Four-and-a-half stars.

For once, this isn’t an isekai: the story is set long in the future, after some apocalypse about which the survivors are still trying to figure out the specifics. Apparently their predecessors had become so advanced that they were mixing biological engineering with super-AI or some shit, until their industries went haywire and started mass-producing mutated monsters that overwhelmed the world. Those facilities seem to be still active somewhere, pumping out enhanced monstrosities. Seemingly the sole remains of humanity live in a megacity. More accurately, the wealthy live in the megacity. The rest of humanity (or just Japan?) endure in the surrounding slums. Among the unwashed masses, the local badasses are known as hunters, the only ones daring to venture into the wasteland to make their living. Killing monsters is profitable if they’re threatening the city or other hunters, but their main source of income are the relics of the old world: any random underground mall from the pre-apocalyptic world suddenly found attracts most hunters around, that won’t hesitate to murder each other for the loot if necessary.

Meet Akira. It’s a post-apocalyptic Japanese story set in the future, so someone named Akira had to be involved. We are introduced to him as a traumatized teenager who constantly gets robbed and generally bullied by local shitheads. During a monster attack, the guy has enough, and decides to defend himself with a gun against a group who are bound to kill him. Suddenly, a naked female spirit appears, and hovers casually toward him. Akira freaks out until she, who calls herself Alpha, explains that she’s an AI remnant of the pre-apocalypse, and that he’s the only one who can see her because his brain is attuned to the old-world networks still in place, so she can show herself to him as augmented reality. She’s not just a curiosity, though: she can offer Akira superhuman support, analyzing his environment, pointing out enemies, guiding his shots. After she manages to save him from explosions and monsters by telling him to stay put or move at times, he realizes that she’s trustworthy, and that this sexy ghost of the past is his ticket to a better life.

Alpha, as we piece together early on, isn’t that trustworthy. Apparently, for many cycles, she has been finding humans to support. All of those cycles have ended with the subject dying. In the latest one, the subject came close to succeeding in beating some final dungeon that Alpha wants her subjects to clear out, only for some information to have been revealed that made the subject turn against Alpha, who promptly took the subject out. What’s Alpha after, then? Is she on the side of the pre-apocalyptic humanity, who may only want to resurrect the old world no matter how many modern eggs need to be cracked? Is Alpha part of the same AI that mass-produces monstrosities? We still don’t know. Throughout the story, the friendship between Akira and Alpha is heartwarming, but as Akira becomes more and more dependent on her, in the back of your mind you know that she’s going to screw him over in the end. It remains to be seen, though, whether or not Akira would go along with whatever Alpha’s true objective is.

Akira is emotionally stunted. He was orphaned so young that he has no memory of his parents, and all he has known of people growing up is the need to protect himself from sentient wild beasts. As the story advances, he meets people who like him, and would even want to tear his clothes apart and mount him, but the part of his brain that ought to connect to people doesn’t work to any significant extent. Plenty of other compentent hunters see him as an uncaring loner who, despite his competence, is someone to be wary of. The exceptions are a few women in his life to whom he proved himself, and who are eager to take him under their wing and show him their delectable parts to get a rise out of him.

The gals in this story are delicious. Props to the author and the visual artist. From the teenage gang leader Sheryl to the redheaded murderess whose name I don’t remember but who was a super cyborg or something, you want to stare in awe and horniness. Thank you Japan for being you.

This is yet another one of those Japanese stories in which you follow the lives of the characters as they change and grow. Although some personalities clash, they have reasons for doing so. Some chapters are just about having a good time and hanging out with interesting characters that get along, and that’s something I think has been lost in Western stories, that are full of forced conflict and people acting like bastards to each other. As far as I’m concerned, you can rely entirely on the tension born from the story world and concept, as well as from some characters that are genuine bastards, and just have the rest of the crew navigating that while relying on each other.

I’m loving this story. I wish I could keep experiencing it, but I’ve run out of chapters. If you’re into Japanese stories with great action, careful worldbuilding, human stakes, and total babes, this is one of the greats as far as I’m concerned.

