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First impressions, new titles - Nov 2021
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This to discuss initial impressions of the new titles which have just been released. We have a large cohort this time:
- To Another World - With Landmines!
- My Quite Blacksmith Life in Another World
- My Stepmom's Daughter is my Ex
- Magic Knight of the Old Ways
- Fantasy Inbound
- Saint? No! I'm Just a Passing Beast Tamer
- Forget Being a Villianess, I Want to Be an Adventurer
- Prison Life is Easy for a Villianess
- When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace
- Housekeeping Mage From Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home!
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As a side note, I think JNC must be doing well financially to be starting so many titles.
A quick analysis, based on the blurbs:
- To Another World - With Landmines!
A high school class all get isekaied, each gets a special power. This looks very standard. The main twist is that the god might be evil, but that too has been done in a recent JNC release.
- My Quite Blacksmith Life in Another World
Salary man gets isekaied (by Truck-kun no less), gets OP power but just wants to avoid trouble. Again, this looks very standard.
- My Stepmom's Daughter is my Ex
High school rom-com.
- Magic Knight of the Old Ways
Sword and sorcery.
- Fantasy Inbound
Real world fantasy post-apocalypse.
- Saint? No! I'm Just a Passing Beast Tamer
Comedy fantasy. Looks like "MC seeks quiet life and fails" plot.
- Forget Being a Villianess, I Want to Be an Adventurer
The now standard "reincarnated as villianess" sub-genre. In this case, the MC looks to be trying to entirely avoid the death flags by running in the opposite direction.
- Prison Life is Easy for a Villianess
Not immediately falling into a well-trod subgenre. It does have "Villianess" in the title, but she doesn't seem to be an isekai.
- When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace
This looks like a twist on supernatural superpowered teens. Again, it looks like it doesn't fall neatly into a subgenre.
- Housekeeping Mage From Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home!
Salaryman isekai with MC seeking a quiet life.
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My thoughts on "isekai land mines" as I've taken to calling it is that it will be similar to Zero Believers with the MCs not being OP in the stereotypical way but in how they creatively use their skills; it even has a "yes I'm called an Evil God but I'm not really an evil god" as well.
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First impressions cont.
Prison Life
This one is going to be fun. Not isekai which is refreshing. I agree with whomever said this has a similar style of comedy to Monty Python. My favorite of the bunch
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I guess since I spent a while going through all of the new releases I can offer an opinion. Though since I'm still relatively new to LNs I'm not as burnt out on what others may consider more painfully generic.
The only two I didn't really hit it off with were Quiet Blacksmith Life and Housekeeping Mage. For Housekeeping we only got one part so it could pick up later, but I'd like to get more of the MC's perspective first. For Blacksmithing, I think the characters just feel kind of empty so far to me? Both the main guy and the tiger lady soon-to-be love interest feel like they're going through the motions of how these kinds of characters would normally act but without much of the reason. The dialogue and what exists of the guy's inner monologue all feel pretty bare bones and functional, without much of the stuff that shows character and makes it more enjoyable.
The ones I enjoyed the most were Landmines, Prison Life, and Stepmom's daughter. In landmines, it's not that everyone gets a power, but that everyone has the opportunity to choose an OP seeming power, where the more cheat-like it is, the worse the drawback. I'm not sure exactly how relevant those drawbacks will be long term, but so far the main trio are pretty enjoyable together and have a lot of potential. Prison life (not an isekai) is just funny, given the competency gap between the protagonist and her enemies, how everyone but those enemies understand it, and MC just wants a break from her hard work. Stepmom's Daughter has absolutely no right to be as enjoyable as it is, given the premise, but so far I think it's really pulling it off so far. The leads have a surprising amount of chemistry for people who allegedly hate each other, and doesn't have painfully slow development yet either.
I don't have too much to say about the others. Supernatural battles throws enough references around to make me feel unqualified to read it. Passing Beast Tamer (surprise isekai but it's not that relevant really) is a fun read so far, the MC's intense devotion to fluff and fluffy beasties is enjoyable.
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First impressions cont.
Step-Ex
Yeah they're totally gonna fall back in love with each other, but kudos to the author for setting up circumstances where I can actually believe step-siblings falling in love with each other. Usually with this sort of set up I just roll my eyes and mutter "Oh Japan..."
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First impressions cont.
