Michael
Beautiful artbook. Contains all the illustrations for Ikaruga, since that's probably what you're after.
I personally liked this one much better than v1, since v1 was just establishing basic RPG/isekai power grinding. This one has fun boss fights, good comedy, funny character interactions, overall it's just the better volume. I'm excited to read v3.
A fun read. Word of warning though, the first chapter is absolutely mediocre and is nothing but your standard “I killed X and got these skills” for an entire damn chapter. I recommend reading the beginning of the chapter right up until he kills the goblins and starts talking about his skills in autistic detail, and then skip straight to the end when he encounters the slave carriage. You will miss absolutely nothing by doing so and can get to the enjoyable parts.
A really funny read, but it depends on your tolerance for manzai comedy. The MC is borderline insane, makes for an entertaining read but it can be frustrating or annoying if you're not into that kind of thing. However, the first half of volume 1 is an absolute slog to get through because it's your typical isekai stat grinding crap. Once he finally reunites with his classmates, it picks up.
Picture the most stereotypical ecchi harem story from an eroge/manga/anime you can think of. That's this story. It's exactly as you expect it. The jokes play out as you expect them. The archetypes play out as you expect them. “But of course they do, he's in an eroge game!” you say, but it's still garbage. Not worth reading at all. I must have been bored when I decided to read this.
A dull volume, basically a filler episode. 80% of it is exposition explaining some background info on Leadale's game system and the mystery of how they ended up in a game world, but it's sort of whatever and kept intentionally vague. Probably because the author realized how ridiculous it sounded. One of those “the mystery doesn't need to be explained” situations.
I ended up dropping it a few chapters in. The constant POV switch between the real-world MC and Kuroi gave me tonal whiplash and made it hard to get into. This story would have been much better if it focused entirely on Kuroi, and instead just implied that she's being controlled by a higher power (even keeping it as a guy playing a videogame in another world). The potential for that would be greater I think, because the concept of a character becoming a devout Apostle while she's a character in a game would be really interesting. My eyes glazed over every time it swapped back to the MC explaining game mechanics and hamming it up for his livestream audience, because it would come right after Kuroi killed a bunch of monsters or whatever.
Finally, another factor that led to me dropping it is that the writer has a very slow release schedule. Volume 2 came out all the way back in 2020, and he has kids and it's not even clear if he's still writing at a regular pace. I'm not gonna wait years for another volume of a series I'm only vaguely interested in.
The art is top notch, though.
This volume is basically filler, and it wasn't written that well. It exists just to setup the next volume.
- Surprise! The Church is actually corrupt, and the Head Paladin is an evil rapist. Said Paladin has a habit of going around seducing virgins, and apparently getting a few pregnant, but no one seems to notice or care.
- The drill instructor nun attaches herself to the MC for no discernible reason, other than her just wanting to be a teacher? And it has the makings of an awkwardly forced love triangle with Ari. She has no personality besides “jealous clingy teacher.” She just comes off as pushy and annoying, seemingly there to be a love conflict for no reason.
- The Demon King in disguise is just hanging around in a rural adventurer's guild for no reason. He said that his goal is to destroy the world, but he can't kill anyone himself, so he has to find someone to do it for him. So why go to bumfuck nowhere? He didn't know that Inori existed when he was summoned, so he apparently thought that this rural town was the perfect place to find the instrument of his revenge.
- Middle of the volume is filler that you can skip and not miss anything.
- Volume ends on a weak cliffhanger. Random Summoner chick wants revenge and to kill the church. Inori is going to use her to kill the church. Because... why? Why does Inori care about the church?
Volume 3 better knock it out of the park, or I'm dropping this. Which is a shame, because volume 1 was great.
The volume that made me drop the series. I finally realized that it's just been nonstop teleports behind you fight scenes for the past few volumes, and virtually none of the fights have stakes to them, and I found myself just skipping forward to the end of the fight. Everyone goes Super Saiyan Ultra Blue Instinct God Supreme God Max, blah blah. The series just isn't for me anymore. If you like reading hundreds of pages of fight scenes, you'll have a great time, but I just stopped caring.
