Organizations were not formed from machines, after all. If incompetence was praised and talent ignored, the talented people would naturally feel discontent. There were plenty of other opportunities to be had by talented people, so only the incompetent ones would inevitably remain in the organization.

Of course, there were some cases of organizations placing higher value on areas other than visible results, but he wasn't a psychic. There was no way he could see through that; he wouldn't know unless it was indicated as such. Not to mention that Rio was a person outside of the organization. For Liselotte and Duke Huguenot, he was their savior and the largest contributor to the relief efforts, making him someone they wanted to get closer to by all means. He had achieved results that were objectively impossible to fault, so it was only natural for him to be praised. Or rather, they would be distancing themselves from Rio if they didn't, which would make Liselotte lose face.

That was why Hiroaki's discontent towards the warm hospitality being shown to Rio was simply being misdirected. Or rather, if he was envious, then he should have used that envy as a driving force instead. But Hiroaki lacked the spirit for that.

Ah yes, the neutral side character that appears later than the main character while being stronger too. The one that has to ruin the overpowered uniqueness of the main character, right? What a drag.

Hiroaki disapproved of Rio from whatever point of view he could think of. In his head, he was being logical, but the fact his evaluation was based off his emotions meant it was anything but.

[collapse] They spent several lines apologizing and praising Mr. Perfect just to get to that point, only for Mr. Perfect to explain why someone would be jealous of him. There's no need for an explanation. It's obvious to anyone who has half a brain. Which Mr. Perfect apparently doesn't have because he needed someone to confirm it for him.

You can almost feel the author desperately graps at whatever words they could find to maximize the amount of filler in this story. That combined with the lack of variety of speech and overly polite way everyone talks makes this novel completely exhausting to read. I had to take several breaks to get through it all.

Oh yeah, and here's some spoilers that I also I want to comlain about while I'm writing this review.

Spoiler

Remember that girl that Mr. Perfect spent book 1 pining over? Well she comes back as a 15 year old. So this 25 year old guy finally gets his chance to be with a 15 year old girl. That's creepy.

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Spoiler

The main villain has no reason to do any of the things he does. He has this strange fixation with messing with DID, so Mr. Perfect saves her. It seems like the only reason the bad guy exists is to create the distress that Mr. Perfect saves the damsels from.

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Spoiler

The 3rd book is entirely pointless. The WHOLE BOOK is filler. Mr. Perfect goes to a village and make some more girls fall for him. Then he leaves and the girls are never heard from again. We do learn that Mr. Perfect's mother was a princess, but that's to be expected from someone as perfect as Mr. Perfect

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Spoiler

The 8th book is literally Mr. Perfect picking up the girls (and 1 guy) to go to a party. That's it.

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I'm sure there's other to complain about, but it's not worth taking the time to think and write about. Just like how you shouldn't bother reading this book.