The Death Mage Who Doesn’t Want a Fourth Time Chapter 145 Discussion

Definitely one of the better isekai stories

Now, if you're reading this, you're probably already familiar with isekai tropes (guy died, reincarnated/transported into another world with myriad of blessings and cheat powers, gathers harem, etc, etc)

Now, it's common to give a spin to the initial formula. In this, the guy (Hiroto) due to a mistake reincarnated with only a high amount of mana, but in a ridiculously bad circumstances the gift turned into a curse as he becomes no more than a lab rat. When the second reincarnation happens he swore revenge to his classmates who killed him in the second life (and has myriad blessings unlike his), and to prevent that happens God actually gave him a curse hoping him to kill himself ASAP.

Form this point, it can easily turns into another isekai

type story where it's basically revenge fantasy (like Nidome no Yuusha or a few others). The first few chapters support this as he is born to a very persecuted race, and bad things happen to him again.

Yet he does not let hatred completely consume him. Eventually, with his death magic power he gathers a collection of vassals and acquaintances of a certain kind (Undeads, mostly). What is most appealing here that makes it better than most is that his vassals, though loyal to him, does not fall into one note characters with typical hero worship isekai stories usually do. At least, not the inner circle. They feel like actual supporting characters and closer to surrogate family, teaching him of the ways of the world, and reprimanding him when he does wrong. When they asked him what does he really want and he answers with "be happy" it struck a chord with me, reminding of the old adage "the best revenge is a life well-lived." He also does not hesitate to tell about his situation (all of it, including the reincarnation thing) that makes their relationships is not one-sided/imbalanced like most other isekai stories

At this point of the review, he's still collecting vassals, so to speak, so the jury's still out on the overall direction of the story, but here's hoping it goes somewhere nice.

Another good point of the series is that it does worldbuilding decently, giving us information step-by-step as it becomes relevant to the story and not with inelegant exposition. It also does not fall into the garbled wall-of-text trap where the "story" is exploring the RPG mechanics of the world step-by-step for thousands of words.

The reason why I did not give it the best score possible is that while it did not do anything bad, it does not particularly do something great either, and still fall to the typical isekai story progression of "things happening" and "going with the flow" (which I guess is kinda inevitable for web-serialized stories), and also some hints of harem (which I do not think as particularly negative because the relationships are much healthier as it's based on trust instead of hero worship)

TL:DR

Recommended, highly so for those who enjoy isekai type stories