Also, why not, here’s an AI-generated short podcast about this review:

Four stars. The title translates to “The Heartwarming Slow Life of a Free-Spirited Production Worker.”

This is yet another title in the isekai sub-genre of “let’s contrast how shitty my life on Earth was by having a good ol’ time in this fantasy world.” When this series started, I expected it to be completely mediocre, but it surprised me with its character work and sense of humor.

The story follows an overworked Japanese salaryman in his thirties, who works at one of those Japanese companies that require you to wear a suit and tie, and to die inside. Wanting to remain human, he exercises his architectural talents in an online VR game. His buildings are so popular that they’re regularly used as backgrounds for wedding proposals by the kind of people who would propose to someone in a video game. Anyway, the godess of love or some shit contacts the protagonist through the game and offers to send him to a new world where he may be able to have a good ol’ time.

He finds himself in your average isekai fantasy world, based on Central Europe during the post-medieval period, but including monsters and sentient fantasy races of the Tolkienesque variety plus beast people. His abilities back on Earth have been turned into vastly overpowered skills: previously a crafty fellow, he’s now the most talented builder person around. He has also access to a warehouse-size inventory in some private dimension, along with the kind of Minecraft powers that allow him to dig through a mountain easily. Although initially he’s a bit freaked out, and tries to remove the VR headset in front of confused fantasy people, he quickly gets used to a life that won’t involve working at a Japanese company.

Like in many other isekai, first cute girl he meets, who is usually the first female at all he meets, becomes the intimate option. In this case, with the guy in his thirties even though his new body doesn’t suggest it, they establish a sort of father-daughter relationship with no incestual undertones. Because she helped him, a broke guy with no ID, to get around in that new world, he imprints on her (or is it the other way around?), and is happy to follow her on her adventures as long as he has the opportunity to make her comfortable. By that I mean stuff like cooking restaurant-grade food for her every day, or producing entire houses out of his inventory whenever they need to take a rest in the wild.

Still, she doesn’t fall for him, which may have to do with the fact that she has a questionable relationship with the older female receptionist at the adventurers’ guild; this girl even calls “dates” her outings with the receptionist. Oh well, can’t fix nature.

Plenty of the plot so far involves the protagonist wanting to enjoy a slow life in this new fantasy world, only for people to take notice of him because of shit like stacking the processed meat of eleven orcs on the guild receptionist’s desk, or earning about a year of his previous salary in Japan with a single quest. Soon enough he attracts the attention of the local duke, and a troublesome party of adventurers.

This story is fun, and I like to have fun.

Four stars.

The story introduces a seventy-year-old master machinist who’s on his last leg as a professional, having to deal with corporate punks that intend him to accept unreasonable conditions.

He suspects he’ll end up on the streets soon, old and alone. How would he spend the rest of his life? Thankfully he doesn’t need to worry about it, because he suffers a heart attack and dies.

This story is one of the apparently millions of isekai out there. What’s an isekai, you ask? For whatever reason, the Japanese created a genre based on the notion of a Japanese person getting transported to a fantasy world, where they’re bound to enjoy a cooler new life. I don’t know what that says about Japan, but in my case, I love stories about exploring bizarre new worlds filled with colorful people and monsters, going along with a protagonist generally so overpowered that they might conquer the world if such were their preference.

Our seventy-year-old protagonist finds himself as a young man with vastly enhanced skills related to his decades of experience as a machinist, allowing him to surpass even the fabled Dwarves of legend (hence the title). For whatever reason, his workshop also gets isekai-d along with him; that’s a new one. Anyway, first fantasy person he comes across is a one-handed, scarred gal who was dismissed from a party of adventurers (a relatively common trope). A healer by trade, she has no choice but to train her offense if she’s to honor her late mom, one of the former heroes of this world.

The protagonist, charmed by her determination, asks her to lend him her magic staff. She’s a pushover, so she accepts. A couple of weeks later she finds out that the master mechanist has turned her staff into a futuristic gun capable of one-shotting the worst monsters around, and is even capable of healing for some reason. The protagonist’s overpowered skills allow him to gather and process the most hardcore materials easily, which he proceeds to turn into weapons of a quality that his new world has never seen.