Blacksmith isekai
One of those slow life isekai series. We'll see whether he actually gets a quiet life, wishing for a quiet life in light novels usually means that you get swept up into decidedly unquiet things
Also because I have to:
My name is Tanya Eiko. I'm 33 years old. My house is in the east section of The Black Forest, and I am not married. I work as a blacksmith, and I stop working every day by 8 PM at the latest. I don't smoke, but I occasionally drink. I'm in bed by 11 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a person who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
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I've now read the initial installments of Prison Life and Supernatural Battles.
Prison Life:
Rachel, the MC, is a Machiavellian supergenius with few moral fetters. But she doesn't want to rule the world, she just wants people not to annoy her. It looks like watching her run rings around Those Who Would Annoy Her will be the main attraction.She was paying attention to her arduous How To Be Queen lessons, so she does have some sense of duty. I'm not sure why she didn't apply herself to avoiding becoming the heir apparent's fiance in the first place.
I felt her backstory establishing her badass credentials was a bit perfunctory. It doesn't really justify the fear and awe her parents hold for her.
The start was good enough that I'll be reading more.
Supernatural Battles:
I think the characters and their interactions are going to make or break this one. I'm not sure yet whether they will work for me. At the moment it feels like a 'read a volume or two, then give up' story.I do like that they took some time to think about the ethics of having superpowers.
Despite having an adolescent boy MC with four girls making up the rest of the core cast, I'm not getting harem vibes from this one. It is unclear to me where this story is going - which is not a bad thing.
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First impressions cont.
Housekeeping Mage
Seems to be the story of someone who after traumatic past finds a way to eventually be able to open her heart again. Hope it doesn't get too dark but I'm a sucker for romances, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops. Like it so far with only a single part to go on
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First impressions cont.
Passing Beast Tamer
The fluffiest of fluff, just like the MC desires. a fun goofy ride. Reminds me of bit of Dragon Daddy in its MC causally being OP
“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
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First impressions cont.
Fantasy Inbound
Dystopias are not really my cup of tea and my impression went down a notch when you have to go through a whole 2 pages of terminology before even getting to the prologue but it's interesting enough that I will stick around for the rest of the volume
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Are these titles staying on Saturday or are they going to be spread out through the week?
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@mortcs You can check the calendar to see when they will be releasing, though currently only the upcoming part is posted and not the full volume for each series. The breakdown Monday to Friday (US time) is 3/1/1/2/3 series each day.
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@lisast - It looks like Housekeeping Mage is on a slower cadence than the others, though, since the next part isn't next week at all, but rather Friday, December 3rd.
(Edit: Or maybe that's just skipping the Thanksgiving weekend and it'll be normal cadence after that.)
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@lily-garden said in First impressions, new titles - Nov 2021:
First impressions cont.
Passing Beast Tamer
The fluffiest of fluff, just like the MC desires. a fun goofy ride. Reminds me of bit of Dragon Daddy in its MC causally being OP
And once again we find out the single most OP skill you can carry from our world to the isekai is ... cooking. Ignore learning to make gunpowder, precision engineering, cryptography, steel smelting, algebra. Learn to cook. Your future isekai self will thank you for it.
@mortcs said in First impressions, new titles - Nov 2021:
Are these titles staying on Saturday or are they going to be spread out through the week?
Past practice is that they drop a whole bunch of new titles all at once on one day (with two parts each), but regular updates get spread through the week. I haven't tried to figure out whether the new title drop comes at a regular interval, but they are a few months apart. I do wish they'd schedule a bunch of releases for the weekend. By the magic of programmed scheduling, they can do this without requiring people to work weekends.
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@libri-liberorum I hear industrial chemicals are useful as well. Things like acid, chlorine and petrochemicals are dang handy in early industrial production.
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Still going through all the new licenses, but from the ones that interested me enough to start reading that I've gotten to so far Land Mines seems interesting, but I'll need to see where this one is headed before I commit to it fully. Fantasy Inbound has some potential, but it's not catching my interest enough to do more than keep tabs on the pre-pubs so far. Magic Knight doesn't appear to be the type of story I'm interested in after reading the first two parts, so I'll probably pass on it.
Still have to try Quiet Blacksmith, but I've seen the manga, and I'm not sure it's going to pull my interest enough to keep going, I guess I'll find out once I get to the reading part.
Supernatural Battles I plan to read simply because I liked the anime and I'm interested in seeing where the story goes after where the anime left off.
