- #1
I like this manga generally and after reading for so long I can say that most people who complain about this manga really don’t get how slice of life works. This isn’t an action packed story driven by any overarching plot or purpose, it’s a story about a dude who is cowardly and doesn’t have an otaku mindset at all being dragged into another world and having to survive and play chef to overpowered creatures with nothing better to do. It’s basically supposed to be a food and product display in the form of a novel and hey some Japanese companies liked the idea so much that they sponsored this into being an anime that’s basically an obvious product placement but who cares the food looks amazing and the characters are genuinely funny and interesting.My only complaint about the novel itself is that the author doesn’t really put in any character growth whatsoever and it’s just the same character never really changing facing different but similar situations. But his interactions with other characters and the world around him is what is the most entertaining thing about the story and why I like it.A little warning though, the current translator/editor is kind of self-centered and is always criticizing the author when they aren’t properly translating the novel. Gumihou does good work and their edited version is good to read, they do correctly interpret and edit the story in most cases to convey the authors words if they were an English speaker but the biggest problems are that they cut out too much content deeming it redundant and thus severely cutting the actual length of the chapter, no to mention they try to hide this putting spaces between every sentence, and that they are arbitrarily cutting out important details of the story to fit their view of how they think the story should go. SPOILER: To emphasize this, in chapters 487 and 488, the author writes that the group want the entire giant crab to eat and they convince the MC to take the whole thing with them and not sell any of it to the guild thus creates the problem of how to cook the whole giant thing which leads to the MC remembering a technique they did earlier in the story which they then use to cook the crab. GUMIHOU rewrites this to where the MC Sells parts of the crab and only takes the legs and then suddenly they are using the technique without any context of where it came from or why they are using it over normal methods. Also GUMIHOU posted an unedited version and their edited version to try and show how much better their interpretation is but what’s scummy about this is that they intentionally show us what is basically a machine translation that’s not properly translated and they think that justifys them changing the entire sequence of the MC’s thought process and interaction. Yes GUMIHOU in those same chapters add in some nice details and flair, but they intentionally changed the story and content of the chapter instead of doing a proper translation. This also begs the question on what else they’ve technically cut out that would help make sense of some chapters if we had the proper context.spoilers:Mukoda the Protagonist is blessed with two cheat abilities; an infinite item box which can carry anything and preserve anything that goes into it and the ability to convert this worlds currency via his shopping interface and buy goods from Japan, including name brand items. This catches the eye of divine beasts and gods who highly covet his items cause they’re world does not have such luxuries.Mukoda is basically a Level 1 person most of the time, despite him leveling up slightly, being dragged around by someone several hundreds levels higher than him into dangerous and calamitous situations that even scare the people native to the new world. So of course no matter what protections he has on him, doesn’t mean he gets desensitized to the danger and scariness of the situation.This juxtaposition of a cowardly person who’s biggest skill is cooking with high quality ingredients with these battle junkie familiars creates some very interesting scenarios, along with the hilarity that the gods also bring into the equation, makes the story all the more fun to read.