- #1
I decided to redo my review explain what is different and unique in this.The original idea, by the author was to have a story where the main protagonist has multiple lives, and his powers are that of a villain (Hence the title), and this is what we get. When we say that he is in the Villain side we are not saying that he is a super moral character that is being misunderstood as evil, nor some sort of edgy anti-hero, we are talking about a character that went insane, and clings to his ideas of humanity to remain human, without noticing how abnormal he already is: Walking on the walls? Using tent**les to reach somewhere that he can't with only his height? A constantly emotionless face and monotone voice? All check.This is not a protagonist that enemies fear because he used some ridiculously overpowered spell to show his strength, or because he looks hideous, this protagonist is one that, the moment the enemy sees him, he is already disturbed, not by some ugliness or power, but by his lack of presence, by his lack of facial expressions even in the middle of a fight, imagine an isekai enemy having to face an horror character, like Sadako, or that weird pale white child from some japanese horror movie.Now, this is not to say there are no tropes and cliches, although many are played with.-=-=-=-Is this a revenge story? Yes it is, however, this is not a revenge story about betrayal, and you may not have noticed it yourself, but this is actually a rare topic.Most revenge stories make it easy to select the target of revenge because of betrayal: The pretty but evil princess betrayed the super nice protagonist, the party members betrayed the hero, the trusted god betrayed the reincarnator, or the main character found out the king who summoned him/them was the evil guy all along, and the supposed evil guy was actually good all along! But here, we actually have no betrayals, or at least, no relevant ones.Rodcorte, the god at fault for everything, was never his ally, he told him straight that he wouldn't fix his own mistake? The Priest who killed his mother did so because of the church's laws? Both cases cannot be called betrayals, but at least, they are easy to hate, and shall forever be hated.But then. we get some in a more of a gray area of reasoning, for example, were the reincarnators in the previous life wrong in having killed the MC, who was a rampaging undead who was killing everybody in his path?Do they now deserve death for having stopped a natural disaster?Sure, at first MC was pissed and swore to kill them, but then again, would he have been different if he was in their place? Yes, when he heard that they had appeared, he thought they were coming to rescue him, and in that regard, his expectations were betrayed, but that was all it was.Of course, it's not to say Van will ever forgive them for having killed him like that, but, do they deserve to be killed? Some (if not most) would argue that's not the case.-=-=-=-"Oh, but there is the other guy who STOLE his stuff!". Let's be clear that, nobody knew of the mistake until the protagonist was the last one, the other guy is the one who got double gifts from the problematic god, but the guy himself had no intention of taking something that was not his, in fact, he didn't even knew about the misunderstanding. And of course, the cheats were not his or MC's, but the God's, and he could give it to anyone he wanted, so in this case, he gave double to one guy, and left MC with nothing.So, you may think it's annoying but, the other person IS innocent.This is the sort of gray area you will be facing in this story, but don't worry, the author is not being a sadist, even these innocent lucky bastards will have to face their own problems, besides, what's the difference between curse and fortune? Sometimes it can change depending on the POV, right?-=-=-=-So, another very used trope in isekai is the "no attachments" protagonist, what this means is: They have no family, they have no home, they have nothing besides what is on themselves, thus, they are free in a free world, they don't have to worry about their family and friends being killed because they don't exist in this new world, thus they have no obvious weakness and can't be manipulated.This story however is the opposite, the MC's mother is the first one to express him love, yet she dies, so what is his first priority? Revenge? No, it's reviving her, and if he had to chose between killing a revenge target and investigating a new hint to revive her, he will go after the hint. Of course, if there is no hint to help in that regard, and one of those revenge target appears nearby, then hell yeah, TO THE HUNT!.-=-=-=-"OK, and the harem! What about them!? I heard he gets NTR'd!"...So, the protagonist starts his third life as a toddler, and slowly grows up, in current translated chapters, he is 11 years old, while in current raws he is 13+, so the passage of time is somewhat slow, as such, don't expect the little child to have s*x with adults, much less expect adults to have s*x with a toddler.However, that does not mean there are no promises, and the first one to ask the MC for his seed later gets pregnant so as to stop her aging (Racial trait), as she is already the oldest looking woman of the tribe, so, some inexperienced readers will say she was NTR'd by some random unnamed guy, and now the MC has "used goods" waiting for him.Jokes on them, the problem she had was that she couldn't get pregnant, meaning that she had been doing the deed since before MC was even given birth, but she never imp**gnated.IF you are the type to think that way, do not read this novel.Anyway, the waifus are varied, some humanoid ones, some half-humanoid ones, some are virg*n, some are not, in fact, the future is promising that not only oyakodon, we are getting a 3 generation mix here (loli-baba, the daughter buff-onee-sama, the granddaughter who is still a baby, but she will join once she grows up.) And finally, for puritans, the MC's main divine ally is basically someone who had mated with many diverse creatures, giving birth to many children and many new races, meanwhile, one of the main enemies of the story is the one that talks about order and only does that sort of stuff after marriage.So yeah, virg*n Alda & Chad Vida-=-=-=-Now, let's go to the main character: His main characteristic is being unlucky, it's not just a mere trope for lucky pe*vert scenes, his soul literally has no fortune, if he were to bet something by flipping a coin, he would always lose, even if it was a 1 in millions chance.So, what is his super power? Technically, he got no cheat, but, in this story's concept, the soul that would usually be filled with fortune, affinities and the cheats themselves is now empty, meaning that he is unlucky summed with a ridiculous amount of space that **can** be filled with Mana, but no affinity to use magic either way.However, in his second life, after being sold by his mother for booze, and taken in by na*i scientists as a unique person that doesn't even have any affinity, which should be impossible, the researchers found something new on him, and made use of it until this Guinea Pig, the protagonist, died, being the first one to die of the Reincarnators, and finding out about the third life.In his third life, the sole person who loved him was killed in the stakes for being a witch (she gave birth to a vampire's child), and MC goes absolutely insane for that, however, still clinging to humanity. It's not a story about "You want revenge? Then kill the target", as he is the holder of a power of death, and has died 2 times, he is the one that understands the most about death, so, instead of being edgy and childish like some readers seem to expect from a generic story, this is one that also considers the suffering of living as a punishment method.It however does not mean that he does not kill: He does, and a lot, in fact, he later on starts capturing some targets alive to do many sort of inhuman experiments, not to mention most of those die in the process, all for the sake of understanding more of his powers as he grows from an horror movie cover character into a lovecraftian aberration.