One of the main joys of this manga series, apart from its art style and character designs, involves following a self-assured, old Japanese artisan that’s having the time of his life in this fantasy playground, to the dismay of the locals that he ends up dragging to face monstrous horrors.

Character work is quite strong so far, with a couple of redemption arcs that I enjoyed a lot. As in plenty of if not most other isekai, the protagonist and his team are gearing up to kill the demon king, whatever it’s called in this story. I don’t recall having actually seen such a feat achieved in any of the isekai I’ve read in the past few months, unless the story starts with the protagonist having already won. Oh, well; joy’s in the ride.

I recommend this one if you enjoy peculiar protagonists, cool designs, and having fun.

Three stars. The title translates to “You, My Lewd Queen.”

Picture an ordinary male teenager who, as a kid, met an injured girl and tended to her wounds when nobody else would. Such a pure act sparked love in the girl, who proceeded to spend most of her tomboy years with said dude.

Unfortunately, she’s the daughter of some rich man who intended to send her to a private school that our unremarkable protagonist couldn’t afford, unless he excelled at his studies. He did bust his ass, and ended up attending the same school as his love interest, only to find out that the previous tomboy had become a prim, beautiful lady that wouldn’t spare one second of her precious time for our ordinary protagonist.

Cue the concept of this story: some dumb urban legend actually works, and his room ends up connected to hers even though they are in different dorms. The minor god who granted that wish possesses a pillow to inform them of the price to pay: because she was the one who asked first for their rooms to be connected, her self-control will be removed for an hour each day.

The male protagonist comes to learn that he’s in love with a single-minded gal.

Our female protagonist, who is probably not even sixteen yet, masturbates compulsively about ten times a day, about three if she’s sick. She has remained madly in love with the protagonist; although her tsundere ways won’t allow her to admit it freely, once her self-control is removed, she happily proclaims to the world that she can’t wait to end up covered in our boy’s sperm. If he impregnates her, even better. We are treated with many creative scenes of her struggling to contain her compulsive masturbation, or finding artful solutions to satisfy it: for example, while her thumbs are zip-tied behind her back for reasons, she proceeds to rub her soaked parts against a table leg.

This isn’t the most ridiculous story I have ever read, but it does come close. And it just happens that I’m in the market for obscene silliness that doesn’t give a fuck about anybody’s boundaries.

Three and a half stars.

So many stories get produced yearly on the Japanese internal market (made by the Japanese for the Japanese), that tropes and anti-tropes and anti-tropes for the anti-tropes have been explored. For example: using absurdly long titles for fantasy stories. This tale, like many others in its general genre, features a party of heroes that are supposed to save the world or whatever, but the story starts with the protagonist getting kicked out of that party because he’s perceived as useless.

I’ve come across a surprising number of manga series that feature that anti-trope, and most of them launch into a revenge-focused narrative. As the anti-trope for that anti-trope, our chill protagonist doesn’t give a shit about being kicked out of the hero’s party, or more accurately, he takes it as a father would if his annoying kids started flying the coop: he hopes they have learned enough for the horrors they’re about to face on their own.

In fact, the protagonist is far from useless: he was the strategist and god-tier buffer of the party, capable of turning an average party into a force to be reckoned with. One of the most entertaining parts of this story so far involves witnessing how the hero’s party, comprised mainly of mean-spirited idiots, slowly realize that they’re hopeless without the man they drove away.

Regarding the protagonist, as soon as he gets dismissed, he embarks on more or less episodic adventures loosely tied together by the notion that some unseen hand is manipulating the events. Even though the guy gets mocked and sneered at by most people once they learn that he got kicked out of the hero’s party, he calmly makes them realize his power through good deeds that unite the community. He’s quite an inspiration in that regard.

Anyway, this is yet another of those Japanese stories that fulfill the common daydream of amassing a harem of attractive and powerful women who will eagerly murder your enemies. The ladies in this case are a feisty dragoness in humanoid form, a big-breasted saintess, a mythical female wolf in humanoid form, and a disguised princess who was chosen by a holy spear. We are introduced to each of these ladies in episodic adventures, which goes a long way to get us acquainted with their peculiarities.