This is easily one of the worst things I have ever read, and I've read a lot of garbage. It's not even consistent as a power fantasy wank, because by the end of the volume he almost gets his ass kicked anyway despite him supposedly training for a billion years or whatever. An embarrassing effort by the author, who has no sense of scale when it comes to time (he should've trained for 500, maybe 1,000 years instead). Yen Press must have gotten this for dirt cheap, because otherwise they got ripped off.
A bland read. It's basically a heavy-handed, preachy “killing is wrong. If you kill him, you'll be just like him!” story. The character are one-dimensional, and the titular Undead King doesn't really have a character arc besides “I just, like, want everyone to live in peace, maaaan.” The conclusion is not satisfying, and the bad guy basically gets away with everything but is now a bit more inconvenienced.
Despite the Goodreads title saying “Vol 1”, this is a one-volume read (it came out in 2020, so it's either that or the next volume hasn't come out for whatever reason, but I doubt the story will continue with how it ended).
A decent little comedy. The skill wankery is kept to a minimum thankfully, so you won't have to read multiple pages about how he leveled up in ditch digging. In fact, I don't remember seeing anything like that at all, although Skills do exist. The setting is amusing and the lead heroine is fun. Hoping the plot doesn't take itself too seriously later though.
I'm pretty sure I wrote a review for this, but it seems to have been deleted... So I'll repost.
This review is completely about the official translation by Breakthrough Books (distributed on Lulu.com, which is incorrectly listed here as the publisher). It's nigh-unreadable. It was translated by the owner of the tiny publisher, a native Japanese with a tenuous grasp on English, and as such is a pain in the ass to slog through. Should've saved up some money and hired a competent native English translator instead of trying to translate it yourself. Also, the covers are ugly and have nothing to do with the books themselves. Here's hoping that a real, competent publisher picks it up instead someday. Embarrassing release.
Starts off okay-ish (when was the last time you saw a light novel about pirates?), but quickly devolves into your usual isekai slop. I knew it was going to happen but read it out of boredom anyway, would not recommend.
Another school arc. This series has been treading water over what is almost the exact same plot ever since volume 2, and it looks like it continues to volume 5 at least. He goes to yet another school (thankfully it's quickly glossed over this time), he fights yet another upstart noble that he inevitably crushes, everything falls in his lap, blah blah, same as the previous couple volumes. When I was about to finish the volume, I said to myself “is the school arc finally over?”, only for him to say that college is next. I'm on the verge of dropping this series, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the first couple of volumes. But it feels like the author has no idea where to take the story, or what he's even doing.
I noticed that he's also the author of Otome Mob, which I also dropped, so I guess it's not surprising that I might end up dropping this series, too...
I ended up dropping the series on this volume. It was a fairly mediocre read overall, but this volume finally pushed me to give up on it.
Really, FUNA? Doing a soft reset of basically the entire story just so you can shoehorn a new cast in? Did you get bored of the current story, or did you not know how to progress it?
A bland, formulaic read. This volume is about an orphanage, and it plays out exactly as you expect.
It's an okay read. The crux of the comedy is that our MC is super dense (well beyond the point of incredulity, bordering on flat-out stupidity), and the novel is a stream of “he's so awesome and humble” -> “there's no way he can survive that” -> “wow he survived that, he's super awesome and humble and heroic.” If either of those bother you, you won't like it. The plot itself seems interesting enough-conspiracies, a Holy Empire that's probably exactly what you imagine-but the characters are pretty flat so far. It's sorta whatever, if you've got nothing better to read.
Bland garbage. This series also suffers from the eight deadly words – “I don't care what happens to these people.” None of the side characters are interesting, and they act in absurd and irrational ways. Find something better to read.
A fairly disappointing volume, it's basically filler and setup for the next volume. Guess we have to wait another year for Slow Press to release volume 16 before anything of consequence happens.
I was worried because volumes 3 and 4 were sorta disappointing, but this one pulled the series up just before I was on the verge of dropping it. Great volume.
Bland and predictable. If you've read literally any other OP misunderstanding comedy, you've read this one.