Three and a half stars.

This manga series starts with our twenty-five-year-old protagonist engaging in one of Japanese youth’s favorite activities: getting killed by a vehicle. Isekai-d into a fantasy world, he quickly comes to grips with his situation, particularly when he realizes that he’s been given, for no apparent reason that I remember, Minecraft powers. And I don’t mean powers to create blocks in a way inspired by the game Minecraft, but literally the whole gamut of how Minecraft works, as far as I recall, from recipes to tools to tricks like creating infinite sources of water with a hole and two buckets. It’s so blatant that I admire the author for it.

The protagonist gets ambushed by a sexy dark elf, who tries to kill him because he’s a human. She realizes that the guy isn’t as horrible as every other human she has come across, and proceeds to spare his life and enslave him instead. She brings him, yanked by a chain, to an outpost of non-humans, from mythical creatures like cyclopes and harpies to every kind of beast-person imaginable. Everyone around him despises the protagonist due to his species, and he comes to learn that in this fantasy world, seemingly all humans are zealous supremacists that force every non-human to convert to their religion, and generally abuse others in terrible ways.

However, the protagonist showcases his Minecraft powers, such as felling trees with a couple of axe hits only for the trunk of the tree to show up detached, straight and processed. The local elders determine that the protagonist is a fabled person from another world, and if they absorb him into their non-human nation, he will become indispensable to their survival.

Meanwhile, the protagonist and his mistress get along well enough that she fucks him the first night. Very graphically, too: full-on hentai. Other than the extremely old elders, every female non-human he comes across is delectable, so he’s bound to end up having a lovely time with these freaks.

The story cleverly builds up throughout the technology tree of Minecraft. The protagonist overwhelms the minds of his new-found lover, friends, and acquaintances displaying reality-breaking feats such as building a structure and removing the supports, only for the structure to remain floating in the air. Most of the fun of this manga comes from the idiosyncratic ways that problems are solved, that could only happen in this story because Minecraft powers are tied to the concept.

When the problems at home are solved and the protagonist’s mistress fully trusts him, the story slides into a war narrative, with the non-humans organizing themselves to restore the kingdom that the humans stole from them. You’re along for the ride as they come up with the logistics of their operation: where they’ll set up outposts, their scouting runs, taking care of refugees, etc., while blazing through technological eras in a couple dozen chapters. I had a blast. You’ll rarely come across stories in which fantasy people solve problems by shooting with bolt-action rifles or dropping bombs.

Now the iffy parts: this is the kind of manga series that provides its readers with what they want, if what they want is lots of boobs, camel toes, and monster-girls wanting to join the protagonist’s growing harem. I’m the kind of fellow who’d rather only have sexy people in manga unless the alternative is more relevant to the narrative; I’m not on board with the modern Western trend of worshipping ugliness. However, I draw the line at characters acting uncharacteristically, like the tough dark elf co-protagonist getting dragged into trying cute outfits, or her being fine with her slave slash lover entering into carnal relationships with other freaks, when initially she was annoyed at him merely mentioning other women. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the stuff mentioned in this paragraph, I may have rated this story close to four and a half stars, for its genre.

Unfortunately, I’ve read as many chapters as have been translated. Given that the manga is adapting a light novel series, it probably has plenty of juice left to drip.