This manga series is a lot of fun so far, not a masterpiece or anything, but features cool action and entertaining interactions. As far as I know, it’s adapting a novel, so it should have plenty more to go. In any case, these uniquely Japanese tales serve as great bulwarks against the armies of night, for which I’m forever grateful.

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.

Four stars, four and a half for its genre.

This manga series with a characteristically long title attempts to answer the question of what would happen if a female knight from a ruthless fantasy world got isekai-d into ours, specifically the isolated countryside of Japan. According to this author, the experience would turn into a wholesome show of how beautiful and peaceful the life in the countryside can be, at least as long as you have some money.

The story follows a twenty-nine-year-old dude who bought some big house in his hometown, set in the Japanese countryside, and has spent the last few years growing produce and selling it to wholesalers. He’s a loner who ended up avoiding even his childhood friends. He doesn’t want to get involved with other people’s troubles. Then, one day, a young woman wearing elaborate armor shows up unconscious in his paddy field. She’s a blonde, emerald-eyed beauty of European descent, but she’s also too quick to draw her sword at the slightest mockery. The protagonist first takes her for a devoted cosplayer, until her physical feats and clear ignorance about the world she’s found herself in convinces him that he’s dealing with a stranded outworlder who probably will never return home. Therefore, he offers her to live together.

As mentioned, this story is an isekai. What’s an isekai, you ask? I’m glad you asked. Isekai is a decadent dessert of French origin. It starts with a creamy base, like yogurt or custard. Then, a layer of something crunchy is added, usually granola or crumbled cookies. Next, there’s often a layer of fruit, like berries or sliced bananas. Finally, the dessert might be topped with a drizzle of honey or chocolate, or a sprinkle of nuts.

This story, although it’s set up as an isekai, quickly slips into the slice-of-life genre, allowing us to follow the experiences of the female knight and our progressively less solitary protagonist as they live, work, and deal together with neighbors, acquaintances, and the male protagonist’s childhood friends. She’s delightful: always enthusiastic and curious, somewhat like a child, if a child were a blonde, emerald-eyed young woman with F cups. Most of the entertainment of this manga comes from watching this fantasy character discovering some mundane facet of Japan or our world that her place of origin lacked. Given that her homeworld lacked even our plants and animals, she’s in for plenty of surprises.

The knight came from the kind of medieval fantasy world where, in her words, “blood is washed with blood.” Human towns regularly get assaulted by monsters, traveling anywhere is a nightmare, and people are forced down paths in life out of the necessity for survival. This steely female knight quickly becomes captivated by the beauty and peacefulness of the Japanese countryside, and by how friendly the people around are, to the extent that she considers our Earth a wonderful place full of happiness. It’s all about finding joy in the little things. She was also extremely lucky to have ended up in the Japanese countryside instead of, let’s say, Detroit.

The male protagonist’s arc is set up as a reserved loner turning into someone who embraces the company of those around him, thanks to the joy that this enthusiastic, big-breasted female knight brings to his life.

All in all, this series is a good-natured, wholesome ride featuring lovable characters, beautiful drawings (particularly of backgrounds and food), and a huge attention to detail. The episodic tale is still ongoing, but it has been so consistent that I don’t see my rating changing.

Four stars.

Recently I’ve been binging YouTube videos that offer manga recaps of obscure series: an AI voice summarizes what happens in the first twenty or so chapters (or the entire thing, if they’re masochistic), which gives enough of a notion regarding whether or not you’d like to read the whole thing. I’ve already discovered four very enjoyable series that way, including this one.

