- #1
I was pleasantly surprised by this series, I gotta say.I wasn't expecting much, but the protagonist is intentionally wimpy at first and grows out of it properly. I'm also not a huge fan of misunderstanding comedy, which the story features, but the misunderstandings are pretty understandable, at least.I feel like a lot of people leaving bad reviews somewhat miss the point, and especially aren't able to handle the transition back to the real world after his training arc. During the training arc, he acquires the strength of a peak god and amasses a large number of subordinates, but he also goes mad in many ways and loses his humanity and memories of his life as a human. After he clears the dungeon, the dungeon grants him a special bonus reward: the consciousness of the him before and after the dungeon are merged in a more or less one to one ratio.Many readers hated that, because he went from being a badass sword god to halfway a downtrodden 15 year old brat again. They perceive it as a d*ck move from the dungeon. I disagree. He'll live an eternity as a god after either way, what he was granted was a way to patch some of the holes in his sanity and to properly experience the mortal life he was robbed of. A mortal life is just a short dream to a god, so why not? It's also what he desperately wished for during the initial thousands of years: just to be able to escape the dungeon and go back to his old life.There are growing pains, of course, but the worst of it fades quickly and he matures. A few slightly annoying quirks remain, but they're easy to make sense of when you think about them, not arbitrary. Overall, the characterization is pretty good. Development is understated, but still present. Many of his followers are one dimensional fanatics, but you can see why and they're more a part of his power than proper characters anyway. Unfortunately, the protagonist tends to entrust training new human followers to the worst of the cultists, though. Their minds all break down and they end up assimilating. The story is guilty of having the character development of other characters in general center around his existence too much, but I'll accept that much wish fulfillment. It's not that hard to believe such a transcendent being possesses strong charisma, either.My last note will be about his gift. The reason is that it seems so unreasonable at first that it gives a bad impression to the work in general. There's much we still don't know about the gifts, but the narrative that they are purely divinely bestowed is questionable. I think it might be something based on the soul of the gift-bearer; although activated by a ritual at a temple, I think the motive from the highest tier of existence is to nurture new transcendants by granting people a crystallization of essence that can become a divinity if one walks their path to the end. Despite seeming more like a curse, his gift is evaluated as a god level gift. I think it's worthy of that evaluation, except that it's pretty useless to humans under normal circumstances. Other than removing his cap on growth, I believe he wouldn't have gotten off with only going slightly mad during his training had he not possessed it. It's a blessing that says "your talent is utter tr*sh anyway, so let's make it even worse and give you bonuses related to endless hard work instead. It'll be hard, but best of luck overcoming the barrier of talent and proving your worth!" Specifically, it suspends normal human mental and emotional needs, allowing one to train with a supernatural focus. I don't see malicious intent in it.