Tensei Shite Inaka de Slowlife wo Okuritai Chapter 533 Discussion

Read the first 30 or so chapters, then MTL’d the rest. This is probably (alongside “Life With a Sister”) the most underrated somewhat realistic isekais, if you just read the reviews.

Most reincarnated characters are hellbent on fighting or something like that; this novel is not like these ones. Do not expect fighting every ten chapters; this is a “slow life” in the truest sense.

Story:8/10

I think the beginning of this story are the most sporadic in the series. When I reread this story, I definitely skip the most after

Spoiler

After the first trip to the royal capital and before the Kagura vacation, and after the vacation until Elinora comes back from training with the knights in the royal capital.

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After this, I think the author really solidified their ideas in the series, and the quality improved significantly overall. A lot of the reviews are talking about lack of plot development, but the story steadily develops over the 500+ existing chapters. This is a slow story, and as of this review, not even 150 chapters have been translated. The highlights are the relationship between Alfred and his family. Alfred is a powerhouse that could probably stalemate anyone even if he can’t defeat them with his magic. He could easily solve any of his fighting problems with magic, but chooses not to for fear of getting found out. Alfred’s inner monologue with himself shows that he may have suffered a regression when he became a child, but as readers that know he is also unimaginably lazy, we are not given a definite answer to what extent his thought process has been effected. His family and friends obviously can’t understand his aversion to work, as they don’t know he reincarnated. This, coupled with the slapstick comedy, leaves an overall enjoyable slowlife where we steadily learn about Alfleet and the world as they are pulled around by it.

Combat:9/10

I think this is the most shocking element of the story. I think the author has amazing focus and is very gifted at narrating combat. It makes me so sad that the author chooses not to write more combat into the story, but learning about the world instead is a necessary part of the story as well. I like to describe poor fighting descriptions as a fight where either side is completely beating each other up, and it switches up throughout the fight. Imagine some early dragon ball fights where Goku gets beat up unilaterally until they become Super Sayan. Don’t get me wrong, some fights are unilaterally lost in the series; it just isn’t realistic that the side getting beat up would switch up so many times in one fight. I’m also not hating on novels that do this; I just think trying to narrate combat without doing this is more refreshing. Al, who is committed to being lazy, almost always avoids putting in more effort than he did initially, so fights are usually consistent and have some entertaining tactics along with them. The worst part of combat is the lack of it.

World-building: 7/10

This world is very well-described. I think every person who reads up until the end of the story will not be lacking details in how magic works in this world, how Alfred builds his magic, and how he does things. Rarely, details are omitted the first time and elaborated later. The author sometimes revises their chapters to include more details for their readers. This helps with understanding the world. The elephant in the room is that the world isn’t very interesting at all. It’s so uninteresting that I’m wondering if the descriptions of the world are filtered through Al’s eternally bored persona and regurgitated to the reader in an emotionless state. I wouldn’t mind if that’s the case, but all “fun” places in the series are purposefully left ambiguous, and new places arerarely introduced. Alfred’s use of space magic is more of a restriction to the author than a plot point considering how little Alfred can use it out of fear of being caught to explore the world around him.

Relationships:9/10

If the world were the most boring part of the series, than the relationships are the saviour of it. Relationship development is the crux of the work. Without good relationship development, the world would be unbearable. The humour, growth and bonding between the characters is mostly realistic and a fun part of the series. I can’t describe how many times I thought a chapter would be boring (this work was basically my starting point into non-fighting focused isekais). The humour can be vulgar or leave you feeling uncomfortable, but if you can get past one or two jokes in bad taste (which have been removed from the manga version) the humour is pretty good.

Overall rating:8/10

I made an account to post this review. I’m not sure how helpful this is to other readers, but this novel gets better as you read more chaoters, and we haven’t even gotten to the good part in the translation yet. I would ask you to wait until chapter 200-300 is released to update your review, but most novels don’t get reviewed that late into reading, so I can understand why people won’t do that. If you’re wondering at chapter 100 if it gets better than now, I can tell you it gets much better. If you’re at chapter 200-300+ and saying the same thing, chances are you won’t like the novel very much.