- #1
Decided to write this review because out of all "classroom summoning" isekai I've read, this was my favorite by far.The setting is extremely simple, but also effective. The classroom is summoned and thrown in an survival battle royale dungeon. Thus, the story is a mix of struggle against the monsters and interactions between the students, including alliances, betrayals and battles.The MC is well written, we can see how his personality changes throughout the novel. He feels believable, since he is neither a cunning cutthroat bent on revenge, neither a people pleasing beta. He makes his choices with survival in mind, and engages in battle using strategy and preparation. He is weak for a very long time, this is not one of those insta weak to OP that we commonly see in the genre. As a reader, a lot of times I felt the same frustration as the MC for the imbalance between his power and that of his classmates, but this only helps make the victories more satisfactory. Regarding his power development Spoiler
up to where I read (c160), he is still not on the same level as the top tier classmates. However, he has a good arsenal, and is able to deal with a lot of them using his own resources.
[collapse]No harem is a great positive imo. Many novels have interesting premises, but are completely butchered later on because of an exaggerated focus on harem girls. The relationship between him and meiko, although very slow paced, is well explored in the novel, both when they are exploring the dungeon as a duo and when they are entangled with other parties.Side characters are essentially his classmates. There are chapters with their POV, either showing the backstory of a character/group that will interact with the MC in the near future, or showing the hero party side. Now, I do admit that some of those feel like a hurdle when we are focusing on the MC, specially the ones with the hero party. However, due to the nature of the novel, with the battle royale for survival as the main drive, most of these chapters are important to give some depth to the characters.It is a very good read, the only downside is that the translation is progressing quite slowly with chapters broken in 2/3 parts for weekly release.