The Misfit of Demon King Academy (WN) Chapter 18 Discussion

Edited the wording and removed redundant parts as I was a bit riled up while writing this back then so some of it was a bit offensive and harsh, my mistake, I still stand by my opinion and score of course, that's why I only changed the wording and removed redundancy without actually changing any meaning or removing any opinion. The anime sold itself better than the novel given the shorter duration and being given less time to ponder while also utilizing visual means to aid the story and distract from or complement story elements with nice art, it ends up being a perfectly decent OP protagonist anime, but the two are wildly different things despite sharing most of the same story. To people like me, I'd recommend to watch that instead of reading this, after that one can give serious thought about if you loved the story part of it enough to try the novel. If it was out before I read this, I might've ended up with a better impression.

The times I've come across such a grand chuunibyou novel is truly rare. This is, as far as I've read, the essence of cringe solidified. From skill names (every skill has a skill name along with an explanation of what it actually is, like "thought transmission <liikus>" or "Flight <Fures>" or "Transfer "Gatom" or "Growth <Crest>, Contract <Sekt>, why use both the name and spell?), juvenile developments and an inconsistent protagonist (his personality is all over the place, changing whenever the author wants) to immaturity overflowing from every pore of the protagonist and perhaps everyone else in the story as well. Spoiler

They all seem like morons. Such as when he used insane magic by today's standards to massacre plenty of "high level royal demons" and yet when they measure his magic it's at 0 and he gets a crap score. People doesn't seem to think it's weird. The protagonist gives answers to exam questions that are correct yet being s*upidly honest about what really happened which others would believe impossible because he's not smart enough to understand that no one else would know his actual thoughts back then. That's not at the level of s*upid anymore, that has transcended the term

[collapse] The character traits are also overdone which make everyone feel like they only have a single trait they play to the max, like this guy is a "baddie" so he acts evil and won't give up his evil ways no matter what or that person isn't good at speaking so she overdoes the choppy speaking act. Sure, it might be prone to change, but I'd say it's not good practice to make them so bad at the start. Have to love how often the author uses "stare into the abyss" to refer to the protagonist's power and how people can't grasp it all, every time it sends a shiver down my spine as I feel my will to live dwindle just a little bit more. That will never be cool or feel reasonable no matter what explanation we're given, an explanation should've been given before it started being used to lead to a natural development in why it's referred to in that way if it was to be used without cringe.

It's rare to find a novel with such blatant praise for the MC and the MC's own desire to show it off while at the same time pretending to play it off as nothing, which makes it even. Everyone appear to exist to suck the MC's schlong and the MC himself exists to suck his own schlong. It's such a blatant self-wanking praise that I can't even laugh at it. It's so overdone that I have a hard time telling if it's supposed to be a parody or not, but a parody should mark itself clearly as one and be fun, one of the reasons why parodies work is because they make it abundantly clear that it's not serious. Giving it 18 chapters to prove me wrong was all too kind. This should be a test of how long you can endure the cringe before giving up.

It doesn't make things better that the MC acts like an overconfident teenager who gained too much powers for nothing (we know he earned them in his past life, but he sure doesn't act like it). He's literally going around looking down on everyone and acting like he's so much better than everyone else and while this is true, of course, what are you trying to prove by showing off frequently? A real, true badass doesn't need to show off and rub his own ego, he knows he's the best so why would he care about what others think and why would he actively provoke ants that don't matter to him at all? Why would he be in such a rush to prove himself? How about a little maturity? This guy, he acts like that annoying power-trip teenager you see in some novels that suddenly gained extreme power at little to no cost and gets all inflated, thinking they're on top of the world with no rival. It's simply not reasonable given his background. Spoiler

Everyone treats him like he's nothing yet he has over and over again proven the opposite and showed that he can do things that clearly only the founder could do, but they're just reacting with "Oh my goood, who is heeeee, impossibru"... He clearly has countless ways to forcibly make everyone recognize who he is, by magic or wit, but he doesn't do anything.

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Not saying no adult could enjoy it, but I believe that people who value logic, common sense and intelligence wouldn't enjoy it, especially not if it's taken seriously or if they're not baptized already by the story from the anime that was presented in a more bearable and enjoyable manner so they can skip some parts or just know exactly what they're getting into. It's so cringeworthy it could pass off as a parody at times yet it's not a parody. If it was just poking fun at typical chuunibyou novels and that was made clear with some more comedy, it would be fine. Maybe when I was in my teens, this would've been enjoyable, so perhaps I'm not even part of the target audience. Oh well, plenty of content on the internet to enjoy.