The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs Chapter v212 part1 Discussion

The first volume is great (5 stars), the second volume had some things that annoyed me (3 stars), so for now I'll average it out and give it 4.

I really enjoy the isekai genre when it's written/translated well, and this is probably the most fun example I've found in quite some time. Instead of getting reincarnated into a world based off a traditional JRPG (or, let's be honest, an eroge) the protagonist is reincarnated into a world based off of an otome game. I've read a few web novels like this that have a female protagonist, but none with a male protagonist. The primary entertainment in this novel comes from the clash between the protagonist's nature and the way the world is supposed to work, both in terms of game tropes and in-world social mores.

The setting is a completely overdone take on the idea "what if the power dynamic between men and women were reversed?" and, in particular, looking at otome game tropes and describing what a society would have to look like for those tropes to work. It doesn't end up coming out realistic at all, but the novel acknowledges that, and in fact, one character even comes to the conclusion that this society could not possibly have arisen through natural means. An example: the numerical gender balance is roughly even at school age, but among the elderly there are many more women than men, and it's inferred that the reason is that some women intentionally get their husbands killed in battle over and over in order to receive multiple pensions from the government.

Also, there are airships and mecha.

In the first volume, the protagonist learns about the world, gets into the royal academy and ends up screwing up the plans of someone trying to complete the "plot" of the game. He also makes friends with the girl who was originally supposed to be the protagonist, as well as one of the girls who was a villain in the game. All of this is a lot of fun and while the characters were not particularly deep I pretty much enjoyed them all.

Unfortunately in the second volume, the three main characters end up having those "classic" and annoying communication problems that cause extremely pointless drama, and that diminished how much I could enjoy everything else. The actual main plot also wasn't as interesting as the first volume, although it did set up some interesting stuff for the future that makes me feel hopeful.