I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship, so I Became a Space Mercenary Chapter v11341 Discussion

It's fine and all but it seems like the author really struggles writing tension into it. The battles tend to be quite flashy at first and then just taper off without much in the way of climax. Hiro charges in, overpowers everything in his way, and then you're reading the mop-up conclusion without realizing the battle is already over.

The crew basically always have everything they need and are always facing odds they can handle. There were about two moments thus far that seemed at least a little dicey and actually generated some emotion beyond the usual playing around in the protagonist, but then he just immediately drops his complaints. The first one he at least gives some of a reason for why he was wrong about tactics so it could be seen as him being in the wrong, but the other time he's acting like it never happened and has completely moved on. Way too episodic.

Spoiler

Once, Commander Serena ordered his ship to not evade so a bombardment would succeed using him and his crew as bait. He was notably angry and then dropped it completely and thought of it as him not knowing a large fleet's tactics and putting himself in a bad position to start with. Even if he was in a bad position, he was used as bait and his life was risked. I thought at least even if he dropped it that Commander Serena would have maintained some of that guilt but it has never come up again as far as c341 anyway.

The second dicey instance was when a pirate merc (who was abruptly revealed to be another isekai'd character) ambushed him in the middle of a crystal swarm and was sniping him through the swarm. He got a message from her saying she wouldn't try again and she has not been mentioned in the story since. It seems wild to me that he doesn't even mention it to the anti-pirate-fleet-commanding Captain Serena so she would at least not hire the pirate mercenaries or leave that vulnerability exposed, but nah, just their usual banter with no, "oh hey, no biggie, but this large gold rank mercenary fleet are actually pirates and definitely affected your last unsuccessful operation against those pirates who seemed to have imperial army insiders." I get that his character is that of a gamer and his over-the-top resistance to the call to action are meant to be comedy and most of the time they come off that way, but just leaving that thread there without a single line of lip service is reality-breaking to me.

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Every character is pretty reasonably fleshed out as a character with character traits, but the motivations of the harem members are pretty hard to understand beyond the indoctrinated priestess whose cult told her to serve him and the maidroid AI who is programmed to love and be loyal to him. Like, they all love him for one reason or another, but half of Mimi's character is based on an off-the-cuff suggestion to travel around to eat food?

In terms of unpleasant things, dwarves in this universe are basically just shorties, but they're frequently described as looking like elementary school children. They are described more as having adult figures as his relationship with them progressed. Outside that, there are three members of his harem that are under 18. Mimi is described as being around 17, Chris is 12 (which is also underage in-universe), and the priestess girl (Kugi?) is described as younger than Mimi (though she is also nonhuman, she appears to be a three-tailed fox beastperson). Hiro is 27.

Yeah, it's gross. Most of it makes sense in-universe, but the Chris stuff really is unsettling. In her second appearance I thought I was watching the movie "Thirteen". I guess the author didn't want as much overlap with Serena, the other noble. Serena's apparent age is only described once and I can't recall how young that was supposed to be, but I'd be surprised if it was fully an adult. As long as you buy in to the universe's premise, you can probably ignore how Mimi and Kugi have been/are being groomed/trafficked. Kugi is more recent but she appears to have been raised for this single purpose then moved across the galaxy. Mimi at least made some decisions on her own even though she really didn't have any other options.