Isekai Tensei – Kimi to no Saikai made Nagai koto Nagai koto Chapter v2109 Discussion

The web/light novel medium is saturated with the isekai genre, so much so that reader standards are going up, yet quality as a whole continues to decline as more garbage is pumped out. I think that now, even what would have originally been considered to be good in a time when isekais were less prevelant is now just not cutting it.

Anyway, onto the main point. Isekais now need something to stand out and separate themselves from the crowd. Do I think this novel does that? Yes, yes I do.

The first thing this novel does is give the character a clearly defined purpose and makes him self-driven. That means that our character has a goal with a distinct conclusion, and wants to actively persue their goal. There are a lot of motivations for protagonists in isekai stories, but a lot of the time they are indefinite (harem and dungeon isekais, for example) or they are tasked with it (kill the demon lord isekais). It takes a little while for the ball to get rolling and for the character to flesh out their desires, but it's done in a very natural way that evolves over the course of the story.

The second thing the novel does well is it creates a realistic protagonist. Asakura's apathy towards the world is completely reasonable, and is actually the crux of his growth throughout the story. At first, he doesn't really care about the problems of the world because it isn't his world. I think isekai stories have tended away from vanilla protagonists, and that's for good reason - people who would put their life on the line to save a foreign world don't exist in reality. I do understand that a completely disinterested protagonist will probably turn some readers off, but I promise that the character is written like that intentionally, and his opinions of the world change for the better as the story plays out. As of where the english translation is at right now (c109), there have just been big changes to the way the protagonist thinks, so it does happen.

There are a couple smaller things that I feel this novel does right. The power-leveling feels fine - the protagonist isn't given amy cheats, but is strong in his own right, and his powers grow over the course of the story, rather than being broken from the beginning with increasingly difficult foes.

Spoiler

His power is levitation, which is a common low-tier magic in the world and is normally used for minor tasks like carrying dishes around in a restaurant. Our protagonist takes it to the extreme since he's terrible at magic, and develops a way to use it to enhance melee combat. Later on he realises how to use it at distances, and very recently in the translations he's found a way to finally break the magic entirely and is practically telekinetic.

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There is a harem, yes. As of this point, there are no s*aves, so it's already better than a lot of other harems. Right now the harem is at 3-4, depending on how you define it, and I do think it'll be a 'one-true-waifu' type harem from how the story has played out. The characters are par for the course, even if that's a low hurdle. Absurdly enough, the writer has used the fact that the protagonist has a diverse harem to pull the story along at some point, which is wonderful. I think the girls are cute too.

It's not perfect, and it's not the cream of the crop when it comes to isekai stories, but it has enough going for it to separate itself from the rest of the garbage this genre has to offer.