- #1
I like to call that moment of disillusion with a novel you really liked at the beginning but starts to kinda annoy you after a few days as the “100-chapters phenomenon.” This has happened to me in every WN with chapters of around 1.5k - 2.5k words I've read from this site, but especially Japanese WN with a romance aspect to it. Once you go past the 100-chapters mark, you start to clearly notice the cracks in the plot, those little things you found sort of unsatisfactory or maybe didn't even notice start to pile up, and BAM, you find yourself not enjoying it as much and eventually dropping it because you don't expect it to get better (or the big event that's the core premise of the novel, like a couple finally getting together, already happened and the author just meanders about).So, I have very mixed feelings about this particular WN. I am disillusioned with it but at the same time feel that the author is taking the piss and he himself doesn't even care, so why should I? In the end, I'm kind of like “meh, next chapter, ” and keep reading anyway.To start with, yes, this is another “kind of” deconstruction of the isekai genre. It's exactly as the premise says but with a dumb harem and a dense protagonist. However, the author wrote the characters and the initial setting really well. The struggles of the protagonist at first really hit close to home. I was actually emotionally invested in him, and Kuro, and the two other girls. It really is a shame that the author then went “harem lol” and forgot everything that made these characters so good. Also, the MC literally has the power to sense the emotions and vague thoughts of other people but at the same time he's like “a woman liking me in a romantic way!?? Impossible! There's no way I could even know if that's true, regardless.”But, as I said before, I can't even get mad because the author literally takes the piss out of the plot or the characters at the end of the chapter in his notes. Like “yeah bad guy loses, spoiler lmao, ” or “The girl likes so, how are you so dense, MC!?” Considering that, even if it's a dumb harem novel, the characters (mainly the love interests) and the world-building are sufficiently compelling to keep me reading chapter after chapter.On a side note, yet again another Japanese webnovel translation that could've greatly benefitted from a native speaker editor. It looks like it's at least heavily reliant on MTL, leading to very direct translations and awkward wording, and the occasional sentence that makes no sense and it's impossible to decipher. But, honestly, I can't even bring myself to be mad about it because the translator pretty much posts daily between this and his other novel.