Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi Chapter 613 Discussion

I've read over 600 chapters at this point and rewriting my review to be a bit more detailed.

I really wanted to like this novel, I did. But from reading it for so long, I found out that the author deliberately writes it to be boring. First of all, this is not adventure or action or even a slice of life, it's a cooking novel. Not the good kind, but the bad kind (more on it below). All characters in this novel are one dimensional, and I really mean that every character is like that. No one is changing and no one is growing, and in fact, as novel goes on, the characters become worse.

The worst of all is the MC, who isn't even a real MC. He is completely brainless and has intelligence of about 3 year old. He is also very cowardly and he never does anything. The only thing he does is cook. Most chapters basically go like this:

familiars: I am hungry

mc: and then I cooked

familiars: ooooooohhh! more!

mc:... ok..

That's basically it. MC has no general intelligence and the author constantly plays "no common sense" trope, but not because MC is from a different world or doesn't know stuff, he just generally lacks any kind of awareness and common sense of any normal person. Mind you this guy is an adult who was in the workforce for many years, yet he doesn't understand the concept of value. He also has no goals and only wants to do nothing all day. He is being pushed around by pretty much anyone, including his familiars. Essentially he is the servant and main characters here are the familiars because they are the ones who push the novel forward, not the MC. Every time someone berates MC for anything, all he does is taking the attitude: "yes, you are correct, I am s*upid and it's all my fault". Even if he is in the right. He never ever speaks out for himself. Even his familiars just take him places by force against his will and he never even voices a complaint.

The cowardice of MC is even bigger problem. He is constantly being protected by powerful barriesrs that his familiars cast on him, yet he is always afraid. He even complaints of getting PTSD from sitting inside an impregnable barrier and watching monsters fight at a distance. He never takes initiative and just keeps screaming all the time how everyting around him is dangerous and scary and dangerous. Even though his familiars are the most dangerous and apperantly the most powerful monsters in that world, other than actual gods, probably.

Now, the familiars. You would think they would be interesting, but no. They are even less than one dimentional and behave like bipolar pshycopaths. All they do is "I want to hunt, I want to hunt". So they just want to kill something all day every day. And eat. I am actually surprised that there are any animals/monsters left in that world the way this novel portrays them. Over time their vocabulary basically have 2 phrases: "I want to hunt" and "I am hungry". Most of the time they don't even talk properly and speak with one word sentences.

Essentially, this novel is a cycle of about 5-10 chapters where the familiars forcefully take MC somewhere because they want to mass-mu*der stuff, then they get hungry and make MC cook for them, then they go to some town to sell materials, the guild is getting all impressed while the familiars keep saying "hunt hunt hunt!!!!", and then they go hunt again. There are some stuff inbetween sometimes, but it doesn't make any difference. And the offering chapters are the worst. Any kind of humor you get gets old real fast because none of it is smart or original and basically the same shallow joke gets repeated 600 times.

Now, not everything is terrible, this novel does have it's moments occasionally. But I have a strong urge to punch the MC for s*upidy more often than this novel makes me laugh or makes me entertained. There is basically no overarching plot, or any plot for that patter. It's just an empty novel based on some silly gag comedy tropes that got old fast.