It’s an isekai. What’s an isekai, you ask? Who are you, and why are you reading a manga review? Anyway, isekai is a tremendously popular genre in Japanese fiction that always involves someone getting transported from our world into a fantasy world. So many stories have been written in that genre that not only you expect to find the usual tropes (a Japanese citizen gets run over by a truck, usually a goddess is responsible for the summoning, the fantasy world is almost always based on Europe around the time when this continent initially contacted Japan, the fantasy world tends to feature magic, they have elves and such races, the protagonist receives superpowers, they usually have to defeat a Demon Lord/King/Emperor, etc.), but so many stories have also been written that satisfy all those tropes, that anti-tropes have been explored (the summoning goddess and/or the country involved in the summoning are actually evil, the protagonist turns out to be powerless and gets discarded, the protagonist refuses to follow the rules and instead opts for a chill existence, a person from a fantasy world gets sent to our world instead, sometimes the summoned person is reborn as a vending machine, etc.). In summary, isekais are comfortable stories about some random person exploring an unfamiliar setting, receiving powers, making friends, and kicking ass. I’m almost always up for such an adventure. These are also the kind of kind-hearted, non-political stories that don’t get made in the West anymore. Or at least, they don’t get published.

The twist on the usual formula for this series involves the fact that when the story starts, the protagonist has already won. Our guy, a freshman in college, got picked for no particular reason by a goddess from a fantasy world, who told him to defeat some bad guy. He became OP, gained lasting friends and love interests, but ended up returning home, ready to continue with his mundane life. However, he discovers that his magical abilities and OP skills have transferred to our world.

At that point, the protagonist could have gone nuts exerting his power over the peasants around him, but apart from threatening losers a few times, he uses his powers for good: assisting in accidents, solving hostage situations, improving the health of those around him, doing magic tricks for sick children (with actual magic), etc. He also finds out that he can summon an intelligent, shapeshifting dragon from the other world, so we get plenty of the usual manga/anime magic involving some fantasy character discovering modern Japan.

The story features a tight plot (just twenty-five chapters), entertaining secondary characters, some clever writing, and scenes that could only happen with such a concept (for example, the protagonist riding a motorcycle in a fantasy world, inside the magic equivalent of a hamster wheel, to barrel through a knight charge).

I didn’t have any issues with the story. So why four stars instead of five? Because the artwork is quite generic, and as an isekai, relying on known tropes to tell the story, it lacks the level of innovation that would be necessary to create a tale that can’t be easily categorized. Still, I loved the experience, and got through it in a single sitting.

Four stars. The title apparently means “unnecessary” in Turkish.

This is Furuya’s latest series, finished six years ago, after his fan-favorite (at least for this fan of his) Saltiness. As usual, the story follows a man in the fringes of society, the owner of a small shop that specializes on baumkuchen, a type of pastry I wasn’t aware of but that looks delicious. As a teen, the man was urged to quit high school and become an apprentice of his father’s. Now his father is dead, and he has found himself as a nearly forty-year-old dude who knows little else other than baumkuchen, and whom nobody would love. His sole acquaintance is his twenty-three-year-old employee, an intimidating young woman who regularly pesters him with random topics such as the birth of the universe. She also finds him weak and generally pathetic.

One day, our protagonist begs his employee to eat out with him, and she reluctantly agrees because it’s his birthday. He has realized that he leads an empty life, but he opens up about the fact that he has fallen in love. The employee fears that she’s the target. However, that’s not the case: every evening, when he’s returning from work, he sees the same shapely young woman standing behind a tree at a local park, and she’s alluring enough that he can’t stop fantasizing about her, even though he has never seen her face.

The protagonist’s employee is intrigued. She urges him to head to that park and introduce himself to the woman. As he points the stranger out to his employee, though, an issue arises: he’s the only person who can see her.

That’s as much as you need to know about this shortish series, which only gets increasingly bizarre from there. Although it’s a minor work by a now fifty-one-year-old author who has probably said most of what he needed to say, it delves into powerful topics such as the need of certain people to lose themselves in delusions, because if they faced their reality objectively, they’d go insane.

I enjoyed this tale a lot, and found its last stretch quite touching. However, I would have ended it a page or two earlier.

I have reviewed most other works of this author, such as Boku to Issho, Wanitokagegisu, Himizu, and Ciguatera. Unfortunately, I have only found the translation for a single more work of his, and it’s the oldest, made in the early 90s. Furuya hasn’t produced any original work in six years, although he seems to have involved himself in adaptations of his series such as a live-action version of Ciguatera, which I’m sure is lackluster because live-action stuff rarely works.