Ever since I read "I have been reincarnated as a Slime" a lot of "I have been reincarnated as..." appeared on my recommended read list (by Google). Lots of soulless knock-offs, a boring bouch that repeated the joke louder.
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| Mere example |
(Volumes 1, 2, and 3)
This is not that. I have been surprised by the author, Okina Baba because while taking a super-exploited genre such as game-system Isekai, claw your way to the Top style, she achieves a completely different result.
Each volume shows an epic battle against terribly powerful enemies, such as earth dragon Araba, and the way skills are developed is engaging, but what's distressing about Kumo's situation is that she's against the Gods themselves, against fate in a very Odyssey-like fashion. I don't like the segments in which the other reincarnations do their thing, but I understand that it's necessary in a novel of this type to have a counter-point to show us how the regular folk sees the world, and how irregular the protagonist's situation is. I've read the whole three volumes in five days, that's how engaging this is! 9/10
(edit, I'd like to point out that as the plot progresses stat-blocks become a bit too intense and difficult to parse, sometimes even inconsistent as shown on the meme below. It's nothing too important now, but in later stages stats are just page-fillers)
(Volumes 4 and 5)
I don't agree with the politic of two timelines (one in the future, one in the present) that Okina implements, in fact, as many others I think that the "human timeline" or the "students POV" is the worst part and the constant hopping hurts the story, I don't understand the underlying idea. I got pretty far into the story and still can't figure out what the student's POV is for, as it leads nowhere.
It's completely skippable in the fourth volume, and almost so in the first half of the fifth.
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| Kumo doesn't like people either |
Kumo's present time on the other hand has not disappointed! Volume four is particularly good. Innovative, and constantly reminding you that Kumo is not invincible, that there's still danger lurking in the world and mysteries to be solved.
The soul attack method was a new one for me, and I found parallel minds a very interesting concept to apply. Since half the book was meh, I can't give them a ten out of ten, but since the rest is so good I think the story deserves an 8/10
(Volumes 6 & 7)
6th PR= Shiro and the demon Lord Ariel take a stroll to the capital with baby vampire Sophia and her faithful servant. Meanwhile, the parallel minds start plotting the destruction of all lifeforms around the globe. Eventually, Shiro confronts her parallel minds in a not-very-exciting battle.
The sixth volume has a major improvement (I hope permanently) of not having two timelines, I think this has something to do with the light novel version catching up with the web version. There's still another point of view but it happens at the same time. It's a bit repetitive on the things that we've already seen in the book and it feels like a long transition episode. The mage's POV was the best part of the story but as I said nothing new. 4/10
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| Kumo becomes popular and heals villagers in strage fashions |
7th PR: The usual suspects casually find some ruin deep underground that contains a huge amount of robots, tanks, and an OVNI. A "turning point" of the story is revealed when they finally say what's the information Taboo has revealed: the reason the world is dying is that it's running out of Magical Energy, which was practically exhausted by the spendthrifts of the modern age before some cataclysmic event turns the world back to the bronze age.
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| Another hideous character, Potimas. AKA Machine-gun elf that throws lasers through his eyes |
As the plot reminder indicates this volume betrays everything the book has been so far. I'm not entirely sure it's bad, it's just a different book. The typical level-up/skills are left aside, so the battle that follows not only leaves us in the dark related to what's the extent of the machinery firepower, but the result of the battle is quite dull. Yes, at the end (spoiler alert, I suppose) Shiro turns into a Goddess, but it doesn't mean anything. She loses the system and becomes weaker than how she started. Quite the setback, IMO.
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| No, user#321 from Solo Leveling, we can't explain this shit. |
8 & 9
So I started missing Kumoko after a while and rue the day I decided to give it another go.
God, what a sore to the eyes. I don't mean to be disrespectful to okina baba, but the level that these two volumes had was subpar to the worst I ever read.
Ok it's better than Atlanta Nights. But barely so!
The eight volume was completely intranscendental, like a long transition. The fact that Kumo had lost her powers was baffling since it was like grabbing the entirety of the novel's work so far and tossing it off the boat, she's left in the sidelines as other characters that barely hold any interest, being as cliché as they are such as this "Wrath" person that should change his name to "Tantrum" given the shallowness of his so-called character development, take the lead.
But it was mostly passable, it even had it's funny moments like the one when Wrath discovers that can make IEDs out of swords and starts blasting the whole forest with them "Sword Mines".
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| "Mind swords", peak strategy right here. Sun Tzu? Who's that? |
But the ninth volume was the worst. This abomination, this insult would suffice to make AI so mad at humanity that if it was indeed intelligent we would be facing a hundred fury-driven terminators. I cannot even begin to describe how annoying it was to me that the author, after four hundred pages of suddenly deciding to give back kumo- sorry "shiroe", her powers back without any valid explanation, and still not doing anything with it, gets us to the so long wait for confrontation between Kumo and (evil) D(ick), and then slap our faces with "turns out Dick was Kumo all along, or rather (plot hole, plot hole, plot hole) ... and Kumo is just a (plot hole) which was shaped as a clone of D. But that doesn't have any of her memories, or powers, or well anything that would justify saying that they're the same." After the swiss cheese showdown, instead of having any interesting reaction, like, I don't know getting mad at D in place of us readers, she just play videogames with D, meaning herself. And loses, too. 1/10
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